Now Darrel seems quite a prestigious guy. He's an FRCP (Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians) and reader in Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute and, he has a list of published works as long as, well, several arms. He has travelled the world lecturing and studying, it would seem, and undertakes work for the British Heart Foundation. You can, if you are really bored, read the 6 page pdf of his report here. I wouldn't if I had something else better to do, like watching some paint dry, but I would not want to be accused of not representing his view in full. But what a load of b******s. Is this really serious research? More importantly is this what our hard earned taxes and charitable donations are for?
The details of this study contradict the many recently undertaken (and many from the past) that indicate that intake of statin's do not confer any protection to low risk or indeed high risk cohorts of those likely to fall prey to CHD/CVD (see posts passim). This study confirms, that even persons admitted with heart attacks, did not have high levels of LDL, which is the reason why statin's are generally prescribed in the first place. Makes one wonder why anyone would want to take them then! Especially with the ketchup for the fries!
And what's the fat got to do with it? It's the bun (high carb plus it's wheat), the fries (high carb plus trans fat used for frying), the burger (well some saturates but more, it's cheap, lot fed beef with high polyunsaturate content from soy meal). Oh let's not forget the shake. That will be sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, bulked with protein powder and is as far away from real milk as it's possible to be! So, all in all, it's something I would not recommend eating to almost anyone. Well, perhaps a few, at the Food Standards Agency, or Diabetes UK, for instance because it fulfills their stupid criteria of 66% carbohydrates, and might rid us of a number of those who have advocated diets that cause positive harm and increase obesity.
All in all, I do concur with Darrel, that it's not a meal to be eating at any time, but to advocate it to be taken with a statin. Well that's a step too far. It plays to the gallery of stupidity embodied in healthcare at present that advocates intake of harmful substances, like carbohydrates in abundance, and to then take a drug to ameliorate the effect of such intake. Such as hypoglycemic agents for Diabetics. I suggest that Darel et al take their study and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine, along with the statin's they advocate!
People like this, do not gift the population, with the brains they are born with. They feel the need to inject fear into the populace, as a means of manipulation of diet, that flies in the face of common sense, that since low fat has been the mantra of healthcare for the past thirty years, all they have achieved is more sick, fat people, not less.
I think the clue is that the guy - Darrel. P. Francis - "undertakes work for the British Heart Foundation."...)o:
ReplyDeleteI urge everyone to read about nnt (number needed to treat) here: http://www.slate.com/id/2150354/?nav=ais. This supports the view that very few people actually do benefit from taking statins. The vast majority of people who take them do not benefit, despite having the bother of taking them every day for years.
Far more people experience unpleasant side-effects from statins than benefit from them. The chief benefit of statins is to the drug companies who manufacture and sell them.
The best, cheapest, and most effective way to lower your risk of heart attack, reduce heart disease, lower high cholesterol levels, lower high blood pressure, reduce excess weight and benefit your health in a host of other ways with no adverse side-effects whatsover, is to reduce your intake of salt and salty food as much as you can. Salt/Sodium reduction is of especial benefit to people who already have heart and circulatory disease or high blood pressure, or are overweight, etc. Salt reduction is real 'primary prevention'.
I don't know why the British Heart Foundation persists in banging the drum for statins, instead of stressing the many huge benefits of sodium reduction. - What's in it for them? Why do they want more and more people taking drugs - even when there is nothing the matter with them? - What's in it for them? Or to put it another way, "Cui bono?" Or another way again: "Follow the money!"
Very often it is prescription drugs that cause heart problems, etc. in the first place...)o: - drugs like steroids, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, antipsychotics and many more that are frequently over-prescribed and frequently unmonitored. It's best to avoid prescription drugs unless you feel they are absolutely necessary. As a whole, they do far far more harm than good, especially statins.
Many, if not all, so called 'charitable' entities derive considerable income from adhereing to protocols promoted as essential in the diseases they are in business to 'cure'. In doing so they lose integrity and expose their constituent to many dangers simply to perpetuate their existence.
ReplyDeleteThe BHF is just one of these.
Sadly most delude themselves that they are acting in the best interest of the patient cohort, even it seems, when many inside attempt to divert them to a more righteous path. They come to believe their own rhetoric, become part of the establishment. That way is the path to grants of gold and privilege. Once on that path, the rest is an inevitable loss of their reason for being. This happens often; when even their own funded research shows a different outcome to the one they are pursuing, they usually ignore it. As you rightly state, Willow, they 'follow the money'.
And here is an associated situation: a cancer society that has financial ties to Mammography. See http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/02/cancer-society-has-financial-ties-to-mammography.aspx
ReplyDelete