The latest blog post from Dr Cate Shanahan:

Click on the link to read in full.

Includes a Library of the top videos on the topic. With the well known cholesterol skeptics...Drs. Malhotra, Diamond, Bikman, Ali, Kendrick and more.

It shows the power of advertising dollars, because that's where people are being driven.

Of course, she has push-back on Twitter.

Her response:



More to come!

Agree with Dr. Cate on this, as the science is not settled, but we’re getting there with new research. She’s brave in tackling the various social media posters on this topic, and we need more professionals to force this dialogue.

To answer the question of Who Teaches Doctors About Cholesterol-lowering Drugs?, however, is relatively easy. In the United States, it’s the pharmaceutical companies. The heavily subsidized medical schools receiving pharma money are required to develop their courses of studies to heavily emphasize pharmaceuticals as a primary course of treatment. Our newly minted doctors are more prepared to treat symptoms with a prescription than they are prepared to identify an accurate root cause. Sound medicine must be practiced as an art allowing doctors to draw upon their clinical experiences rather than blindly following a standards of care approach by playing “whack-a-mole” with prescription drugs.

We did a "whirlwind doctor round" with DH, who was getting some lower kidney numbers which concerned our GP. I fixed it by getting him on low oxalate, and he got 22 points up on his next exam.

I went for the source of the problem. It would seem DH's kidneys are sensitive to this dietary toxin, so removing it did far more than bump his numbers. If his kidneys are working better, it's probable that the rest of him is, too. It's a global change with significant benefits for all his organs.

But we also saw a kidney specialist, who announced he was throwing away our GP's carefully crafted regimen, which we saw considerable improvement under, to pursue his own ideas of what was causing the trouble. Needless to say, the first drug he wanted to remove sent DH into a spiral in decreasing health, so we pulled the plug on his ideas, and fired him.

Had we not, DH would have been chalked up to "non compliance" or "atypical." He wouldn't change course even if the patient was getting worse. Because it couldn't be his precious protocol.

Also notable? He ignored me like I was a talking plant stand. He ignored DH because he was the patient. Such an arrogant piece of work. How can I trust this person's medical judgement?

Who teaches doctors about drugs?

The drug companies.

What do they recommend?

The most profitable for the drug companies.

The reason for a corporation is to make the stockholders money. They care not about the customers, only about perpetual profit growth.

Once you really understand that, you've got it.

I think this also masks how people process information. Remember Public Service Announcements? (If you say yes, then you're a certain amount of old.)

People act like the Influencers are telling them important things to shill their product. But they lie.

The advertisers support the media.

Therefore, most of what you see/read in the media, is either an overt or a covert ad.

If the corporation doesn't make more money this quarter than the last, and more than that in the next one, ad infinitum, the stockholders will sell their stock. Why own stock that doesn't increase in value?

But perpetual growth is impossible. So they do what they can for as long as they can.

I am old enough to remember "Three out of four doctors recommend Camel cigarettes." And I remember bogus tests that showed how the cigarette eased tensions, and promoted weight loss.

I've seen people calling themselves Doctors publish articles in the press that make you think that you need sugar in your diet or you will be sick.

Unless the article is published in a peer-reviewed , professional journal, I consider it highly suspect. And if it is peer-reviewed, I'm still skeptical, just not AS skeptical.

Bob

Actually the claims that smoking helped with weight loss was true.

As pointed out in one of the other threads on here, it worked by keeping smoker's mouths busy with non-food, keeping their hands busy with the cigarette itself, and the smoke altered their sense of taste and smell so that food didn't taste all that good, so they were less inclined to eat when they weren't really hungry. So yeah, they were able to lose weight by taking up smoking.

ETA: Oh and smoking did ease tensions to a certain extent, since anyone trying to quit smoking (or even cut back on smoking) would definitely go through a sort of withdrawal. Maybe not the kinds of withdrawal symptoms associated with heroin, but they would certainly be tense from not getting their nicotine "hit".

I also think an unsustainable system gives warnings in a myriad of ways. Food and drink -- and I'm talking about giant sugared coffee drinks -- are the latest, cheapest, most indelible addiction.

The veterans of WWII had been plied with free cigarettes to keep everyone alert. Which nicotine does. It's like coffee that way.

If they could put nicotine in bottles without killing people... they would.

They put it Vape products, add sweet flavoring and market it to children.

Yes, but the doctor is in charge of your health. And when they get cancer or emphysema from smoking and die, they will definitely eat less.

Digesting tape worm eggs will help you lose weight, too, but doctors don't recommend that anymore, so why something else that's deadly?

And I doubt the 4 out of 5 doctors who recommended Camel cigarettes in the advertisements were representational of all the GPs, but cherry-picked for their opinion, or else was simply a lie.

And I find it amazing that so many people still smoke cigarettes and cigars.

When I was young, I did, because everyone did. But as soon as I found out just how risky the habit was, I quit.

Back on topic.

The doctors are barraged with covert and overt ads in their journals placed there by big pharma. Tell the lie often enough and the lie becomes perceived as the truth. And big pharma goes to the bank and doesn't care about the patients, only selling what they have patents on.

They also hire good-looking sales people who take a doctor to lunch and flirt with them, while offering kickbacks.

That's a different kind of science.