[thesearethetimes...]

BookMark

[sparklite2]

“We know that millions of North Americans are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs and are not being told these prescription drugs are robbing their heart of coenzyme Q10.”

Uhm, my cardiologist had me taking Co-Q-10, 400 mg a day along with the statins. Surely he isn’t the only one who knows about it.

[dangus]

My wife was very nearly a dead body thanks to herbal detox tea.

[Seruzawa]

Sure there are lots of charlatans out there hawking uselss supplements. And there are plenty of allopaths doing the same thing except with drugs, which are essentially poisons. I’m not aware of any supplements that turn you into an addict in less than a week, though. I’m afraid that prescription painkiller prescribers alone are a far far worse scourge than a few vitamin salesmen. Not to mention the insane over-prescription of antidepressants and such.

[Boogieman]

Hmm, how many deadly diseases and conditions have “supplements” cured though?

Have to figure that into the calculus also or it is meaningless.

[JohnT416]

Magnesium chloride is most likely one of the most powerful & helpful supplements a person can take to remain healthy.

[caveat emptor]

This book covers a range of heart related topics including one related to this thread - the decision made by a number of drug companies and US health authorities to get large numbers of people taking statins unnecessarily, and the resulting frequent, often debilitating side effects. Out of print but available at Amazon.

Here's a fairly recent article discussing widespread use of statins - this is in Britain, and is still going on.

Forty years ago Henry Gadsden, chief executive of the drug company Merck, expressed his frustration that the potential market for his company’s products should be limited to those with treatable illness. Ideally, he said, he would like ‘to sell to everyone’. ‘Henry Gadsden’s dream has long since come true,’ observes the medical commentator Ray Moynihan. ‘The marketing strategy of drug companies now targets the hundreds of millions of the apparently well, persuading them they have some medical condition that warrants treatment.’

The jewel in the crown of modern pharmaceuticals and the apotheosis of Henry Gadsden’s vision of selling ‘to everyone’ are cholesterol-lowering statins. They are the wonder drugs of our age, credited with saving tens of thousands of lives and generating for their manufacturers £15 billion a year in annual revenues. They are, by far, the single most profitable drug ever discovered. Already the most widely prescribed class of drugs in Britain, they could soon become even more so following the recent recommendation by a committee of cholesterol experts advising the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) that those eligible for statins should be extended to everyone aged 60 and over, boosting the numbers taking them to an eye-watering 12 million — or one in four of the adult population.
.............................................................

It [claims of "virtually no side effects"] is certainly contradicted by independent surveys of those taking statins that suggest the prevalence of muscular aches and pains to be 100 times greater than reported in trials, along with numerous other problems of fatigue, depression, poor memory and concentration, sleep disturbances and reduced libido.

I first became aware of the scale of this hidden epidemic of apparent statin-induced symptoms after describing in my Telegraph column the experience of a man in his seventies whose general health following the successful repair of an aortic aneurysm had gradually deteriorated to a state (as he described it) of ‘chronic decrepitude’ — such that when flying to Hawaii to attend his son’s wedding he had required a wheelchair at the various stopovers. Yet returning three weeks later he had walked back through Heathrow — having forgotten to pack the statins he had been taking since his operation.

This account of his near-miraculous recovery following his statin-free excursion prompted hundreds of letters and emails from readers describing their own similar experiences. Those who had been previously fit and well were usually quick to spot the adverse effects on their wellbeing: ‘Within a couple of weeks I went from an active 65-year-old to a doddering old man,’ as one put it. Most only realised the devastating impact of statins on their lives when advised by friends and relatives to stop taking them.

Thus the ‘bottom line’, as Professor Abramson describes it, is that for more than 95 per cent of those taking statins, they neither prolong their lives nor prevent serious illness while some may experience side effects ranging from the ‘minor and reversible to the serious and irreversible’.

You might also check out this story, Lipitor - Thief of Memory, about problems encountered by astronaut Duane Graveline, M.D., M.P.H., while taking Lipitor.

[dangus]

Look, what’s going on here is that most of the deaths from prescription drugs come either from abuse or from situations where doctors are quite aware that there is a grave danger but find emergency medicine necessary: No-one is going to use an herbal remedy to prep someone for surgery, and no-one is going to blame an herbal remedy for death when used as a secondary pain reliever for someone at the end of their life. But yes, if you overdose on the prescription pain killers given you while your metasticizing cancer breaks your bones apart, some medical report will list your cause of death as painkiller overdose.

Pharmaceuticals are traditionally nothing more than herbal remedies that have had their effectiveness confirmed, impurities removed, and interactions noted and contraindicated when necessary; failure to go through a process of vetting for safety and effectiveness, purifying, and studied for drug interactions doesn’t make a drug safer.

[I do say “traditionally” because now we live in an era of “designer drugs” wherein a drug manufacturer will say, “what if we do this reaction to substitute this ethyl group for this methyl group?” But again... this usually makes a drug SAFER, not more dangerous.]

[dangus]

Because of some of the idiotic comments made on this thread, I’m posting this comment I posted last July.

Warning: Herbal Remedies are just untested, unverified, impure drugs. (Loved one poisoned by tea.)
vanity | 7-10-15 | vanity
Posted on 7/10/2015, 4:02:09 AM by dangus

My wife is in the hospital because of herbal tea. (Prayers are welcome, thank you.) I consider this news because hopefully the events of the evening will lead to a nation-wide recall, and if not, they should.

Please allow me to reiterate for everyone’s health and safety: “All-natural remedies” are NOT safer than “Big Pharma” (a.k.a. medicine).

Here’s what a drug is:

Someone identifies an herbal remedy. They identify the effective ingredient and purify it from any other ingredients which may cause side effects or be unhealthy or even toxic or simply reduce effectiveness. They may discover and include slight chemical changes to the ingredient which increase effectiveness or reduce side effects. They then rigorously test the substance for side effects, toxicity, addictiveness, or any other negative effects. Then they have to prove its effectiveness and safety to the government to a scientific certainty. Then they determine if it might interact with any conceivable other medications or medical conditions. Finally, by offering it as a recommended substance to patients, they assume liability for any harm it might do to a patient because they failed to test it enough.

“All natural remedies” don’t have to be purified, proven safe or effective, and no-one assumes liability for anything, and no-one tests it for interactions, toxicity or the like.

Had this been a drug, there might be some six-figure settlement involved eventually. As it stands, I’m not optimistic because people who shell natural remedies... no scratch that: untested drugs in the raw... assume much less legal responsibility.

You would want a professional engineer, not some hippy day-dreamer, to design your airplane. Likewise, you should want a pharmaceutical professional, not some hippy day-dreamer to design your medicine.

[Hot Tabasco]

But there are no dead bodies.

There are dead who are walking among us and I suspect they are the ones mentioned in this article.........

This is a huge cover up by the MSM............OMG!

[Hot Tabasco]

This guy is a QUaCK! Why doesn’t he go by his real name Ken Walker?

[upsdriver]

Here’s a link I saved a long time ago. Seems pertinent to this thread.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/04/23/defend-your-right-to-access-safe-dietary-supplements.aspx

[right way right]

[McGruff]

We’ve become a pill popping nations. Doctors must be getting kickbacks.

[DouglasKC]

When my doctor put me on statins I could feel that it was doing something. Changed my mood, just didn’t feel right. Took them for a while and then stopped. Next visit he berated me for getting off them, told him what they did..dismissed it as “you’re sensitive”. Started again. THEN I read about the study and the dangers of statins. Stopped taking them. Won’t do it again. Went to high protein, high fat, low carb diet. Feeling great. Going to check my cholesterol in another 6 months and I’ll bet it’s normal.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk