Re: health check
Originally Posted by
Grumblewagon
->
Did you watch Michael Mosleys program last night about health screening?
While some of the programme agreed with things I had seen and read, there was the usual disagreements amongst 'experts'. Mosley seemed to contradict his own findings from the previous weeks prog.
Having had his heart scanned and told that it showed a small but potentieally dangerous piece of plaque, he consulted an imaging specialist who told him it was not significant and not unusual for someone his age.
Last week in a bit of self experimentation, he discovered that making lifestyle changes could be as effective as taking statins in lowering cholesterol, but after tonights tests, he said he would start taking them... The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that there is somewhat of a hidden agenda in these progs.
Setting the statin issue aside, the matter of over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment for prostate and breast cancer was very worrying.
Re "taking statins in lowering cholesterol":
Much of the "scientific" research in favor of statins is flawed and fraudulent. The most reliable evidence has long tied statin use with memory problems, muscle disorders, liver damage, cataracts, nerve damage, pancreatitis, erectile dysfunction, brain dysfunction, diabetes, and with an increased risk of cancer and higher mortality (statins only somewhat reduce the risk of non-fatal heart attacks).
The physiological mechanisms of how statins do serious damage are also well understood, such as by their impairment of oxidative cell metabolism, the increase in inflammation and cell destruction, the lowering of cholesterol and steroid hormone production, the promotion of pancreatic injury, etc. - rather thoroughly explained in this scholarly article on how statins, and a cholesterol-lowering popular diet pill advertised by Dr. Oz, promote diabetes at
Do Statins & Garcinia Cambogia Extract Increase the Risk of Diabetes? - look at Figure 7 to see how irrational it is to block the production of cholesterol!
Yet despite of the existence of that scientific knowledge, the medical business and the public health authorities keep ignoring it and continue to recommend statins to diabetics and make claims that they have a low risk profile despite that they are also significantly linked to cancer and higher mortality (just look at the propaganda put out by the Mayo clinic on statin drugs: "the risk of life-threatening side effects from statins is very low"). And because of such medical propaganda, few people are aware that the medical claims of benefits of statins are mostly based on junk studies conducted by people with vested interests. And, logically, it's mostly the corporate medical business and other people with similar vested interests tied to it (eg, mouthpieces, hacks) who promote the alleged value of these highly lucrative products.
Also, older people with HIGH cholesterol live longer than those with low cholesterol levels (see above mentioned article for numerous scientific study references confirming this).
Because the cholesterol-heart disease theory, or rather medical dogma, is wrong, the use of statins is also wrong by logical extension. Statins have almost no real benefit in the very vast majority of users. They do more harm than good. It's a "scientific" scam of the mainstream medical business.