Posted on 10/02/2006 9:15:49 PM PDT by neverdem
ROME — Every patient in the cardiac care unit at the San Filippo Neri Hospital who survives a heart attack goes home with a prescription for purified fish oil, or omega-3 fatty acids.
“It is clearly recommended in international guidelines,” said Dr. Massimo Santini, the hospital’s chief of cardiology, who added that it would be considered tantamount to malpractice in Italy to omit the drug.
In a large number of studies, prescription fish oil has been shown to improve survival after heart attacks and to reduce fatal heart rhythms. The American College of Cardiology recently strengthened its position on the medical benefit of fish oil, although some critics say that studies have not defined the magnitude of the effect.
But in the United States, heart attack victims are not generally given omega-3 fatty acids, even as they are routinely offered more expensive and invasive treatments, like pills to lower cholesterol or implantable defibrillators. Prescription fish oil, sold under the brand name Omacor, is not even approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in heart patients.
“Most cardiologists here are not giving omega-3’s even though the data supports it — there’s a real disconnect,” said Dr. Terry Jacobson, a preventive cardiologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “They have been very slow to incorporate the therapy.”
The fact that heart patients receive such different treatments in sophisticated hospitals around the world highlights the central role that drug companies play in disseminating medical information, experts said.
Because prescription fish oil is not licensed to prevent heart disease in the United States, drug companies may not legally promote it for that purpose at conferences, in doctors’ offices, to patients or even on the Internet.
“If people paid more attention to guidelines, more people would be on the drug,” Dr. Jacobson said. “But...”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes, there are alternatives. My wife is a pharmaceutical sales rep and yes, doctors go almost entirely on what the drug company reps tell them.
Docosahexanoic Acid, or DHA (the truly active part of Omega 3 fatty acids), has been shown over and over to have a very strong affect on:
inflammation
healthy HDL/LDL levels
cardiovascular protection (prevents hardening caused by atherosclerosis)
neuronal cell development; neurotransmitters and their receptors, such as the 5HTP family, rely on DHA for their formation and maintenance. When the body has an inadequate supply of it it relies on trans-fatty acids for NT formation which is grossly inferior to NT/receptor creation using DHA.
DHA is particularly crucial during pregancy in the formation of the infant's brain for the same reasons I just gave.
But that's not all. Policosanol improves HDL/LDL ratios more effectively and to a greater degree than the best available pharmaceuticals.
Niacin lowers BP as much or more than the best pharmaceuticals on the market. Get the flush free niacin.
All of these supplements can be bought at Wal-Mart; among other common outlets. They are perfectly safe and are natural supplements used by the body and found in certain diets.
This isn't common knowledge b/c the pharmaceuticals can't patent this stuff so there's far less profit in researching and marketing it.
Or you can just get Nature Way for even cheaper. It's one of my top vitamin/supplement brands.
Oh yea,
Magnesium and chromium picolinate supplements enhance the bodies ability to effect a healthy insulin response (reduces insulin resistance and improves insulin production). This can be used to help prevent Type 2 Diabetes.
I had heard, but never confirmed, that plain old grapefriut juice will make your blood pressure measure just a tad above dead.
I love the stuff, should probably buy somemore.
DISCLAIMER:
If you are taking prescription meds for HBP, cholesterol, Diabetes, etc. DO NOT take this stuff in large doses without talking to your doctor first. Seriously. Niacin, for example, has a powerful blood pressure reduction effect and you must be careful taking it.
The doctor who does my annual blood work began eating tuna too after he saw the change of before/after in my blood work.
I use The Vitamin Shoppe brand Omega-3 Fish Oil EPA-DHA - in a bottle of 100 softgels. I pay $15.00/bottle in San Diego. They do recommend you take it with a meal, because otherwise you can burp up a very fishy taste.
This product was recommended by my doctor. I also take a cholesterol medication.
I must be weird, I like the flush. Take about 750mg a day.
Right before bedtime. Take of my shirt and look at myself in the bathroom mirror and I look like a lobster!
Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Never heard that about grapefruit. Interesting, though. I didn't believe any of this stuff until my wife showed me the studies and the data. It's amazing how simple it is to correct some of this stuff and how little common knowledge there is about it.
Gingko Biloba concentrates do the same thing as warfarin, the drug used for stroke patients to thin their blood. If you take Gingko you'll notice that you bruise very easily...it's thinning your blood.
Also, antidepressants can be mimicked with 5-HTP supplements, L-Tyrosine and, something recently discovered, a chemical they isolated from St. John's wart. They just found out what that chemical is and now they sell concentrates of it. The natural chemical family found in St. John's wart is called "hyperforins". It's a reuptake inhibitor. Before they made concentrates St. John's didn't work very well b/c the chemical was in such low concentrations that it did little. Now, they've found, these are *better* anti-depressants than the state of the art pharmaceuticals.
That's a pretty stiff dose. Do you take your blood pressure regularly? You could get hypotension if you lower it too much.
BTW,
I can't stand the flush. Makes me think I'm dying!
And the major drug companies are trying to get 'over the counter naturals and herbals' either banned entirely or regulated.
Wonder why that is?
lol
Shameless trawling...
Omega-3 is for ME!
Cheers!
I don't know if you know about pubmed. Just type PUBMED into the address bar of your browser.
Access to literally millions of clinical studies and abstracts.
In most cases, when I've done searches on things that are routinely discounted by the pharma industries, (like policosanol), pubmed shows they are actually effective. In fact very, very effective.
Several online sources have most of these products.
Two that I have used are:
vitaminshoppe.com
swansonvitamins.com
130/77 last time.
Like to get it lower.
Regulation is good, to a point. Some of this stuff they sell is poor quality and misleading. For example, 5-HTP should be served in an enterically coated capsule to be effective. Not all the natural suppliers do that.
And the most recent and biggest discovery I think has to do with what's called resveratrol, which triggers the same reaction caused by the SIRT-2 gene in centenarians: it tells your body to "keep repairing itself and live on", regardless of your current age. Resveratrol appears in abundance in Pinot Noir red wines; the very wines that those fat, sugar, meat eating french folks living to be 100 were consuming. It was called the "French Paradox" b/c they were doing everything doctors tell us not to do - bad food, smoking, etc., yet they were living forever. It was b/c of the high resveratrol content in their wine. Resveratrol, and the SIRT-2 gene, appear to almost completely dominate human health. Everything else appears to just be a band-aid you can apply when the body doesn't repair *itself* by sufficiently strong signalling from SIRT-2 genes. That's just a genetic roll of the dice; either you've got a strong SIRT-2 response or you don't.
But the catch is that it's really hard to 'capture' this chemical in a pill form. Alcohol is a natural preservative for it but in a pill form it breaks down before you consume it. And there are a lot of companies selling worthless resveratrol tablets b/c they are not regulated.
Currently, the only effective way to consume resveratrol and get the 'SIRT effect' is to drink Pinot Noir wines.
So, I think there's good and bad in the regulation issue.
Oh, you're good. Mine's around 110/60 but I'm still a bit young. That's *with* Niacin. Without it's about 130/80.
Heh heh heh, couldn't resist.
;^)
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