[Hold the front page]
Last night I watched a you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. Here, from Wikipedia:
‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952) is an Indian-born Canadian physician, the Marion W. Burke Chair in Cardiovascular Disease at McMaster University Medical School and currently the President of the World Heart Federation, a world-renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist. In 2001, he published a landmark study that proved the benefits of clopidogrel in acute coronary syndrome without ST elevation.’
Here, from Forbes magazine in 2012:
‘McMaster University’s Salim Yusuf has tied for second place in the annual ranking of the “hottest” scientific researchers, according to Thomson Reuter’s Science Watch. Yusuf was a co-author of 13 of the most cited papers in 2011. Only one other researcher, genomic pioneer Eric Lander of the Broad Institute of MIT, had more highly-cited papers than Yusuf.’1
On February the 12th he gave a presentation at a cardiology conference in Davos, Switzerland which can be seen on YouTube. In this presentation, he makes the following points:
- Saturated fat does raise LDL, a bit, but has no effect on CVD – maybe slightly beneficial. Monounsaturated fats are slightly beneficial. Polyunsaturated fats are neutral.
- Carbohydrate intake is most closely associated with CVD
- Fruit and vegetable intake has little or no impact on CVD – nor does fish intake [He wonders where the five portions of fruit and vegetable intake recommendations actually came from]. Vegetables in particular have no benefit.
- Legumes – beans and suchlike – are beneficial.
- The recommendations on salt intake are completely wrong, and set far too low. For those who do not have high blood pressure, low salt intake increase mortality. On the other hand, high salt intake does no harm.
- He recommends higher potassium intake.
- He criticizes Ancel Keys and lauds Nina Teicholz [Author of big fat surprise].
Well, good for him. It seems to have taken him a long time to get there, but he did in the end. Of course, mainstream medicine will remain in shocked silence, so you will likely hear nothing of this in the mainstream media. But, hey, you get to see it here. Perhaps someone would like to send this presentation to the BHF and the AHA and ask them for a comment?
The YouTube presentation is here:
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
good news
he said fruits were good up to 2 per day and said should eat 2 a day and legumes. Legumes hated by low carb zealots. Carbs an issue only when more than 45% of energy intake.
Oh dear! He is not a nutrition scientist, but with any luck he will not be censured by the Australian anti-health authority. I will pop this along to the BHF and wait with interest for their comments. Then I will watch it 🙂
I like the anti-health authority description.
No surprise here, according to the reply from the BHF, saturated fats are bad for you:
“Thanks for your email regarding your enquiry on fats and carbohydrates and CVD with reference to the video presentation.
The video highlights the key messages around what we should be eating – too much or too little of everything is not good for you that is why it is important to look at the whole diet rather than focusing on individual nutrients.
In the UK we are still eating too much saturated fat . As the presenter mentions, cutting saturated fat doesn’t mean lowering all fat. We all need some fats in our diet and, over time, the very low fat diets recommended in the past have been put to one side as our understanding of the effect of this nutrient has developed. But what you have instead of saturated fat can make a difference to your health. Replacing saturated fat with healthy unsaturated fats ( mono and polyunsaturated fats) and wholegrain foods seems to have a positive impact on our heart health, however replacing saturated fat with refined carbohydrates such as sugary drinks sweets and cakes does not. So, current guidance tells us to switch from saturated to unsaturated fats rather than cutting the fat completely.
Regarding carbohydrates, like fats the type of carbohydrate we choose to eat also has an impact on our health. We are also eating too much sugar ( part of the carbohydrate family) and just last year new nutrition guidelines were published recommending we cut free sugar intakes by half (https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/preventing-heart-disease/healthy-eating/sugar) and that our current intake of starchy carbohydrates, should remain at 50% of our daily calorie intake and should include high fibre foods, wholegrains and legumes known to be beneficial to health. Of note the 75% calories from carbohydrate the presenter quoted is an old World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation – current recommendations are 55 percent of total energy coming from carbohydrate.
There are many factors which cause cardiovascular disease and no single food or nutrient is solely responsible for this. Similar to the presenters conclusions it’s more helpful to focus on the foods that we want to include more of in our diets. Eating a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, pulses, beans ( legumes) , wholegrains, unsaturated oils and fish means there is less room for the foods high in saturated fat and salt like fatty or processed meats and sweet treats. Eating a Mediterranean-style diet has long been associated with a reduced risk of heart and circulatory disease and centres around all on all those foods we should be eating more of. Our UK dietary recommendations are largely consistent with a Mediterranean style diet, so guidelines we should be aiming to achieve.”
Many factors cause CVD, and no single food or nutrient is solely responsible. Mmmm…, OK, except perhaps saturated fat? Rather mixed messages and what you eat seems to have an effect. That’s alright then as long as it “seems” and we don’t have to mess around with silly things like evidence…………..
A H Notebook
Interesting, but predictable, that BHF have skated over the findings that saturated fat is likely protective, along with monounsaturated fat, whereas pufa is neutral. So why did BHF reply find it necessary to tell us we are eating too much saturated fat? surely, if anything, we should be cutting down on pufa which didn’t appear protective.
They also seem to have also ignored the protective aspects of full fat dairy.
Given the overall message that fats are protective and excess carbs dangerous, why would we want to replace saturates fat with whole grains?
Seems like they are going to cling to same old, same old. If fact as I read through their reply I wondered if they had watched the right video.
It would matter not what video you showed them, their response will always be the same.
I get so tired hearing officialdom in the UK talking about the “Mediterranean diet”. They don`t know what they`re talking about!!!!!!
Aside from the olive oil factor and all the unproven things about fruit etc, the assumption is that Mediterranean peoples have diets low in saturated fat!! Having lived for several decades in Italy with Italians, no English of English diet in sight and I can assure readers here that Italians eat lots of saturated fat. They eat fat rich cheeses in quantity, they eat lots of pork including the fat. They have pure meat sausages which are probably about 50% fat (my frying pan as witness). They sometimes eat them raw, on bread, and they are delicious. They eat slabs of the bacon portion of the pig that are almost pure fat, I could go on ad infinitum. The Med diet is NOT low in saturated fats by ANY measure. It may be true that some of younger generation are cutting down on these because of the intense propaganda emanating from the US and the food industry, however, at least in the rural areas I haven`t seen much evidence of this. Very young children sit at table with adults and eat the same food – no messing about, no tantrums and where I am no industrially produced made-up food (ersatz food), I`ve seen a child of 2 eat pieces of octopus and of sausage (as described) and ask for more……..
enough said!!! Except to say I`m thrilled for you dr K that almost every week now something comes up to vindicate your so obviously valid reasoning. Did you or blog readers see the New Scientist recently??? A cover story throwing doubt (though the article didn`t go nearly far enough) on the statin “theory”….
Sue Madden
What you say about Italian diet, fits with my own observations. I would characterise it as long on saturated fat, and carbs, in the form of pasta, and, I have the impression low on vegetables. Is the melditerranean diet like the loch Ness monster?. If you discuss the point with uber-enthusiasts, they cite Crete as its centre, and when questionned, they claim only in the mountains! Yet De Lorgeril had spectacular results with his mediterranean style diet.
Incidentally the Italians have a very honourable place in all the mortality tables I have seen for CVD.
The Italians I know never believed in low fat theory, I think. Or low carb theory, for that matter. It’s amazing to take a flight from Milan to London and see the difference in people’s girths… The Anglo-Saxon world is quite confused about nutrition, IMHO.
Exactly the same copy & paste reply as the one I have just received- same old same old…
😆 not very bright are they? Maybe they don’t know there are some fairly clued-up people (and me :)) talking to each other. Perhaps they are suffering from oxidative stress, they should take more care as it might promote CVD, or they could take large quantities of vitamin C 😉
Should we conclude that the medical establishment is totally corrupt or is there now a hope for a fundamental paradigm shift?
You don’t want to loose all hope.
Goran,
I am afraid that I have concluded that sometime ago. The Medical research establishment has sold out to Big Pharma and their “perception of profit and status” these days.
Waaay too late. In truth all hope was thrown out with the bath water. My only hope is that I will be capable of executing my own Self Directed Death before the bastards figure out how to bankrupt my survivors with snake oils and Charlatans.
I think the “establishment” has invested so much in the out-dated ( and plain wrong) everything in moderation mantra ( apart from ‘evil’ saturated fats, of course!) that many simply cannot recognise the plain truth staring them full in the face. But they should remember that “resistance is futile” and that the truth will out…. eventually!
Hi, I know you use Vitamin C. Can you tell me which kind you use is it vitamin c ascorbic acid. How much do you take and does it turn your urine yellow.
Dr K
You are winning. Tell him to read you book to know where the five portions of F and V come from!
So there is hope!! The tide is turning ….
Or the mainstream establishment will decide he has lost all his marbles, and we will never hear about him again ….
Or they say “yes but we still need more research into those issues, and in the meantime we shall not change our recommendations”.
Or maybe also stick their fingers in their ears and sing loudly about some other aspect they feel is really to blame…
Possibly all of the above!
Very interesting that finally the rest are ‘catching up ‘. To answer the question re 5 a Day, from memory it was an advertising slogan by the California Fruit Growers Association in the depression years to ‘drum up’ sales! Martin
Sent from my iPad
When people say I must eat fruit, I say I eat olives, avocado and cucumber.
Botanically, wheat, rice, and corn are also fruits. What distinguishes them is that the fruit wall has fused with the single seed.
I eat plenty of fruit, but avoid fructose ;o)
When you eat wheat, rice or corn you are eating the seed, as all the outside, arguably fruity bits, have been removed.
AH,
Damn! I never thought of that.
Let’s hope in the next few years they will say: “We’ve always said saturated fats do not cause cvd. Carbohydrates seem to be the substance of concern. This much has always been known in mainstream Medicine for several decades.”
1st drop off is the ApoB/ApoA at 6:42 where the graph shows between 0.7 and 0.8 but he mentions a spread of 0.72 to 0.85. This unfortunately is the typo equivalent which the vested interests would latch onto.
That’s like Watson and Crick hen they were asked about a bond angle and , I think, Cricksaid, “I don’t know what that bond angle is but this IS D N A!”
At 5:00 mins.
“Now why did we go wrong? We went wrong because of surrogate end-points.”
Priceless!
Surprise Surprise…..Dr Wolfgang Lutz and others were right about carbohydrate intake ….Fascinating
I’m delighted because the more people like him who speak out, the more people like you, Dr K, are supported and protected when you speak out.
I bought a glucose meter. I tested after steak and green vegetables fried in butter. Blood glucose one hour later was 4.9. A few days later I had baked beans on toast plus two pieces of fruit. Blood glucose was 11.2. Retested 11.1. I have been a low carber since that day.
Similar for me. Fifteen years ago I decided to try losing weight by using a glucometer to guide my food choices. I went from about 180 lb to 150 lb and have kept it off for 15 years now. If I cheat too much I gain, and it is harder to take it off again now that I am 72, but it still works.
Wow, mainstream medicine finally catching up with the facts! Whatever next….evidence based medicine ….how could they?
Malcolm, I have been meaning to ask you about the salt issue, but up till now I didn’t want to distract from your main message, (that of it being non-dietary issues which have the greatest effect, such as lack of sunlight, stress, polution, or having the misfortune of being born male etc). However seeing as you have introduced the subject……..
As we all know, salt intake increases blood pressure due to thickening of the blood, and generally increased blood pressure indicates an increased risk of CVD. Can it be that it is the cause of blood pressure which matters, not the blood pressure itself? That is to say, it is the increased blood pressure due to damaged endothelial repair mechanism which is the danger rather than a thicker blood in healthy arteries that is the issue?
Additionally (being gready here) I don’t recall reading your full discussion yet of why artherogenesis occurs in arteries and not veins? I thought it was that arteries run at higher pressure, and higher pressure equals more damage. But if pressure is not the culprit, it must be something else. Might it have anything to do with arteries being more rigid, or is it that arteries carry oxygenated blood which does the damage?
Whatever the answer, it’s a riveting thriller of a “whodunit” you are producing. I am hooked. Might we expect another book in the making?
Cheers.
Do we know for sure that salt has that effect on blood? Or is it another urban myth put about by so-called experts? I no longer know what is fact and what is fiction (vested interest) any more!!
No, we don’t understand the relationship between blood pressure and salt. In many studies, when salt intake goes down blood pressure goes up. Of course, there are studies showing the opposite too. For more, search for “gary taubes salt” and you’ll find two discussions of salt. You can also read two articles on salt here (search for salt): https://eathropology.com/
Dr Jason Fung has an interesting lecture on YouTube about salt.
Arteries and not veins . . .
This was discussed.
It would be great, Dr Kendrick, if, somehow, you could provide a term search function that covered all of these Roman Numerals
I think the point is that the rise in blood pressure associated with salt intake is negligible. Here is a Scientific American paper on this subject – unfortunately now behind a pay-wall:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt&print=true
As I understand it, the original idea was that with more salt in the blood, more fluid would be drawn into the bloodstream by osmosis – thus raising the pressure (I don’t know about thickening the blood – I haven’t seen that mentioned before). However, that takes no account of the various feedback loops that control BP, sodium in the blood etc.
I don’t bother limiting my salt intake any more!
David, I drink coconut oil and add salt. I’ll be orthodox soon!
Lots of references on Pubmed. Some examples
J Gen Intern Med. 2008 September; 23(9): 1297–1302.
Randomized clinical trials confirm that lower sodium intake lowers mean systolic/diastolic BP values in the range of 1/0.6 to 5/3 mmHg An impressive(??) reduction in healthy people.
Hazard ratios and 95% CIs for the associations of sodium as a continuous variable (per 1,000 mg of sodium) for both CVD and all-cause mortality outcomes with the three different calorie adjustments revealed inverse associations that approached statistical significance for CVD mortality with sodium and residuals adjusted sodium
and
After full adjustment (Table 3), comparisons of sodium intake in quartile 1 to quartile 4 consistently showed a trend towards an inverse association, but this was not consistently the case for quartiles 2 and 3. However, no statistically significant direct association of higher sodium with higher mortality was observed in any comparison
NHANES II data revealed a stronger, statistically significant inverse association of CVD mortality with sodium, sodium/calorie ratio and residual adjusted sodium as well as sodium <2,300 mg/day (<100 mmol/day)-the threshold for current US dietary guidelines and close to the median intake in that study population
Hypertension. 1995 Jun;25(6):1144-52.
Low urinary sodium is associated with greater risk of myocardial infarction among treated hypertensive men.
Alderman MH, Madhavan S, Cohen H, Sealey JE, Laragh JH.
The frequency of heart attacks was LOWEST in the group with the highest salt intake
and
Alderman et al
Lancet. 1998 Mar 14;351(9105):781-5.They found that those with the lowest salt intakes showed the HIGHEST death rates from cardiovascular disease.
And so and on………………… But who is using the little grey cells?. But this way it adds to the problem making the healthy unhealthy and better candidates to become lifetime users of drugs.
One has to wonder how long “they” can go on ignoring these studies. However embarrassing it might be they surely have to change the guidelines soon. I suspect it will be done a tiny bit at a time over about 20 years to avoid having to say sorry.
Excellent lecture. I hope it gets lots of publicity in the health care world.
Christine,
I think you’re right, I doubt here’s going to be any big public apology. Too much serious harm has been done, especially to those with type 2 diabetes, and the cost of successful litigation would be sky high.
We are they
Do you have the you tube link to his talk?
My daughter just got marked down in Science in school because she put carbohydrates in the wrong place on the food pyramidâ¦my fault â¦â¦what chance have kids with this education systemâ¦â¦â¦.
Stephen
The link is in the blog
It appears that the video is now removed from view! So glad I took the time to watch it twice one week ago. Thanks for posting the best points
The pyramid is wrong. An appeal should be made about the marking as it is at fault. That is a certainty, and I haven’t even seen the marking system.
Re: “Perhaps someone would like to send this presentation to the BHF and the AHA and ask them for a comment?”
What if…
all fans of Dr Malcolm Kendrick use their accounts on Social Media to send the presentation to the BHF and the AHA for comment. Perhaps we could start another Twitter Revolution? The Nutrition and CVD Spring???
I think that may be counter productive. This series of blogs have recieved comments from fairly knowledgeable people for the most part and has, in my opinion a significant amount of credibility as a result.
Twitter storms by comparison are the realm of often hysterical and ill considered verbiage.
the pendulum is starting to swing……….
The rehabilitation of John Yudkin is almost complete…
!
Wonderful! But I have to say that I have never seen any benefit so far in my practice from reducing salt in people with high blood pressure. What do you think about this?
I think the whole salt thing is nonsense, but others fear to travel quite as far along the path as me. They will get there in the end, but it takes years to move people – decades even.
It was interesting to hear what he said about sodium and infection. That was new to me.
Salt water is well known for it’s cleaning properties. Also look at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SIcz4wpVUzI which describes wound care.
I thing ‘they’ are desperate not to see headlines that say it all,
“Doctors were wrong about which type of fat to consume, wrong about cholesterol, wrong about the safety and usefulness of statins, and wrong about the dangers of salt!”
Heads might really roll then!
However, their acute embarrassment is entirely of their own making!
David Bailey
Please excuse me for mildly disagreeing with you on the use of the word “doctors”. In one sense you are right but in truth the real problem lies with the medical research establishment, the writers of the DIRECTIVES and their intention of contributing to the Gospel, Chapter SALT or whatever. I have on several occasions supported my GP, practice medical staff and junior doctors and nurses in hospitals – they are the ones that on a daily basis keep me alive on those occasions that I require treatment. Sorry that is my belief.
Mike
Interesting what you say that the policy stuff in medical care comes from high up. I came across a heart age calculator today on the NHS website. I stuck my figures in and it gave my heart age as ten years older than I am. Looked though the figures and saw I had inadvertently inverted the systolic and diastolic figures. When I corrected that, the result was worse, and my blood pressure too low. The thing that was against me, total cholesterol levels. Yet if you use the figures for TC you see that I am in the sweet spot for long life (we shall see)., taking the chart that occasionally is referenced on this blog.
Summary: keep away from the NHS website, and be diligent in reading here.
Mikecawdery,
I hoped it was clear that I was quoting an imaginary newspaper headline from the near future! I think that is exactly the way a newspaper would put it!
Maybe the majority of doctors deserve it for not standing up against the bullying – collectively they could achieve a lot.
Try asking them to go on a low carbohydrate diet, or better yet, to perform intermittent fasting (even several days) with a low carb diet. It might be that insulin resistance (cellular, but mainly fatty liver and fatty pancreas) is one of the true causes, and LC and IF in particular reduce fatty liver and fatty pancreas, thereby causing blood pressure to go down. (Probably need exercise and staying away from vegetable oils to reduce cellular IR.)
No. It’s the insulin itself, that tells the kidneys not to let salt out of the system. If you cure your hyperinsulinemia with low-carb or fasting, insulin goes down and kidneys are again free to let salt out. Salt gets all the blame, but the real villain is insulin.
Great news! I wonder how long it will take to trickle down? Our grandchildren are still being told at school that butter, fat on meat, and indeed meat, and cream are bad for you and must be avoided, which makes it difficult to feed them properly at home. School meals offer massive amounts of carbs and “heart healthy” low fat options. Another generation is growing up misinformed and denied proper nourishment.
Couldn’t agree more, Gay. It’s struck me many times, in all the bickering between nutritionists (and there’s a LOT), that the bad advice just sits there, doing its damage to people (like kids and hospital patients) who desperately need someone to step up and be unequivocal. What we need is a league of dinner ladies to take a stance to ‘Bring Back Fat!’ (I’ve invented their campaign title.)
Yes indeed, Chancery Stone. Hospital meals are very difficult for coeliacs and those of us who control our statin/lwofathighcarb diet-induced diabetes entirely with a LCHF diet. They, like school meals, need a complete overhaul. And the low fat propaganda needs to stop!
yes here in the USA the FAT IS BAD myth still prevails and CHOLESTEROL WILL KILL YOU, with moves to put statins in the drinking water, and /or give them to children with their vitamins along with the already poisonous sodium fluoride. Safe numbers are always reducing to make healthy people into patients. When you tell your dentist that you dont want flouride toothpaste it is like you are the antichrist and no doctor I do not want statins, I enjoy my three eggs a day or to take an aspirin a day to thin my blood!
And FAT!
Gay Corran: Except in France. School children there appear to be fed very well with appropriate foods for health.
Got any insight? My only insight is on university cafeterias, and that was nothing to write home about.
Yes, Gary, lucky French children! It seems that there is little if any ADHD in French children, and little obesity.
Ah, damn. Just when I’d learned to love the sprout. Great news though.
Continue to love the sprout, just drizzle a little hot bacon fat over it and love it even more…
Hey, we could start a cookery column as an offshoot. I cook mine chopped up with sliced leeks, then raw chopped garlic and a big dollop of mayo at the end. I agree though that sprouts and bacon are a marriage made in heaven.
Apologies, Dr. K. for going just a tad off topic, but when you gotta share you gotta share.
Mmmm… or lashings of butter. I always thought of the sprout as a vehicle for butter and/or bacon.
May I just give my plug for vegetables and to a lesser extent fruit. Professor Yusef does say of course that a neutral effect is good, and that there is likely to perhaps be a slight benefit from eating them. Just from seeing my husband recover from bowel cancer, 10 years now, I feel it has something to do with fresh veg every day, plenty actually, children always complained.
Not scientific in the least I confess. What an excellent video, have sent it on, they will be saying, not again! Can’t she just act like a nice old lady. No I won’t. Thank you.
A neutral effect is good… hmmmm, and interesting concept. What he means is – I believe – that you’ve got to eat something, and if you enjoy it – eat it. [excess carbs the exception].
A neutral effect on CVD, but I am convinced that vegetables are highly beneficial in other respects!
You may be right. Then again, you may not be.
Test blood glucose after eating a vegetarian meal.
I’ve been reflecting on the talk all day. The more I think about this video, the more disappointed I am in what passes for science these days in the medical field. In amongst the few sentences of “good news” in the video, there was a lot of poor quality evidence (particularly for the money).
Even though some of the message was what we like to hear – and I think genuinely presented, based on the expressed need to get out of the surrogate measure trap, most of the evidence presented was the usual epidemiological drivel, with barely any significance (only a few results out of at least 100 data points had decent clearance between the OR=1 axis and the error bars). There was no where near enough information to allow biases or confounders to be considered, and there was still plenty of bias in the presentation.
Possibly it was reassuring to see the “salt” data, though I don’t think there is anything very new there as the case was already clear enough. Otherwise, the data presented are good for nothing more than generating hypotheses and absolutely not useful for setting policy – whether personally choosing to eat sprouts or nor, or national nutrition policies.
I’m going to eat sprouts which I like (had some today) and not legumes (which I don’t like), but there is in my view no evidence that either choice will affect the health of *my* heart. This is in stark contrast to such things as lead and organophospates which certainly could harm my heart, and for which there is real evidence.
Still, some of the conclusions are welcome.
Wow! Wow! Wow! All beautifully summed up in 20 minutes. Thank you for posting this.
Fruit probably had the edge over vegetables because it tends to be eaten raw and the vitamins not cooked or leached away!
For anyone feeling depressed/stressed, etc.
I have a friend who really benefited from one of the courses – completely cured of chronic fatigue and remains so several years after it.
A recent editorial ” Enough is enough” is downright anti-supplements
Downloaded From: http://annals.org/pdfaccess.ashx?url=/data/journals/aim/929454/ on 02/17/2017
I note from the references all all pro-vitamin references that I know are simple ignored.
I get “page not found”.
Sorry about the link, This one is Valid http://annals.org/aim/article/1789253/enough-enough-stop-wasting-money-vitamin-mineral-supplements
I am on it as I write. The pdf link allows download in full
YAY!
So, does this means I should stop eating fish? I’ve grown to like it.
It means, eat fish if you like it, but don’t expect it to protect you from CVD
BobM: Fish is good for the brain. So what if it does nothing for the old ticker. It does matter where it comes from. I stick pretty much with wild Alaskan salmon and sablefish, and mollusks and crustaceans, and avoid freshwater fish like the plague because of mercury..
Does this mean no more statins?
That castle is still strongly defended.
As I have pointed out before the probability of NO BENEFIT seems to approach 1.00 or near certainty that the likelihood of being lucky and actually benefiting is pretty remote. This issue of the real lack of efficacy is never raised in reports – would not promote sales.
The statin industry has got us. We take statins until we develop diabetes, and then we actually might need the statins.
The statin industry hasn’t got me, and it never will! Nor will the vaccine industry, nor almost all of the drugs industry. 🙂
Me too, AH Notepad! I will never take another statin after rhabdomyolisis and what they did to my kidneys, legs, and diabetes development. And BP drugs first ruined my singing with a non-stop cough, and the next made me feel dizzy most of the time. Better without medication. No vaccinations either. The Pharma companies have got the doctors, but not all of the rest of us! And, thankfully, not all of the doctors either! There will slowly be more thinking like Dr K. And our grandchildren will look back in wonder at what we allowed the drug companies to do to so many of their grandparents and parents, for so long…
I think people like Dr Kendrick will always be the outliers. It’s much easier and financially more lucrative not to rock the boat and many MDs by definition are not independent thinkers nor are they comfortable with being outside the establishment. I know plenty of MDs who agree with Dr Kendrick in private but they will not say that publicly, let alone try to educate the people they have never met.
Yes, Sasha, so thank God for Dr Kendrick and other outliers, who have given thousands of us the courage of our own and their convictions.
Maybe it’s all some grand conspiracy to cleanse the gene pool of all the stupid people.
However on another youtube video he does seem to support statins….aspirin…..
________________________________
We don’t have much time—–http://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@adv/documents/downloadable/ucm_491543.pdf
“By 2035, nearly half of the US population will have some form of cardiovascular disease.”
But don’t worry we will have an expensive drug for you to take for the rest of your life, and of course all your blood relatives will need it too, just in case.
Look closer. In the report there is a plot incorrectly titled “Population Projected Prevalence of Stated Disease (2015-2035)” – it should say “Population Projected Prevalence of Stated Condition (2015-2035)” – Hypertension is not a disease (and not independent of the actual diseases included). Notice that even a small error in the projection for hypertension would swamp everything else.
The appearance is of some kind of advertising material (perhaps along the lines suggested by AH Notepad), very far from science.
Erret
Once again thank you. I have always suspected that prevalence was rising along with incidence.. However with better effective treatments (stents, CABG and medical-excluding statins) survival has improved but that means more patients with CVD (prevalence up). But with all forecasts based on past data what actually happens in the future is often very different from the forecast. An old statistical warning “Don’t extrapolate beyond the data range” is so often proved right.
Vicki
The y tube presentation attached to this post is very interesting.
Brigid On Wed 15 Feb 2017 at 09:42, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “[Hold the front page] Last night I watched a > you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by > Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. > Here, from Wikipedia: ‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952)” >
Hardly out of short pants when I left the LSH&TM and working with risk.
This might cheer you up – the next New Scientist is called – Cholesterol Wars: The truth about fats, statins and heart disease.
I very much doubt it. The New Scientist is the prayer book of conventional thought.
Dr K
My experience is that any article(s) headlined “the truth about …….”
very rarely are
Actually that article isn’t so bad – it was written by a reporter who suffered badly from muscle problems caused by guess what. He describes exactly what happened to him. The aricle also shows some NNT values for statin treatments.
At the end, he says that when he feels fully recovered he will let the doctor try another statin on him. I wrote to him telling him my story, and pointing out that some people don’t recover fully from the side effects of statins. He replied that in reality he probably won’t take statins again.
From the way he described it, I assume he has FH because he said in the article that his cholesterol values (and those of his mother) are very high.
Mr Chris
That is a very astute observation; It is often the case that it is the last stand against a failed hypothesis.
I shelled out some serious money for it last week and was very disappointed. The writer was seriously sitting on the fence and ended his piece by saying “But while people with diagnosed heart conditions should keep on popping the pills, it’s far from obvious that the rest of us should. I probably shall; when I’m fit again (after all the hideous side effects – my quote) I’m going to try a diiferent statin…”
By the way, in the same edition of the mag there is an article about gene editing to “Lower your cholesterol – for good.”
Yes, I can see some really bad consequences coming from permanently and drastically reducing someone’s cholesterol. Maybe not muscle problems, but what about the brain! Conceivably moderate brain damage would not even show up clearly in animal tests, and a fair few people might be treated this way before the consequences became apparent.
I suppose those affected might have to take LDL injections for the rest of their lives!
When I went to search on “Cholesterol Wars” in order to read the article I ran across a 9 year old review by Chris Masterjohn of a book called “The Cholesterol Wars: The Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of the Evidence” by Daniel Steinberg, MD, PhD. (Steinberg was one of the original architects of the lipid hypothesis.)
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Daniel-Steinberg-Cholesterol-Wars.html
Masterjohn claims that statins actually disprove the lipid theory and promotes the theory that statins also limit the production of an enzyme called Rho which inhibits nitric oxide production.
tull text of New Scientist article here.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.cc/science/article/pii/S0262407917302725#
Is popping a daily pill really any way to keep your heart healthy? Michael Brooks needs to know
CHOLESTEROL WARS
there is sometimes a letter match spam trap to copy. then click the download arrow for PDF to appear on PC
Thanks – I particularly appreciate the salt thing.
So happy to see that word is finally getting out. I just wish he had the courtesy to send a thanks to you as well, Dr. Kendrick.
I did note a bit of plagiarism – sincerest form of flattery.
Excellent. Thank you for posting this. Can now combine my question to BHF about difference in death rates on graph from Monday’s blog, and ask for their comment on the video together in one letter.
Hello Malcolm, great article as always.
Our kids 9.5 and 10.5 yrs old have every morning as do we, the Dave Asprey style bulletproof coffee (blended with organic grass fed butter, MCT coconut oil and some honey. And a couple of pieces of grilled bacon, occasionally eggs if hungry. This keeps them going most of the day. They have never drunk nor desire soda’s of any sort and Cow Dairy is almost non existent. The school tries to insist they take a snack for mid morning, they are not interested nor hungry. The food at the school is disgusting. They also have a spoon of MCT coconut oil which he calls his gut protector, and a quality multi-vit and a B complex supplement. We also have a lot of Tumeric. They are very fit lean, healthy and full of energy all the time ( a bit like a dog) , on the swim team etc. Their Pediatrician says at the annual checkup that they have the thinnest file of any at the of her patients at her clinic and it is unusual for kids in the USA. On the occasions they have been sick they never take painkillers and fever is allowed to run its 2 or 3 day course and do what it is supposed to do, kill off whatever causes it with the final high 103 temp for a night at the end as usual. The next morning they wake up and are full of energy. Cuts, sore throats etc.bruises are treated with apple cider vinegar and coconut oil,
The body cures itself!
We in Florida have the misfortune to have regular chemtrail spraying which cause some respiratory epidemics every few weeks for the medical profession to profit from. The advantage of Trump living in FL is when he is here the Sky is blue and clear……not a trail in site. What does that tell you??
Our carb intake especially sugar is kept to a minimum which is difficult in the USA, the girl snacks on frozen veggies. Yes they like chocolate etc, but it is kept to a bare minimum and the boy at 9 yrs old reads labels on everything understanding all the made up names for sugar and that SUGAR is the cause of ALL illnesses in the Western world. He also understands the world is run by liars thieves and cheats who poison us for profit.
Kids (or Adults) do not need to look like beachballs, I believe in most cases sickness and heart disease are a lifestyle choice and to my mind many people are full of excuses and rationalisations for not being healthy or having healthy kids. Yes, it takes effort and responsibility to reject the mainstream especially in the USA where the Media promotes poison as healthy and Pharmaceutical medicine is taught as opposed to the Hippocratea nutritional medicine. My Wife being brought up on the American diet has a harder time not eating carbs but makes the effort but it is all COMMON SENSE. Humans are not designed to eat processed food, eat something that was alive recently and you will be ok. If it has a label and a list of ingredients, or is ‘fortified with something don’t eat it!
On the Blood pressure issue, I have had high BP every since I stupidly replaced many years ago dairy with Soy, it f***** me up basically. Never had an issue before. Obviously my diet is very different now but I struggle with this. I would like to know what exactly causes it as I am Pilot and have had full heart tests twice with no significant faults found, could easily do 15 mins on the Bruce Protocol and regularly run 5k and gym. There are limits on BP for my medical so it is a pain in the ass really. BP meds just slow me down as clearly my body is needs the higher BP. I take high dose D3 and K2, and CoQ10 plus a few others.
anyway, I could write for hours so I will force myself to stop, thanks again Malcolm for being a champion of the Human Race, it takes Courage.
Loved your comment about the chemtrails! We live quite close to the Rockefeller family Westchester County estate in NY and we never have chemtrails in our neighborhood. I doubted that they were a problem until we visited the Seattle and Vancouver areas a few years ago where the sky was covered with a careful grid every single day and I could see why people were freaked out over the issue..
Further to my long post, I believe that it is insulin production that causes obesity, lack of energy, diabetes and other related illnesses. If you dont take in foods that spike insulin you will be healthy. The blood can only hold so much sugar and It seems to me that the body cannot do two things at once .1) Deal with excess sugar via insulin OR 2) repair, generally function and build new cells. If there is any insulin in your blood, then the fat burning, processing mechanism stops until the excess sugar is dealt with. People with a high sugar (ok, carbohydrate) diet get an over-production of insulin and it leads to diabetes and weight gain. It is all down to sugar (carbs) and insulin, the two partners in crime.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38963874
John Collis
Many thanks for the link. I find the following extract to emphasize the ignorance of facts
It’s generally agreed that eating too much fat is bad for you
This is the sort of idiotic logic that is so common these days like “everyone knows” or “there is a concensus that…..” when there clearly isn’t. or as in the WHO-EU-Monica report “carbohydrates are good” followed by a complete absence of any data to support the view and this supposedly from reputable researchers.
along the same lines….”such and such may be helpful”. What the heck does that mean? Is it helpful or not? And what exactly does “help” mean? Help what?
Well, at least they qualified that in the first paragraph to omeg-6-fats should be avoided.
The test diet, other than the soda drinks, actually looked like something hardcore LCers might approve of…
That was a wonderfully clear video – wouldn’t it be nice if all scientific speakers spoke so clearly and directly!
Its easy to be clear when you are telling the unvarnished truth.
With my quirky sense of humor, the first thing that popped into my mind was, oh my, my childhood friend that was fond of the rhyme could have been right! – “beans beans good for the heart, the more you eat the more you fart.”
Hopefully some will find the low carb, and further CVD information beneficial. I’m personally not much of a low carb follower any longer. My health issues were not helped all that much by following low carb, but it certainly is an idea to try in hopes of being beneficial.
Thank you so much for this. I hope you don’t mind that I posted it in the APOE4info.com forum.
Thank you
From my analysis of the WHO-EY-Monica study 2005 http://www.ehnheart.org/files/statistics 2005 I found that:
1) Saturated fat does raise LDL, a bit, but has no effect on CVD – maybe slightly beneficial. Monounsaturated fats are slightly beneficial. Polyunsaturated fats are neutral.
Both total fat and saturated fat were negatively and significantly associated with CHD mortality
2) Carbohydrate intake is most closely associated with CVD
Carbohydrate was positively and significantly associated with CHD mortality
Carbohydrate was estimated by subtraction.
3) Fruit and vegetable intake has little or no impact on CVD
Fruit and Veg were negatively and significantly associated with CHD mortality
Furthermore by multiple regression involving the three factors confirmed these associations
Fish was not a factor in the Monica study
– nor does fish intake [He wonders where the five portions of fruit and vegetable intake recommendations actually came from]. Vegetables in particular have no benefit.
In subsequent reports saturated fat was left out for unknown reasons (?? contradicting the official gospel perhaps) while the word “carbohydrate” appeared only once because it “was known to be good“
My reading of the WHO Monica study too Mike
Mike
I have tried to locate the data . . . starting with the refn http://www.ehnheart.org/files/statistics given at the start of your comment but the page does not exist. Thought I might be able to source them through the many analyses that had been published, but with no luck. Any thoughts on this?
Very interesting! Now compare this with a recent video featuring Harvard’s Walter Willett, who condemns butter and continues to promote the old advice.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/primarycare/dietnutrition/62964
Harvard was recently associated with the sugar industry paying two of its researchers to show sugar was not involved.
Classic example of industry agnotology in shifting blame
Under the circumstances anything from Harvard supported by industry (eg Willett and statins) must be taken with a cellar full of salt for personal good health.
but still very main stream here in his HOPE-3 study with Crestor
Cholesterol Lowering in Intermediate-Risk Persons without Cardiovascular Disease
Salim Yusuf, M.B., B.S., D.Phil., Jackie Bosch, Ph.D., Gilles Dagenais, M.D., Jun Zhu, M.D., Denis Xavier, M.D., Lisheng Liu, M.D., Prem Pais, M.D., Patricio López-Jaramillo, M.D., Ph.D., Lawrence A. Leiter, M.D…………….., and Eva Lonn, M.D., for the HOPE-3 Investigators†
N Engl J Med 2016; 374:2021-2031May 26, 2016DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1600176
Paul v Nguyen
Thanks for the link – available in full. The number of Lives saved per 1000 patients per annum by rosuvastatin is a magnificent 1.1, a NNT of 900. In other words the probability of an individual patient not benefiting from treatment is 899/900 = 0.998889 or to 3 decimal places 1.000 near certainty. In my book about as unimpressive as one can get. with a “significant” result
Yusuf et al n engl j med 374;21 nejm.org May 26, 2016
Death from cardiovascular causes Rosuvastatin in medium risk patients
Odds ratio 0.8957 0.1134 = relative rate
95% confidence interval from 0.7184 to 1.1167 Not Significant
Outcome 1 Outcome 2 Total
Group 1 154 6207 6361
Group 2 171 6173 6344
Total 325 12380 12705
Chi-square with Yates correction
Chi squared equals 0.853 with 1 degrees of freedom.
The two-tailed P value equals 0.3557
Not a wonderful result for saving lives. A lot of comparisons with surrogate end points which are subject to bias
So growing up in the West of Scotland on a diet of slice sausage [don’t ask] eggs and chips fried in a chip pan full of beef dripping, then salted, turns out to be right after all? Thanks Mum …and Dr Kendrick.
Yea, but go easy on the carby chips
Although that meal is so filling, you probably don’t eat many chips. I went to France and had duck confit with a side of what was basically some sliced potatoes floating in cream, butter, and cheese. Even though I ate a relatively small amount of potatoes (and thus some carbs), the rest of the meal was so filling I didn’t want anything else to eat. Now, if I was to start out eating just chips (say potato chips), I could eat a bag before I stopped. (Though, when on my low fat diet, I didn’t eat chips, as they had fat…which probably helped me for a while, as most chips are fried in vegetable oil, which appears from my research to be horrible for you.) In American, the restaurants know this, so the first thing they usually bring you is something carby and cheap to make (usually bread, but could be chips).
On the matter of salt/sodium, from a non-scientist:
Is it possible that adequate sodium intake would make it possible for a person’s cardiovascular system to heal any damages, before the lesion – – – – – lesion plastered-over-with-cholesterol cascade developed?
Is it possible that besides bedrest, another unhelpful 1950s/1960sl treatment for heart attacks was the salt-free diet? When Grandpa had his heart attack in the early 1950s, Grandma was even baking salt-free bread to comply with his suggested salt-free diet. He died in 1954.
Every second person in my age (70 +) who I meet seems to have a story to tell about the “side effects” of statins. Today, e.g., when cleaning up in our garden a couple of neighbors stopped by for a chat and one of them then told her story about her unsustainable abdomen pains which only gave away when she refused further statins and this against her doctor’s will.
And this is just one in the row of horrifying “anecdotes” I am now being acquainted with.
No mention in the video of “heart healthy whole grains”, except that they are basically just carbs.
Malcolm I m solid delighted . it will be a tsunami of change shortly . on the ground people are already accepting advice.to eat butter and meat and cut the processed and low fat shit . You have been a pioneer . fair play .Your re a brave and clever man
I looked at the forbes link, and below the article about Salem Yusuf was an article giving the mainstream view of vaccines = good. IMO a view pandering to the vested interests.
He is what he is – establishment. For him to give such a lecture is a clear sign that the establishment is preparing itself for a shift. Four legs good, two legs better.
Take the time to work through Prof Tim Noakes videos – VERY worthwhile and not all about diabetes
Finally had time to watch it. He’s good, and he’s right. Shouldn’t take more than a few decades for the food guidelines to be tossed in the trash, where they belong.
Hello, it seems Wikipedia is out of date and he is a former President of the WHF – http://www.world-heart-federation.org/about-us/board/
I wonder if he would be as vocal if he were still Prez.
Oh well, sometimes I get things wrong. The central point remains true, which is that he is a very highly respected member of the ‘establishment’, when it comes to CVD.
No doubt. I didn’t intend my comment to come across as critical of your post – I was, perhaps not very effectively, raising the question of whether he would have been ‘allowed’ to do such a talk if he was still head of the WHF.
Thanks for the video.
Hi Malcolm
The presenter is named on this link as “past president”, – http://www.world-heart-federation.org/about-us/board/ so is he now representing the World Heart Foundation……which based on their “national members” list many heart foundations from around the world, including America, UK and Australia and New Zealand are members?
Further, doing a bit more digging, the youtube video mentions “cardiology update 2017”. He is mentioned in the international programme committee list – https://www.zhh.ch/en/events/cardiology-update-2017
Hi Malcolm,
You did a really good post showing there is no obvious way that incoming dietary fats can affect LDL levels as they are transported in Chylomicrons, any idea why they still seeing this link?
Sorry, not sure what you mean by the last bit of your post?
Q: What causes CHD?
A: no one knows for certain.
Probably nothyperlipidaemia too many anomalies for the simple reason that if there is a single deviation from a hypothesis then the hypothesis needs modifiying, When a hypothesis matches all of the observations then it is promoted to a theory. If there is a single observation that doesn’t match the theory then the theory is inadequate and needs extending/modifying (cf Newtonian theories with Einsteins theories with Hawkings theories, Newton wasn’t wrong within his frame of reference in the 17th century). Our Victorian working class forebears ate predominantly bread and potatoes, approximately 6000 calories per day, which they needed due to the physical nature of their work, they probably didn’t live long enough to develop chronic diseases that may be associated with this kind of diet. Modern day infantry soldiers consume nearly as much but mainly in the form of protein, again due to the nature of their jobs.
Could CHD in some circumstances have an infective cause leading to inflammation? Why should coronary arteries be affected in some people without affecting the carotids and vice versa? What about other arteries, do you get arethrosclerosis in the pulmonary artery, the abdominal section of the Aorta or the Femoral arteries for example, or is it because the coronary/carotid arteries are small bore vessels but take blood from close to the heart where the pressure is higher than elsewhere in the circulatory system, thus are subject to a high pressure?
It depends exactly what you mean by your question – what is CVD. In a sense there is a huge amount of knowledge and understanding of CVD, at its metabolic core. For example, and with respect to one tiny corner of the problem, I did a Web of Science search on TITLE: (endotheli* AND homocysteine) and restricted results to the last 3 years. The broad sweep and also detail of the ~dozen papers I’ve looked at so far are closely in line with Dr Kendrick’s theme, certainly as regards the details of endothelium, NO etc.
As a tiny example, it is known how homocysteine (Hcy) promotes mitochondrial failure, leading to apoptosis. Further, it is known how -by which process, in detail and according to which genetic background applies – certain agents can be protective (Se, folate, BH4, others, in no particular order) and others harmful (mercury, lead, many others) – though a lot of these experiments are in vitro and so the results are hard to translate to “cures”.
To take just one result at random (by chance it relates to “infective cause”), the last paper I looked at is by Xi et al “Caspase-1 Inflammasome Activation Mediates Homocysteine-Induced Pyrop-Apoptosis in Endothelial Cells” DOI: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.116.308501. This notes the similarity in response of these cells to Hcy or lipopolysaccarides (usually from bacterial cell walls). In both cases there is a violent inflammatory cell death “pyroptosis” – a new word for me.
My point – of course it is complex, indeed horrendously so. However, many sufficiently precise questions do have clear answers. The biggest problem is that the real, hard science resides in a world very remote from the epidemiological drivel that we hear about so much. The hard stuff does have practical applications (someone with high Hcy would probably not want to be selenium deficient, for example).
John,
Actually, your pressure idea is the other way around. It really seems logical, but reality often confounds notions we see as obvious.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27754283
Sorry I’ve taken so long to respond. I’ve had another thought regarding the difference between coronary arteries and other arteries, which may also have an impact on flow. Most arteries are long and straight or have long lengths that are straight, the exception for the main arteries is the Aorta as it loops over the top of the heart; the other exceptions are the coronary arteries which have relatively tight loops around the heart, does this not introduce turbulent flow which could damage the epithelium? Do other mammals develop CVD, particularly thos that are long lived, or is it peculiar to humans?
John,
And, it gets more peculiar.
The heart feeds itself that bright oxygenated blood, but it shuts itself off from that flow with each contraction. Those loops of coronary artery on the surface bring the blood supply to smaller vessels that delve into the heart muscle where they must be to satisfy each and every muscle cell. Those smaller vessels are squashed flat and shut off with every systole. It’s the elasticity of the whole system that allows for myocardial perfusion during diastole – between “beats”.
Those little vessels take quite a beating. The outer “loops” must endure systolic pressure that goes nowhere momentarily.
Amazing that it all works as well as it does!
See Coronary Circulation in Wikipedia.
Once again today’s new is promoting Vitamin D supplementation. But the NHS is not providing an easily accessible testing facility.
Serum Vitamin D and Change in Lipid Levels over 5 years
http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(16)30200-3/fulltext
Conclusions
Deficient 25(OH)D was prospectively associated with lower TC and HDL-C and greater TC/HDL-C ratio after considering factors such as diabetes and adiposity. Further work including randomized controlled trials is needed to better assess how 25(OH)D may impact lipids and cardiovascular risk.
Key words:
Vitamin D, lipids, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, Total cholesterol/HDL-C ratio
But there is an NHS PATHLAB that supplies postal 25(OH)D tests for a modest fee £28.
http://www.vitamindtest.org.uk/index.html
I hope many of you will choose the bulk buy option to get a discount on your purchases and SHARE the tests with your family, relatives, friends and workmates at the discounted price.
It’s a simple finger prick test and you only need to supply 3 drops onto a card which you post back to the lab with your phone number and email addy on.
They email the result in a couple of days, (they will phone you to discuss your level if it’s over 200nmol/l)
Each of the test kits come in separate bags to sharing them is easy.
Those concerned about heart disease may well appreciate the knowledge that keeping 25(OH)D at/above the natural level found in indigenous peoples living traditional lives (around 50ng/ml 125nmol/l) also allows freely bioavailable cholecalciferol.to remain in circulation. This is important because that form of the vitamin is not inert as was previously thought, but active in maintaining endothelial function.
Dietary Vitamin D and Its Metabolites Non-Genomically Stabilize the Endothelium
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4607301/
but obviously, because the half-life of cholecalciferol is just 19-25 hours daily dosing only will demonstrate this action.
Vitamin d only optimally resolves inflammation when 25(OH)D is at/above 50ng/ml 125nmol/l
Dr Hutchinson
Many thanks for that. Most useful at a very reasonable price. Medichecks does the 25(OH)D for £39 and the 1-25(dihydroxy) for £99
Thanks too for the paper – down loaded in full.
The use of a card is interesting; 50+years ago a colleague and ! validated a test for CBPP ( a bovine respiratory disease) based on blood on filter paper in the Vet. Record. I always wondered if the concept would go anywhere.
Edward Hutchinson
Very interesting. Do you have a link for your figures on the half-life. This certainly explains why taking massive does twice a month has so little effect on vit D levels. When last tested in July I was at 46 ng/ml, which my GP thinks is wonderfully high, and he tells me that a lot of his patients are in the 8-10 range.
CH
Edward Hutchinson
About the half life of Vitamin D in the body, I found this on Medscape, where they giv a figure of 15 days:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731722_2
Do you have a different source?
Thanks
it seems that vitamin D half life varies dependent on many factors
http://www.vitamindwiki.com/Half-life+of+vitamin+D+varies
Vitamin D forms: cholecalciferol (sun/skin, supplements, food), calcidiol (25OHD) and calcitriol (1,25OHD). Good overview here: http://www.vitamindwiki.com/Vitamin+D3+becomes+Calcidiol+which+becomes+Calcitriol
Half lives respectively: about 1 day, 15 days, 15 hours.
Mr Chris’s Medscape refers to 25OHD.
Vitamin C may inhibit progression of AD symptoms—through pharmacological intake (in rats) of 100mg/kg daily—–effectiveness related to prevention of membrane lipid peroxidation—-among others—-the same membrane lipid peroxidation involve in CVD
Format: Abstract
Environ Toxicol Pharmacol. 2017 Feb 6;50:200-211. doi: 10.1016/j.etap.2017.02.010. [Epub
ahead of print]
Ascorbic acid ameliorates behavioural deficits and neuropathological alterations in rat model of Alzheimer’s disease.
Olajide OJ1, Yawson EO2, Gbadamosi IT2, Arogundade TT2, Lambe E2, Obasi K2, Lawal IT2, Ibrahim A2, Ogunrinola KY2.
Author information
Abstract
Exploring the links between neural pathobiology and behavioural deficits in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and investigating substances with known therapeutic advantages over subcellular mechanisms underlying these dysfunctions could advance the development of potent therapeutic molecules for AD treatment. Here we investigated the efficacy of ascorbic acid (AA) in reversing aluminium chloride (AlCl3)-induced behavioural deficits and neurotoxic cascades within prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus of rats. A group of rats administered oral AlCl3 (100mg/kg) daily for 15days showed degenerative changes characterised by significant weight loss, reduced exploratory/working memory, frontal-dependent motor deficits, cognitive decline, memory dysfunction and anxiety during behavioural assessments compared to control. Subsequent analysis showed that oxidative impairment-indicated by depleted superoxide dismutase and lipid peroxidation (related to glutathione-S-transferase activity), cholinergic deficits seen by increased neural acetylcholinesterase (AChE) expression and elevated lactate dehydrogenase underlie behavioural alterations. Furthermore, evidences of proteolysis were seen by reduced Nissl profiles in neuronal axons and dendrites which correspond to apoptotic changes observed in H&E staining of PFC and hippocampal sections. Interestingly, AA (100mg/kg daily for 15days) significantly attenuated behavioural deficits in rats through inhibition of molecular and cellular stressor proteins activated by AlCl3. Our results showed that the primary mechanisms underlying AA therapeutic advantages relates closely with its abilities to scavenge free radicals, prevent membrane lipid peroxidation, modulate neuronal bioenergetics, act as AChE inhibitor and through its anti-proteolytic properties. These findings suggest that supplementing endogenous AA capacity through its pharmacological intake may inhibit progression of AD-related neurodegenerative processes and behavioural alterations.
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Cholinergic transmission; Neurodegeneration; Neuronal bioenergetics; Oxidative redox; Proteolysis
PMID: 28192749 DOI: 10.1016/j.etap.2017.02.010
Erret
Once again many thanks for the reference. You really are a mine of information.
Our results showed that the primary mechanisms underlying AA therapeutic advantages relates closely with its abilities to scavenge free radicals, prevent membrane lipid peroxidation…….
Brings me back to my point that good health is associated with a high total anti-oxidant level in blood.
Or vice-versa
Dr Kendrick.
Interestingly Vit C can act as both an anti-oxidant and as a pro-oxidant (ROS). It seems to cycle through one to the other via DHA (dehydroxyascorbic acid). ROS is important in cancer therapy. This is explained in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PI_rKuQWiE
For more reasons than just soft tissue benefits it seems.
http://drsuzanne.net/2012/08/osteoporisis-is-scurvy-of-the-bone-not-calcium-deficiency-suzanne-humphries-md/
Dear Dr. Kendrick, please tell me what to think about the recently published paper “Intake of individual saturated fatty acids and risk of coronary heart disease in US men and women: two prospective longitudinal cohort studies” (BMJ 2016;355:i5796) which concludes: “Higher dietary intakes of major SFAs are associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease. Owing to similar associations and high correlations among individual SFAs, dietary recommendations for the prevention of coronary heart disease should continue to focus on replacing total saturated fat with more healthy sources of energy.” I am not a scientist, I cannot understand why an exact disciplin as medicin can come to so different conclusions as “SAF are good / bad for you”. Thanks in advance.
You are not a scientist, not are most of those involved in medical research. Medicine is far from an exact discipline, and medical research is, in many cases, a horrible distorted biased mess. Sorry if you don’t like that answer, but I believe it to be absolutely true.
Dr Kendrick
I wholeheartedly concur about docs and research. I would say that docs are in most cases very competent in what they were trained for but they are not trained for research and the obligatory use of statistics. Unfortunately they call in statisticians who know very little about medical problems etc. One wonders how many of the docs on some of these multi-centre studies with multi-authors actually know what they have actually supported
A statistical student (later a Prof of Statistics at a major UK University and in much demand by the pharmacology industry) did his thesis on an area of work in which I was working; a very successful partnership – he learnt a lot as did I.
A rare mathematician who could make himself understood by lesser mortals.
Malcolm,
This is exactly what I arrived at when getting interested in medicine some years ago now after having spent most of my life in the “hard core” metallurgical research. At the outset I though thought medicine was just a branch of science like my own discipline.
Irrespective of it’s complexity I am convinced medicine “in theory” could be and should be a part of science.
It might be fun if Malcolm pulled that study apart. It seems odd that they would look at individual fatty acids in order to conclude that SFA’s in general are bad for you. Since nobody (that I know of at least!) consumes pure fatty acids, my guess is that these would need to be estimated, which might offer endless opportunity for fudging!
I remember joking some time ago that researchers would start to muddy the water by testing individual fatty acids, rather than saturated fat as a whole.
I think Dr Kendrick has more important things to do.
Quite a few people did respond to the Zong paper when it was published
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796/rapid-responses
Dr Zoe Harcombe made a short and to the point response.
“Why are observational studies still being done?
The latest paper by Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health/Unilever observed 10 non-significant associations and 6 very small statistically significant associations between coronary heart disease and energy substitution for individual saturated fatty acids and alternative nutrients.
This followed searches for patterns in two prospective cohort studies (the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study), from which more than 30 papers for 2016 alone have been generated with Walter C Willet and Frank B Hu as co-authors.
Surely an institution as esteemed as Harvard, would know that epidemiological studies can merely suggest associations, which should then be tested for causation with randomised controlled trials (RCTs). On the subject of dietary fat, epidemiology and dietary interventions have been running in parallel since the 1950s. If the observations being repeatedly made by Harvard had any value, they would have been supported by RCTs and they have not. So when will Harvard admit this and stop this endless stream of non-sense?”
Edward Hutchinson,
I am sure what you say is correct, however surely the value of Malcolm dissecting the odd paper on this forum, is sometimes not because the paper is a beacon of quality research, but because it is an attempt to mislead the increasing number of people who are switching back to foods rich in SFA’s. His book, “Doctoring Data”, focusses heavily on shoddy research, but so it should because it is this shoddy research that is reflected in the health advise we receive!
The original condemnation of saturated fat did not distinguish between the individual fatty acids, and it was clearly based on fraudulent cherry picked data. The honest response now would be to admit the fraud/error and tell people to stop avoiding foods rich in saturated fat.
People need help! A few years ago, if I had seen a reference to a paper like that, I would have taken it as an indication that the jury was still out on SFA’s, and continued to avoid them – exactly the response, I think, of Chris, who linked to this paper.
Dr Hutchinson
One problem in the academic world is that “Status” and money for research is often based on the number of published papers, not quality or value. When you look at the numbers of papers that some leading “researchers” have it is just not possible that they were seriously involved in any way with most. Their names are added (and paid for>) to give the impression of importance. I have already posted my view on Harvard Nutrition and its credibility
The responses to the article on the BMJ web site discuss reasons why the study’s results may be misleading. See http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796/rapid-responses .
HOW TO ENJOY YOUR FROZEN PEAS:
Answer – don’t follow the packet instructions.
The peas are blanched before they are frozen. (To quote Wikipedia: “Blanching is a cooking process wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is scalded in boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocking or refreshing) to halt the cooking process.”)
So there is no need for further cooking. Good quality peas are wonderful just thawed and very gently warmed through. I’ve done this for years with no ill effects. Boiling them is dreadful – ruins the flavour and no doubt the nutrients.
FOR LCHF EATERS WHO WANT A TREAT:
If you allow yourself the odd piece of dark chocolate trying eating it with a piece of coconut – break up a real coconut. (With the use of a corkscrew, drain the milk into a cup. Put the empty coconut into a couple of plastic bags and get to work on it with a hammer.) Then you have your own version of a Bounty Bar – but much less sweet and quite wholesome (in my humble opinion).
TS
Seems to me that you have not reagd the BHF website on the evils of chocolate cocoa etc. More dangerous than Flora margerine!
TS
Thanks for the Tips. Personally I use coconut oil with youghurt (home made – strained) for breakfast every day plus desiccated coconut (or coconut flour). Coconut milk (ex-nut) or fresh from the green nut with a drop of gin makes a great cocktail.
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine”
Thx Dr. Kenkrick. Another correlation to my best theory – cause of arteries plugging up – endothelial cells have no GLUT4 (glucose transporter). Which is the very, very beginning of damage to endothelial cells. After eating a carb meal, the damage starts little by little because they cannot defend themselves. Sugar can increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can damage and kill endothelial cells.
Randall
Thanks, makes sense to me. Have you a reference for Sugar can increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can damage and kill endothelial cells.?
Reblogged this on Taking Sides.
Today’s New Scientist. I never thought this day would come!
Keep up your great work! Regards Fr Dr Raphael Hawkes
___________________________________ Fr Raphael Hawkes. (Retired Doctor) 11 Penlee Villas Playing Place Truro TR3 6EY Cornwall
Tel: 01872 864586 Mobile: +44 7500008653 Email: Raphael.Hawkes@gmail.com
>
Want to read more
I note that on one of the other YouTube presentations from Professor Yusuf (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHiiOa18S_g) about halving premature heart diseases and strokes, he recommends for those with disease ‘…widespread use of generic statins’ which he claims, along with smoking cessation, can reduce morbidity by 50 to 70%. Any comments?
None that are widely repeatable.
James Hammond,
If you have ever encountered the side effects of statins, you would understand one reason for not taking them. If I hadn’t stopped taking them, I would presumably have been suffering the leg cramps and general pain for over four years by now – even if those problems didn’t continue to worsen.
There is only so much of that someone take – I mean even if someone receives chemotherapy it is in the hope that it will fix their cancer, they don’t want to be treated continuously for the rest of their lives!
Quite apart from the dodgy statistics (e.g. quote the gain for people who also give up smoking, and don’t estimate how much extra life they enjoyed), people should really ask themselves if it makes sense to mess up the latter end of their lives in this way.
David,
i support you
i suffered leg cramps brain fog and who knows what else without realising that i had slowly deteriorated over time. could not even walk, (more like stumbled) for 20 minutes on successive days. i could not continue. stopped statins, changed to LCHF (Prof Noakes). as they say the rest is history.
Because my doctors– GP and cardiologist(s)–truly seem to believe pancakes only have one side I have made this other side available to them by becoming more a more sane and healthy patient. Even suffering a relapse of my CHF, taking a ride in an ambulance (!) I am on the mend and I know why. Deep, profound thanks to you Malcolm.
Dear Dr. Kendrick,
Many thanks for your interesting articles, and now for sharing Salim Yusuf’s presentation. Very powerful indeed.
I thought it might interest you that I passed your article along to DietDoctor.com and LCHF Deutschland, who have both published this:
http://www.lchf-deutschland.de/der-praesident-der-world-heart-federation-ueber-fett-kohlenhydrate-und-salz/
https://www.dietdoctor.com/world-heart-foundation-president-fat-protective-carbs-harmful
I am a perfectly normal individual who after five decades of normal life started to study first evolutionary biology then evolutionary medicin, so since about 5 years I am fascinated with the evolutionary perspective of health and disease, and since a few years I do volunteer work for DietDoctor.com and LCHF Deutschland. Our recommendations for a healthy diet seem very similar to your ideas.
All the best
Kjell
_____________________________________ Kjell Granelli Nattviolvägen 20 Hofterup SE-24651 Löddeköpinge Sweden Tel: +46 (0)72 86 34 440 kjell_granelli@hotmail.com
________________________________ Från: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick Skickat: den 15 februari 2017 10:41 Till: kjell_granelli@hotmail.com Ämne: [New post] What causes heart disease part XXVI
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “[Hold the front page] Last night I watched a you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. Here, from Wikipedia: ‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952)”
I am since a couple of years a subscriber to the daily newsletters from Dr. Mercola and most of the time they are well informed although sometimes, to my sadness, they are passing the “quack” line in my mind.
However, yesterday morning an interesting one arrived where the content suites well this blog and adds to the message by stressing the insulin resistance issue of the CHD etiology.
Most interestingly it features the Ivor Cumming’s interview with Dr. Kraft who spent his clinical carrier by measuring the actual insulin resistance among thousands of diabetic patients. This interview has been one of my favorites for long and together with the book Dr. Kraft wrote about his measurements and conclusions.
I am a 70 years young female, I have T2 which is diet controlled with an Hba1C of 41 on LCHF eating regime and have lost over 4 stone, now weigh 8st 10lbs. I have an under-active thyroid treated by Levothyroixine 100mcg, have high blood pressure 134/70. I have stopped taking Bendroflumethiazide as the leaflet says ‘decreases carbohydrate tolerance’ and am just on Losartan 25mg. I believe that not having the correct treatment for my thyroid i.e. supplementing T3 which is low, is contributing to my high BP and raise cholesterol. Any help gratefully received.
Thank you
Carol
I have no medical qualifications, but Bendroflumethiazide appears from the name to contain flouride. In my mind that does not sit well with underactive thyroid. Having said that, I read that tea can contain 20ppm (or more) of fluoride per cup.
Bendroflumethiazide contains something magical, for sure. It gave me type2 diabetes, which went away when I realised what was happening..
carol cox: The following contains good information about the risks associated with blood pressure by age and gender:
thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/vol355no9199/PIIS
“Systolic Blood Pressure and Mortality,” pp. 175-80. Look at figure 4 on page 177. The dotted line for women 65-74 shows no increased mortality risk below about 165 (systolic). Your diastolic number is excellent. Do you take drugs for BP?
Gary
when I tried to follow your link, I got this
“An error has occurred
The page or action you requested has resulted in an error. Please go back to the previous page by using your browser’s Back button, or visit the Home Page.3
How about this one?
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(99)07051-8/fulltext
AH Notepad: Thanks. A link that works. However, behind a paywall. If you follow the steps I wrote you can get it for free.
Mr Chris: If you are in the US you can access the paper thusly: Go to thelancet.com. In the search box click “Article title, Abstract, Keywords.” Type in “Systolic blood pressure and mortality.” On the left side (date) click 2000-2009, then click search. At the bottom of the first page of results, click page 2. At the bottom of this page will appear the article by Sidney Port (vol 355, No. 9199, pp. 175-80.
Gary
Thanks for that.
Not in the USa but put the paper title and writer in Google and it popped up by another route” so thanks.
A very interesting paper. How many people are needlessly on blood pressure medicine.
Genneral question: if you are well within the limits here, is there any need to dose yourself with L Carnitine?
Mr. Chris: Probably not, for those who eat plenty of red meat, which I do. It’s expensive, so I’ll only take it in the future on days when I eat fish. I continue to take 2-4g vitamin C daily. I think it a wonderful, powerful food for health. As for BP, I think it is over-treated, but then the purpose of guidelines is profit, not health. According to that Atlantic article beta blockers have no mortality benefit; diuretics and ACE inhibitors appear to have a modest benefit, but I just say no to all of them.
Thanks Gary but the link isn’t recognized. Could you post it again please. Doctor says my blood pressure should be lower. I have searched and found that if the thyroid isn’t treated properly it can raise BP and cholesterol. I love confounding the diabetic nurse, she said last week that my cholesterol was too high, i replied that my breakdown is very good but she said that LDL was too high, it wasn’t a fasting test and there was no breakdown of the LDL, ie VDLP or HDLP, she changed the subject because she didn’t know what I was talking about.
Yes, Carol, I play that little game with my DN. Fun, isn’t it. I love the slightly glazed over expression. And, hey, a month or so ago, I asked the (locum) GP about my apparently disappearing low renal threshold which has been there since I was 15 (I am now 74) and he didn’t know what I was talking about. “What’s a low renal threshold?” he asked me. Ditto expression.
By the way, your BP sounds great too me.
Cheers
carol cox: Sorry about that. I realized it was not a clickable link after I posted my comment. The Lancet is something of a headache to search. This is how you can find the article: Go to thelancet.com. In the search box at the top click “Article title, Abstract, Keywords.” In the box on the left side (date) click 2000-2009. Type into the search box “Systolic blood pressure and mortality.” Click search. Go to the bottom of the page and click page 2. At the bottom of page 2 you will find it: Systolic blood pressure and mortality, Sidney Port, The Lancet, vol 355, No. 9199, p. 175-180. If you have a printer open the PDF and print it out. It is well worth having around. I showed it to my GP. Sounds like you know more than the nurse. Stick around here a while and you’ll know more than most of them!
Drat, got to the article, to find it behind a paywall!
Frederica Huxley: It’s not behind a paywall here in the U.S. Are you in the UK? I would be happy to send it as an attachment by email to anyone who wants it.
Yes, and it is large sum to view – over £32, if I recall. What I would really appreciate are the graphs you mentioned re BP/mortality. Would it be possible to copy the graphs and post here? Thanx
Also, look into “Malignant Medical Myths”. It has a great chapter on BP and a chart with age adjusted safe numbers.
Frederica Huxley: It would be a daunting task to learn how to create a chart on Pages. One blind alley after another. What I can do is describe Figure 4. The x-axis is Systolic BP from 100 to 200, and the y-axis is Deaths per 1,000. What is crucial in the data is at what level of SBP does the mortality rate begin to rise. I’ll summarize what it says:
For women 44-54, mortality is about 4/1000 from 100-142 SBP, gradually rising to 15 at 200
For women 56-64 mortality is about 7/1000 from 100-160, gradually rising to 16 at 200
For women 65-74, mortality is about 16/100 from 100-168, gradually rising to 30 at 200
For men 45-54, mortality is about 8/1000 from 100-142, gradually rising to 25 at 200
For men 55-64, mortality is about 15/1000 from 100-150, rising more steeply to 45 at 200
For men 65-74, mortality is about 32/1000 from 100-160, rising fast to 70 at 200
What the data essentially says is that the guidelines are wrong regarding risk; it varies by age and sex, and normal BP rises with age. For example, for a woman 65-74 there is no additional mortality risk if her SBP is below about 168. The conclusions in the paper state that anti-hypertensive treatment can be beneficial, but treatment based solely on SBP “exceeding 140 mm Hg is not justified.”
Thank you, I did not mean for you to go to such trouble! I found the description of the chart very illuminating.
Blood pressure should be lower eh? I read recently (please don’t ask where) that higher blood pressure in older people results in lower incidence of dementure. I suspect it also reduces the possibility of fainting and consequently falling over. Just in case that happens, large (by conventional standards) of vitamin C protects against osteoporosis.
You met her too? (grin)
I had the opposite problem – hyperthyroid – which sent my BP through the roof and curiously dropped my LDL by exactly the same amount as the statin I no longer take. When overtreated, ie. hypothyroid, the LDL shot up.
Since the PCT and the last Practice Manager went away my GP seems to be allowed to be a lot more clueful than she previously appeared. She’s no longer so concerned about my BP which is generally below 140/90 on minimal meds, and agrees that there’s no point even checking my lipids while my thyroid is misbehaving, and anyway since my HDL and trigs are so good the LDL is a bit of an irrelevance, and she almost agreed that having LDL a bit high as I age was probably not such a bad thing after all.
There was a time that the nurses also appeared to be quite clueful but this was then beaten out of them. I haven’t bothered to see one again since being told that I had not had an A1c which I KNEW I had done, and that she was unwilling to give me my actual results since she also informed me that “we don’t test your “cholesterol” again once you are on your statin!”
You might think that “healthcare professionals” would actually care about health, but seemingly not when they have boxes to tick and pennies to save. Meanwhile I’ve actually saved them pounds by not needing the “two or three diabetes medications” I was “expected” to be on by now, or all the other drugs I no longer require. You’d think they’d be grateful, NOT. You might even think they’d want to know how I did it, NOT.
Carol
How on earth can any “health care professional” claim you have high blood pressure with a reading of 134/70, particularly at the age of 72? Ludicrous.
Buggering bastards! I looked at this youtube yesterday, but when I tried it again this morn, it had gone. Gone I tells ye!
This sort of thing makes my blood boil, because it demonstrates so transparently that medical science deliberately wants to cover up the facts about CVD and its causes – and it doesn’t matter if people suffer and die in the process. I hope that perhaps Dr Yusef is in a sufficiently powerful position to resist.
If our weak media had some guts that could blow this whole issue open with one TV program – but nowadays they prefer to censor the truth.
Boiling blood is probably not good for CVD. 😉 That people die because of information does not worry me, they have to go sometime. What I don’t accept is the mis-information pedalled by what are either liars or incompetents. Fortunately we have such honest people as Dr. Kendrick, Dr. Humphries to name but two. I apologise to others who feel left out bu not being named, but there is nothing significant in this. Conversely we have people such as Prof Collins and IsabellaB. Now we know it’s lucre that drives at least one of them, but the other appears to be not a person at all but a nom-de-plume of someone paid by vaccine manufacturers, who in turn is driven by filthy lucre. What is frightening is ignorant interferers like Bill Gates and his missus. They are pouring piles of money into vaccines with the misguided opinion that they can save millions every year dying from commonplace diseases, when providing good nutrition would be cheaper and more effective. Not only that, nature has developed complex systems for maintaining internal control, but sometimes this fails. Along comes someone pretending to care for people, but messing things up, and causing huge long term problems.
My goodness, what a bigot, I’ll stop now, sorry for the rant.
People are dying or getting sick all the time because of deliberate misinformation motivated by commercial interests: pharma drugs, medical procedures, industrial pollutants… In some ways, progress made our lives better and more comfortable, in others it created new ways to kill us off. That’s why I personally believe that as a species we are getting genetically weaker.
“Boiling blood is probably not good for CVD. 😉”
I did wonder about that metaphor as I wrote it!
However, I do worry that people die or become ill because of misinformation – particularly when it is deliberate. Anyone who works in science can make a mistake, but if anyone deliberately misinforms others about serious health matters from a position of seeming auhority, then perhaps it is time we called that what it is – either GBH or murder.
Yes it didn’t last long did it? Surprised I am not.
Just received from Zoe Harcombe
A Youtube presentation by Dr Yusuf Salim
May be of interest
The Youtube link now says the video is private. This has happened on some other heart- skeptical websites. Conspiracy theorists step forward?
However at the time of posting it is still here:
https://youtu.be/e09wQl1kkCE Works for me.
In a previous posting John Hammond mentioned a TEDx Talk video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHiiOa18S_g in which Dr Yusef suggested taking statins as part of the route to cutting CVD deaths. Having had a look at the video I now see why the “Dietary Guidelines are a Lie” video was pulled.
In the TEDx video he talks about the importance of lowering cholesterol (He proposes statins). Yet in the “Dietary Guidelines (~5:00. . .” video he shows that although saturated fat increases LDL-C . . . saturated fat in their study is associated with reduced CVD in a reverse hockey stick curve fashion. This to my mind says that the results indicate at the most a weak association of LDL-C with CVD. His main point is that . . . relying on surrogate end points (presumably like LDL-C) is an unreliable way to inform dietary opinion . . . A point I have come across many times.
the Yusuf Salim presentation was made in a public forum Davos why is it now not available?
Here’s another strange comment for people to wonder over. I’ve been looking into ApoB and found this editorial from a couple of years ago in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology: http://cpr.sagepub.com/content/22/10/1317.full.pdf+html
As far as i can make out they go on and on about how great measuring ApoB is compared to the usual lipid tests, and then seemingly from nowhere they make this amazing statement: “Since apoB is powerful in predicting future CHD, one has to ask whether it could, or even should, supersede the inferior lipid-based metrics in the evaluation of CHD risk in certain well-specified patient groups. The answer is obviously ‘no’: in the foreseeable future, apoB, either alone or in combination with apoA-I, cannot be regarded as an adequate substitute for the traditional well-known lipid metrics …”
What?? Surely if it’s that good they should be using it?
“Since apoB is powerful in predicting future CHD, one has to ask whether it could, or even should, supersede the inferior lipid-based metrics in the evaluation of CHD risk in certain well-specified patient groups. The answer is obviously ‘no’: in the foreseeable future, apoB, either alone or in combination with apoA-I, cannot be regarded as an adequate substitute for the traditional well-known lipid metrics …”
Read the editorial . . . I am incredulous at the conclusion . . . The argument seemed to go something like this: . . . I admit that using LDL-C is not a very good predictor of heart disease “it is inferior”. . . the APOB metric is a better predictor . . . But we have being using LDL-C for a long time – we know where we stand with it – we have lots of calculations and procedures set up – It would be a shame to lose all the previous efforts.
What hope is there when faced with such logic? I’m off to the asylum . . . There must be more chance of sanity there.
The scientific logic of some “researchers” and workers in the disease fields just displays a basic ignorance. I asked a certain disease society about a particular therapy. Their answer was they knew nothing about it at all but in the that total lack of knowledge, they condemned it as a “SCAM” . It may well be but without any evidence to call it a scam is just ludicrous and plain ignorat. Science as practiced and we are expected to believe their recommendations
Translation: we don’t have profitable drugs to treat that so let’s not look.
May be of interest. Dr Holick is a world authority on vit d
Mike,
A great talk – just confirms the “close your eyes ‘criminality’ ” of the “established” medicine.
I note this everywhere in medicine today.
Hi Dr. Sjoberg. I read earlier that you subscribe to Dr. Mercola’s publications. I have been reading a publication called Health Radar that I have found to be very interesting. You might also – the website is HealthRadar@newsmax.com
Haven’t been able to read all the comments on Dr. K’s latest report – just too overwhelming!!
Getting a “video unavailable ” message.
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 05:42 Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “[Hold the front page] Last night I watched a > you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by > Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. > Here, from Wikipedia: ‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952)” >
Some kind person anticipated this may happen and put a copy on another link.
No doubt the same thing will happen again so perhaps it would be wise to download a copy to repost when that eventuality occurs.
I hope someone has downloaded a copy. I didn’t (holds head in shame) All the available links have been removed, so I can’t find a working link anywhere. This is a shining example that conspiracy theorists are not always wrong, as this must have been removed under pressure. I’m glad Dr. K alerted us to it while it was still available. Truth is obviously unacceptable to the authoritarian bigots that have control.
Ok, update to last post, I have found the video at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DAScGnxaEKg, AND IU have downloaded it!!! so we have security.
The video is here at the time of writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAScGnxaEKg
Hurry now while stocks last!
Keep up, I posted that last night 😉 I also found a neat downloading app for my mac so I have a copy of it here.
Pulled again. Would someone with a copy of the Yusuf video please be kind and post it to dropbox and/or Google Drive and post the link here, YouTube are clearly on the case and going to mop op reposts of it pretty fast.
It’s unfortunate, and it would be good to have it available, but as Zurich Heart House have raised a copyright claim, posting a dropbox link on this blog may give a certain hard working administrator an unnecessary headache if ZHH came calling. If you find a working link, download the video, but otherwise I think you have to respect the “rules” unless you are very rich and have a lot of spare time.
AH,
I only noticed you had posted a link after I had pressed “Post Comment”. Unfortunately there is no Delete or Edit function so I have to leave my post as-is :o(
I also have a copy of the video on my PC, downloaded with Free Download Manager. It’s a nice piece of software and, as the name implies, it’s free. I can recommend it.
I get caught by the lack of editing too. IPads have a habit of thinking they need to change what I have written, and frequently alter the spelling, so far I’ve been lucky on this blog, but when I make a spelling mistake the iPad is asleep and just lets me post it.
There is a “role” for us, as knowledgeable “patients”. Pff.
This fascinating paper actually acknowledges that the Dr. can’t do everything. We, as experts of ourselves, can manage better.
http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/11/e003583
JDPatten
Many thanks for the link. I missed this one. The BMJ is doing a lot to encourage “knowledgeable” patients to get involved via rapid responses and as patient reviewers. It is surprisinnhg the amount of support given to non-medics. I believe that this is a way to increase doctors’ awareness of patients views.
And the beat goes on at http://www.atlantic.com…..
“When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes
Long after research contradicts common medical practices, patients continue to demand them and physicians continue to deliver. The result is an epidemic of unnecessary and unhelpful treatments.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/when-evidence-says-no-but-doctors-say-yes/517368/
Malcolm, you might be interested in the examples provided in the article!
I will definitely read it
Thanks for the link. It is indeed interesting that the evidence often says “no point” in protecting the healthy but the DIRECTIVES(in medical terms – guidelines) say “must do this”.
The classic example is Collin’s claim Treat 3 million, save 10,000 lives a year
1 life saved for 300 treated, which means that 299 are not saved (they are just a nuisance to all but Big Pharma – a great financial resource).
Re stenting – I did find a paper which compared medical therapy with stenting over decades – survival curves were “essentially” similar. The problem of course is always a choice for the cardiologist; if patient dies on medical therapy then the issue of liability raises its head. Stenting means that all that could be done was done and would probably be backed by the courts and expert witnesses. It is one of the problems medicine has inherited from the US and their class action system and the rise of defensive medicine which invariably ends in a second best compromise for the patient
The BMJ paper cited above “Should people at low risk of cardiovascular disease
take a statin?”. The patient reviewer seems to be very close to what I would have written.
Brian, that’s an excellent article. Thank you for the link. It’s a long article but one every patient and most doctors would benefit from reading.
Long but excellent!
Yes my cynicism is directed not so much at doctors but at the people who feed them their “evidence”. It’s a GP’s job to know a bit about a lot of things. A specialist needs to know more about fewer things, but a lot of specialities now contain far more information than a single person can remember IMO. They are fed a subset of information by Official Sources, and are left to find out the rest for themselves IF they have the time or the inclination, but in order to do that they have to know where to look and what to look for.
Enter the Informed Patient and Social Media. Someone with only one disease to worry about can equal or even exceed the knowledge of a specialist, especially with feedback from their own results added to knowledge from clueful doctors like Malcolm and clueful researchers with blogs and Twitter accounts followed by digging on PubMed into what they are pointed to.
Increasing numbers of Informed Patients are routinely achieving the impossible, such as controlling diabetes or defeating obesity. Small but increasing numbers of doctors and nurses, and yes, even a few dieticians, are now understanding this, plus now probably hundreds of researchers. When the likes of Salim Yusuf, David Ludwig of Harvard, Ron Krauss, past president of the AHA, start to speak out contrary to what they are expected to believe they have more credibility simply because they are in a position to have a nice comfortable life from following dogma yet choose not to do so.
Chris,
Well said about the role of the Informed Patient. A minor example from my own experience: I got a dangerous inflammation in the left eye. The eye specialist said it was due to my ankylosing spondylitis. When I told my GP the diagnosis, he pooh-poohed it, saying in that case the inflammation should be in both eyes. Subsequently I discovered, through research and reading the stories of other people with AS, that inflammation in a single eye is typical; inflammation in both eyes at the same time is unusual. Next time I see him I shall inform him.
Of course, one has to be pretty sure of one’s facts and be able to back them up with reputable references. I know how annoying it is when someone acts like he knows better on subjects that I happen to be knowledgeable about.
Brian,
Thank you for this great reference!
What I read just confirms my present conviction, as a “victim” of serious CVD since 17 years now, that it was probably the best decision in my life when I refused the suggested comprehensive bypass surgery and all medication. That was also the departing point when I started my so far “successful” search for alternatives.
Sadly, this will go unchallenged by the patient, in the majority of cases. The reason? The “doctor” knows best, don’t dare question him! After my own comedy of errors after a cardiac arrest two years, I have tried, unsuccessfully to “educate” people regarding the out of date advice after a heart attack/surgery. Without exception they have all looked at me as if I was mad! You have to take your statins…don’t touch the evil saturated fat….low fat yoghurts, sorry no fat yoghurts! No butter, it’s poison.. use healthy low fat spreads. On top of that there seems to be little criticism of their lovely sugary desserts. The inconsistency stinks! Just as I’ve said many times previously, what the heck kind of world do we live in where we are being lied to on such a gigantic scale. This unnecessary destruction of people’s lives will never end if those in the know grumble, then bury their heads in the sand, and let “them” get away with it!
Joyce
Today the news is that the expert advice is is to eat Ten potions of fruite and veg.
I suppose a meta-analysis is involved. The problem as I see it with meta-analyses is that they are SELECTED (a no-no statistically) on the basis of a set of criteria which in turn are based on what the researchers want to show as a result but as a consequence ignore a whole range of other factors which may well be associated with the chosen factors. Then with the huge numbers of “statistical units” involved (ie humans) trivial real differences can be demonstrated to be “significant” but in reality are totally irrelevant to the average human.
As an example I would suggest Ancel Keys 7 country study totally ignored the possible effect of Vitamin D on the the outcomes of what he measured.
If you eat a grass-fed animal how many portions of vegetables is that?
As I tell my children. Meat is just concentrated vegetables.
Since most people don’t snack on vegetables (I know there are exceptions), the new advice amounts to eating a lot of extra fruit, and I can’t help wondering if that won’t provide more sugar than is desirable.
Mike, I’m so busy trying to please everybody, my diet is going to pot, and the weight is “creeping” back on! What with 10 portions of fruit/veg, a juicy sirloin steak, a lamb steak, and going to the gym 3 times a week, I’ve just about lost the plot. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Losing the will to live here! P.S. forgot to mention the Vit D3 capsules! Pass me a tube of blue smarties, I need the energy! lol. Not to worry, when I do go, at least I’ll look GREAT!
Nutritional Epidemiology – pulling numbers out of your arse.
Metastudies – pulling numbers out of your arse then torturing them.
I suspect the logic here is –
fruitandvegetables are NOT ANIMALS
sugar is good because it is low fat, and VEGAN!
what could possibly go wrong?
I have a lot of time for my GP. When I told him I had stopped taking statins for 1 month to see if the debilitating pains in my shoulder and upper arms would go . . . he asked if there was an improvement. I said “yes”, and he came back with “1 month is not enough, stay off them for another 2”. Needless to say, after a further 2 months the pains had reduced even further. (It took over a year for them to get to negligible level) He did not pressure me to take up statins again. And now to my main point: During odd visits I have given him an indication of the studies/papers I had been following (Cholesterol, diabetes, diet etc). As I was getting up to leave a couple of visits ago, he said “The thing is, we do not have the time to do all that reading”. . . . I left with no comment.
Of course, he is right in a way – a GP obviously has to keep abreast of so many different aspect of medicine – that is the awful part – they absolutely rely on the ‘experts’.
“No time to do all that reading”. Sad, isn’t it?
My understanding is that most GPs work in group practices, and a small number of ailments cover a large number of deaths. You would think they could share the load and have each GP keep fairly up-to-date on one main issue, as Malcolm does on CVD.
This isn’t about keeping up with research. It’s more about going against established practices and recommendations by the medical authorities…
Yes! My GP is a “diabetes specialist” but frankly I know a LOT of patients that know a LOT more than her. Mainly because she is fed her dogma from NICE, NHS Evidence, DUK etc. and would stand a very good chance of getting into trouble if she didn’t follow it.
Cynical doctors elsewhere have admitted to their patients that being found in possession of well controlled diabetics could lead to an investigation, not with a view to finding out how they achieved their results and thus benefit other patients, but with a view to disciplinary action for “failing to comply” with NICE Guidelines or PCT Protocols.
I suspect since PCTs were replaced with CCGs this may have improved. Certainly there seem to be a few more doctors sticking their heads up above the parapet, and the likes of David Unwin and Joanne McCormack are actually winning awards, but at the same time there’s a lot more sniper fire from the likes of dieticians. I’ve read/been told that there are now a small number of hundreds of low-carb friendly doctors in the UK, which may just about be critical mass where an attack on the likes of Aseem Malhotra or Rangan Chatterjee may be defended in the same way as the ongoing battles with Tim Noakes, Gary Fettke et al.
I’ve even heard of a few more doctors using T3 for hypothyroid and getting away with it. Not so sure about ketogenic diets for cancer – YET.
Chris C
This domination of doctors by the medical establishment w.r.t. GMC investigation is used to terrorize doctors into providing “approved” therapies irrespective they are right or flawed.
I have just sent in a rapid response to Dr Godlee’s editorial ( http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j939 ) about this sort of thing. I believe that it is essential that “knowledgeable” patients should join her campaign to bring patients into the system. The tendency of researchers to ignore evidence contrary to their results happens but it skews the truth. It is imperative that the alternate view is brought to general attention.
I believe that this is why Dr Kendrick’s blog is so important. It is outlining alternate interpretations on a very complex problem. While I personally believe he is nearer the truth than the guidelines is not the most important aspect of his blog. The most important aspect is that it is bringing the whole subject into open debate, which in turn is more likely to result in success than the dictate of conflicted “experts”.
Paper by the now late Rosamund Snow
Click to access e003583.full.pdf
if this came from here I apologise
(also I just read that Joseph Kraft had died at 95)
Thanks Mike, I “liked” your response to Fiona Godlee’s editorial.
Thinking about it further, “my” GP has moved, albeit glacially slowly (12 years) in a more positive direction, in part because she has seen results from me and others and heard of more from other doctors and nurses. She had heard of Richard Bernstein but didn’t approve (at least she didn’t say “Did he write West Side Story?” – a friend’s joke). I printed some papers from the likes of Feinman, Volek, Phinney et al which I suspect cemented her opinion that I was a crank.
Last time I saw her I gave her David Unwin’s name and suggested she look him up on Twitter – and I suspect she might. Then she might go on to some of the others. Maybe even Malcolm.
Some of her colleagues, not so much. Dr Trendy Young Macho Man was convinced that since it is impossible to improve diabetes there was never anything wrong with me in the first place. Dr Size Of A Bungalow told me sternly that “everyone needs carbs or you will have no energy!” while failing to notice she had so much energy from all her carbs that she was running out of places to store it, and subsequently became prediabetic herself. I wonder if she has also backed away from her previous belief that “diabetes is always progressive, it’s the nature of the disease” she has lost weight from 5:2 but has no interest in low carbing (yet!)
More doctors seem to be decoupling themselves from Conventional Wisdom as they see it fail over and over. Even a few dieticians
http://www.metrodietetics.com.au/low-carbohydrate-high-fat-for-type-2-diabetes-an-evidence-based-assessment/
Meanwhile the fightback seems to be becoming even more frantic and some of the perpetrators frankly delusional.
When I was in training some 6 decades ago we were told “you have to know what good health is before you can understand ill health”. Over the subsequent decades this has become more and more apparent. Food animal production depends entirely on good health. Disease impairs health and reduces performance.
I am still surprised that papers published over 40+ years ago in ths area are still being cited. I would also claim that in those days, and indeed before, one had to often do one’s statistics using a Brunsviga or Facit calulator and a lot of hand turning. This was improved later but one still had to write ones own programs. Thus one was fully conversant with the study data and the algorithms and assumptions that were used to analyses the data.
These days with huge studies, the data is simply dumped on a computer and programs applied that include unknown assumptions, unknown algorithms that are possibly not understood and the answer pops out in seconds. This results in the absence of a full knowledge and understanding of what the data are saying. It results in mathematical associations which may or may not be relevant or even meet Bradford Hill’s criteria for epidemiollgical data and its relevance to disease.
I am afraid that these days in my dotage, I find medical pharmceutical research ignores the cause of a condition and is solely concerned in the chemical modification of the result of that cause. In short it is concerned only in illhealth, which is the basic business model for Big Pharma.
For the future of human health this approach must be changed and good health of the individual patient must be promoted. In conclusion may I quote from The BMJ editorial by Dr Godlee (http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j939 ) “Crucially, the key outcomes were those that are important to patients and But with the ongoing help of our patient panel we are more determined than ever to continue our advocacy for patient partnership in healthcare. ( http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/02/15/paul-buchanan-on-rosamund-snow)
anyone tried Niacin and is it safe to take. Went to see a nutritionist and she has recommended it.
Dr Andrew Saul and Dr Abram Hoffer have written extensively about niacin and its uses, in orthomolecular medicine. It immediately and permanently helped someone I know who was in real trouble with alcohol. The effect was absolutely amazing. Gave him his life back. Much larger doses are needed than you get in multivit supplements. Amazon have all the books by Hoffer and Saul I believe, or check out the website of Andrew Saul. (Sorry, don’t have link).
chris: Niacin is one of the B vitamins, and an essential nutrient. Certainly safe to take; millions do every day. Meat, fish, and peanuts are rich food sources.
Hi Chris—-I have used niacin for a few years—-I use Inositol Hecanicotinate—–no flushing issues—–beacuse it breaks down slowly in the body into Inositol and free niacin—I take 500mg once a day—with food.
Inositol nicotinate is a compound made of niacin (vitamin B3) and inositol. Inositol occurs naturally in the body and can also be made in the laboratory.
Inositol nicotinate is used for treating blood circulation problems, including pain when walking due to poor circulation in the legs (intermittent claudication); skin changes caused by pooling of the blood in the legs (stasis dermatitis) when veins are ineffective in returning blood to the heart; narrowing of the blood vessels leading to cold fingers and toes (Raynaud’s disease); and blood flow problems in the brain (cerebral vascular disease). Inositol nicotinate has been used in conventional medical practice in Great Britain for improving symptoms of poor circulation for many years, although it is usually not the preferred treatment choice.
Inositol nicotinate is also used for high cholesterol; high blood pressure; sleep problems (insomnia); migraines related to “hardening of the arteries” (atherosclerosis); skin conditions, including scleroderma, acne, dermatitis, psoriasis, and others; inflammation of the tongue (exfoliative glossitis); restless leg syndrome; and schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
How does it work?
Inositol nicotinate releases a form of niacin when it is processed by the body. The niacin can widen blood vessels, lower blood levels of fats such as cholesterol, and break up a protein needed for the clotting of blood.
From WebMD
correct spelling is Inositol Hexanicotinate
Hi, I have heard that the non flushing Niacin can cause liver problems. It builds up somehow. Sorry no medical knowledge so not exactly sure how it works. Is Inositol nicotinate the same as the non flushing kind.
Use of this compound to help with restless leg syndrome is interesting.. Having recently eliminated my own long term restless leg issue by taking a small daily amount of magnesium citrate I wonder if this points to a causal factor of narrow arteries, since I believe magnesium has the same dilating effect? Both my daughter in her twenties and my father in his eighties (both fit and healthy on no meds, as am I so far!) have also been plagued with the ‘legs’ – until I recently put them onto magnesium too. Definitely appears to be hereditary in our case, whatever the cause.
Good article on niacin here:
A good site for supplement info – https://examine.com/
With 15 years of critical thinking and research behind me, as a consumer of the system, and with many years of investment involvement in healthcare product companies, I have come to see that the underlying structure of what we call healthcare is deeply flawed.
With Malcolm’s tolerance for yet another off-topic posting, I would like to explain. Please conduct with me a thought experiment.
You are the head keeper at a zoo. The zoo has a variety of mammalian species and primates. You are charged with their care and preservation..Generally you seek to replicate their living conditions in the wild as best you can and get them to their full life-span. You follow best practices through the life-cycle of the inmates by studying their environmental and nutritional needs. All the while seeking to maximize longevity.
In a turn of events, you are asked to accommodate a member of the species Homo Sapiens for the first time.
True to form, you prepare for the new inmate as you would any other species new to your experience. You gain a deep understanding of the habitat and nutritional needs of the species and you create the closest possible replica to its natural environment realizing that any significant deviation is a risk.
The emphasis is on risk assessment and reduction, preservation by prevention.
Our healthcare industry, on the other hand, identifies and reacts to symptoms and diseases as they crop up. We identify syndromes deserving attention. We then assume that the attention takes the form of interventions whether pharmaceutical or device addressing the symptom. To be fair we also dig deeper and explore and research the related mechanisms.
The result is a dizzying array of diseases and treatments with little apparent order or organization in silos of exploration and learning. We do not have a model of the optimal environment for a human being. We cannot state coherently how to maximize longevity or which environmental elements are most important.
What we humans need is a an understanding of the threats to our health and longevity embedded in our modern civilization and how to avoid them, in my opinion.
Yes symptoms are seen as drug deficiencies
Chris
What would you take it for?
Hi Malcom, the link to the video doesn’t work. Thanks
I know. I think it has been downloaded and can be viewed by links on this post. My understanding is that this was not a conspiracy. More a case of the journal not wanting the main points of Yusuf’s study being posted all over the internet prior to publicationsl
Further to the thread of a doctor’s (or media’s) credibility, another great article appeared in the Observer.
That is an exciting article because it is really starting to join the dots together in this scandal in a widely read newspaper! I hope those responsible are beginning to suffer sleepless nights.
John U
Many thanks for the link. In Particular I liked the comment:
Of course, no one in the USDA, the AHA, the AMA, or other such authority can admit they got it all wrong, can they?
I think that the FDA, EMA and some charities could reasonably be added to the list. (MHRA and NICE) perhaps???
If only the authorities werent so arrogant, it would give them credibility if they admitted they were wrong, then they could be believed when they told the facts. As it is, anyone who does any thinking realises they say so much that is obviously misleading, anything they say is viewed as possibly or even probably misleading.
This presentation is dealing with oxidative stress and its effect on many conditions with Vitamin C. In particular as the FDA and EMEA are both trying to convert vitamins to prescription drug status. I can understand why Big Pharma and the medical establishment supports this change. As Dr Levy explains the various activities of Vit C. if any Big Pharma drug had these effective characteristics it would be promoted world-wide in 100 point bolded headlines and the price of this nutrient would go through the roof, just as daraprim (an old anti-malarial) has done.
It confirms my view of the importance of the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of blood and its association with good health.
as a follow up:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Cardiovascular+drug+Reviews+++C+di+Filippo++2006
Cardiovasc Drug Rev. 2006 Summer;24(2):77-87.
Oxidative stress as the leading cause of acute myocardial infarction in diabetics.
Di Filippo C1, Cuzzocrea S, Rossi F, Marfella R, D’Amico M.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1527-3466.2006.00077.x/epdf
Similar articles
Review Role of oxidative stress in development of cardiovascular complications in diabetes mellitus.
[Curr Vasc Pharmacol. 2006]
Review Oxidative stress in diabetes: a mechanistic overview of its effects on atherogenesis and myocardial dysfunction.
[Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2006]
Review Oxidative stress and diabetic cardiomyopathy: a brief review.
[Cardiovasc Toxicol. 2001]
Review Role of nitrosative stress and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase activation in diabetic vascular dysfunction.
[Curr Vasc Pharmacol. 2005]
Review Diabetes and the impairment of reproductive function: possible role of mitochondria and reactive oxygen species.
[Curr Diabetes Rev. 2008]
Why are these papers so ignored by the medical establishment?
Maybe because they are actually Evidence Based Medicine – in that they correspond to what actually happens to Real People in the Real World, while the Establishment is pushing Marketing Based Marketing and just calling it EBM?
Mike,
Ascorbic acid is “just” a pure chemical compound. I see some problems for Big Pharma here.
I buy it today by the kilo at about 30 British pounds.
So – a kilo is for me a three month treat at roughly 10 grams per day.
I wonder since I am also managing my unstable angina successfully (e.g., I was on a 10 km walk in my nearby woods without a problem today) by 2 400 IU natural vitamin – E if there is a synergy effect.
Hi, do you mind telling me where you buy your Vitamin C and the full name of and kind please.
thanks.
Goran
Yes Vit C, Vit D and other vitamins are simply nutrient but both the FDA and EMA are trying to redefine the as “prescription medicines” which would allow Big Pharma to dominate the field with massively increased prices. Another trick being tried by the FDA in “the public interest” is to set testing standards to the level of dangerous pharmaceuticals, requiring a similar “authorization procedure” as pharmaceuticals – very costly process. These authorities were set up to PROTECT the public from “snake oil medications” but are now being used by Big Pharma to promote “pharmaceuticals?”
Charles,
Not at all – it is a Swedish supplier spices though.
http://www.borgebykryddgard.se
With the todays mail I had my kilo of vitamin-C to restock.
Thanks. Will have to see if I can find some myself and I don’t understand Swedish. It is a special kind of Vitamin C or just an ordinary power version.
Where do you buy you’re vitamine c?
All this reminds me of “my” latest (last?) cardiologist who first of all at our first, and last, meeting three years ago stated: “I am not at all interested in what you have been up to the last 15 years – I consider it as nonsense!”. In response to my question if he wasn’t at all amazed that a patient they wanted to severely by-pass but refused and on top of that also all their prescribed medication then turned up in a pretty good shape for a meeting all those years later he actually went silent for a while. Well, then being the “expert”, he composed himself and blurted: “You have just been lucky!”
Goran
Denial is the usual strategy of “X-spurts” when they resort to when faced with a challenge that is beyond their dogmatic beliefs and they are unable to openly minded to examine the data. In Dr Kendrick’s first book, when he pointed out to a colleague the results of the Monica study w.r.t. to fat intake, his colleague declared that something “must be wrong” because it was contrary to official beliefs. This is happening all the time.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande
Incidentally, did you ever apply to become a “patient reviewer” for the BMJ? Dr Godlee in a recent editorial has confirmed that the BMJ will continue to promote patient involvement.
My response can be read
http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j939/rr
Yes, I am accepted as a patient reviewer but still haven’t been invited for any review.
I wonder if my “profile” may be too “stark”.
Mike
The article from the “New Yorker” was intensely interesting. I am really grateful to everyone on this blog, starting with Dr K, who take the trouble to post, answer peoplés queries and advance our knowledge. My own experience with misdiagnosis led me to vow that in the future caveat emptor would be my watchwords. I had a wry smile when I read in the article how if you ssee a surgeon, he will recommend surgery, and if you see a physio, he will recommend massage and exercise. In the end you have to make your own mind up.
Goran
It may be that the way you defined your “knowledge”. As you say to stark
JDPatten
That is powerful stuff you pointed me too.
I cidentally Zoe Harcombe has in her free part an analysis/comment on the six or 23 nations study, and she is a serious researcher.
Incidentally she comes down in favour of there having been 22/23.
One man’s waste is another man’s paycheck. A simple math in fee for service system…
Meanwhile Salim Yusuf appears with various other luminaries from Walt Willett to Ron Krauss
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4597475/
Just for giggles look at Dr David Jenkins Conflicts Of Interest
Chris c
Thanks for the link. As you say Dr Jenkins is another example of author bias
For interest I searched the paper for “low carb”. I found only TWO instances of “low carbohydrate” in the references – there were 307 refs in all. Gives one the impression of selection BIAS bigtime!
And they might not have been there either if not for the presence of Ron Krauss and Andrew Mente.
In a way doctors and researchers both are on a hiding to nowhere. They are not only bombarded with the same bovine excreta as the rest of us Publics but they have their own special supply lovingly provided by The Establishment. “As everyone knows” CVD is caused by “cholesterol” which is caused by eating fat. Diabetes is caused by being fat which is caused by eating fat, or meat. When someone stand up and points out that the causal chain is exactly backwards, only a few listen.
Remember that Panorama (?) on diabetes where carbs were not mentioned once? This is in a way the professional equivalent. “I mentioned carbs once but I think I got away with it.”
Dr Axel Sigurdsson just posted his take on the Dr. Salim Yusuf video here:
A prominent medical journalist on Salim Yusuf:
http://cardiobrief.org/2017/02/27/top-cardiologist-blasts-nutrition-guidelines/
Re: Niacin—inositol hexanicotinate (IHN) alternative—-I’m not concerned about lipids—-my diet is approx. 65% sat fat—–I don’t care for the flushing—–I’m looking at blood flow and oxygen
In contrast to the beneficial effects of ER-NA on blood lipids, IHN had no significant or nearly significant effects (total cholesterol: -1%; LDL:-1%; HDL: +1%; triglycerides: +2%).Collectively, the available data show no significant effects of IHN on blood lipids following daily oral intakes of up to 2,000 mg/day.
While the evidence to support the use of IHN for dyslipidemic disorders is weak to contradictory, there are reports suggesting that IHN may have a beneficial effect on endothelium-dependent vasodilatation.
Benjo et al.24 observed no improvements in serum lipids after 3months of 1,500 mg/day IHN but did observe improvements in flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery,indicating an improved endothelial function. Blood flow improvements are therapeutically important in conditions resulting from peripheral vascular insufficiency, such as Raynaud’s disease and intermittent claudication.
The clinical research literature includes promising results from several studies on the use of IHN for improving blood flow in these conditions.51–53
IHN is prescribed in Europe as a patented drug known as Hexopal, which is therapeutically indicated for the symptomatic relief of severe intermittent claudication and Raynaud’s phenomenon. The usual adult dose of IHN for these conditions is 3 g/day and is increased to 4 g/day if necessary. IHN is not recommended for use in children.
The mode of action of IHN in Raynaud’s phenomenon and in intermittent claudication is not known. However, IHN does not appear to work solely via general peripheral vasodilation, and it is hypothesized that its activity may also be mediated through a reduction in fibrinogen, improvements in blood viscosity, and resultant improvement in oxygen transport.
“Dr Yusuf LIED!”
Well, at least that’s the bitter contention fought over in the lively comments following the blog article that Phillip posted just above. The article itself explains the general removal of the video and then posts Dr Yusuf’s visuals and presents all his main points and conclusions.
The comments really are quite something. (I wonder if any of us might want to join in?!)
JD Patten
Thank you for the link and subsequent links.
I have one problem with this report. The graphs are based on ORs WITHOUT the basic numbers from which they are calculated. The real percentage benefits are NOT given. The relative rates may be significant but the real benefits could and frequently are trivial, improbable and irrelevant to the individual person/patient.
This sort of agnotology seems to be pervasive in medical research, particularly in meta-analyses, and as the media are beginning to catch on to are merely ways to avoiding the fact that advice in the past was just plain wrong: and nobody has the guts to admit that they were wrong.
There are people there who are underminiing my beliefs. Maybe they are right, they sound plausable. Who should we believe? There is a video https://m.youtube.com/watch?amp=&v=NDwjkv1FW5g&feature=youtu.be that supports Ancel Keys, is it justified?
That was a curious video. The author (Charles Grashow?) seemed to dodge back and forth – never making clear what he was saying (other than mere invective), but sowing confusion as hard as he could go.
I looked on Wiki, and found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys#Seven_Countries_Study
This discusses the 7 study but curiously never mentions those crucial extra countries – even to refute the charge that he cherry picked the data.
No doubt this page gets edited regularly, like many contentious Wiki pages!
JD, I’ve joined in. The supporter of Ancel Keys, and hysterical critic of Dr Yusuf, is Charles Grashow, a well known vegetarian troll. He goes from site to site criticising Nina Teicholz and making endless personal comments about Jimmy Moore and his weight.
I didn’t know until recently that Ancel Keys was a paid advocate for the sugar industry, who were delighted with his defence of sugar and condemnation of fat. What a terrible legacy Keys has left behind.
Stephen,
Excellent. Go for it!
Grashow = well known moron troll. I’m surprised Mie hasn’t shown up yet.
Want to live longer? Good study – Conclusions Both IL-6 and CRP levels were good predictors of physical and cognitive performance and the risk of mortality in both the entire elderly population and in successfully aging individuals. http://immunityageing.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12979-016-0076-x
Try this link
Hello
Video is available on The Fat emperor’s website.
Conspiracy theory anyone as to why it gets taken down so much? Or fear of the truth?
I think the journal about to publish Yusuf’s work got a bit annoyed that his main findings were being ‘pre’ released. That is what I heard, anyway. So, no conspiracy – yet.
Malcolm,
I downloaded the video as an MP4, and sent you an email with a link. I think it might be worth saving the video just in case somehow the paper doesn’t get published.
David
A little reflection on medical advice. On the one hand there is the official advice to diabetics – eat high carb diet but starch is a string of glucose molecules and hyperglycemia is the problem in diabetes. The logic to control diabetes and the consequence of high blood glucose is to feed more glucose.
Apply this logic to hyperlipidaemia and instead of using statins or other cholesterol lowering drugs the treatment should be to feed cholesterol.
There seems to be a serious lack of logic in the official medical industry or is it simply a case of advertorial agnotology?
mikecawdery: All of that plus inertia and profit and status-seeking, with a bit of incompetence thrown in. The Milgram experiments bear remembering, as well.
follow the money
Slightly off-subject but I wonder if anybody has any info on the long term use of aspirin and Ranitidine? For the past couple of weeks my tummy has been weird but only after I take the damn stuff in the morning with my breakfast. Could it be when I’m taking it that’s the problem? Usually, I make breakfast, take the Ranitidine first, eat my breakfast and then take the aspirin and I’ve been doing it since being on this regime (before it was Omeprazole).
It’s difficult to describe the symptoms, but not exactly a bellyache, more a feeling of being slightly bloated and with it and uncomfortable with a occasional bad taste in my mouth (tongue not completely pink). When I wake up in the morning before I eat breakfast, I feel fine and usually, I’m regular as clockwork but again, recently, I have the occasional constipation but it never lasts more than two days. I don’t want to appear paranoid.
Have you tried taking the asprin at a different time of day?
Christine,
No I haven’t and I’m not sure it’s the cause of my tummy upset. I could have picked up a bug I suppose. I was tested for h.pylori after stopping the Omeprazole (so they ARE aware of what these drugs can do), but it was negative. And as h. pylori seems to be the source of ulcers, it was my first port of call, so-to-speak. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and see my doc.
Update on the Aspirin/Ranitidine issue: I’m pretty sure it’s the Aspirin that’s the problem. As to the upset tummy, well I think I picked up a bug of some kind as day-by-day the condition is improving (lots of ginger and green tea). So today, I took an aspirin (soluble but forgot to dissolve it first, so that might be a problem) and within a short period of time the discomfort returned, just not as bad as before.
So, what are the alternatives to Aspirin I wonder?
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1702362?query=featured_home&
(Just to toss a little petrol on the fire.)
Lisa Rosenbaum is entitled to her opinion, and I agree with some of the article, but not to the suggestion that in general vaccines are good, when there is evidence that the converse may be true. Why is putting a vaccine sceptic in charge of investigating vaccines any worse than the current system where it is the vaccine manufacturers who provide the information, and who have a law protecting them from liability in any findings against them? There is also the point that at one time science may have been closely involved in medicine, but recently science appears to have been hijacked to present a false authority to questionable, though lucrative, treatments.
The impossible thing. Knowing which bits of science are right, and which bits are wrong… for absolute certain. Lisa Rosenbaum weakens her own argument by calling people skeptics and deniers. These are not words of scientific debate, they are a way to degrade anyone who disagrees with you. I note that, today, the high court has struck down NHS England’s attempt to restrict treatment (for narcolepsy) for those damaged by the swine flu vaccine. The cost of treatment is £13K per year, the number of those affected currently stands at around 200. Financial cost to the NHS £2,600,000.00 per year. This excludes the damage done by the vaccine.
Those who question vaccination are merely (or at least in my case) trying to establish what may cause harm, in some people, and how to reduce this. Unfortunately, the moment you question vaccination, any vaccine, you are immediately accused of being a ‘denier’ who wants thousands of children to die. This does not, in my opinion, constitute a valid scientific argument.
Dear Dr Kendrick,
The point you make about the arguments that are deployed, which often consist of labelling preople as “deniers” for me totally undermines their arguments. You see the same approach on many cholesterol blogs. As soon as I see the word “denier” used to lable a person who disagrees, I give up reading.
Sad
Is rejecting vaccinations indiscriminately a good idea? I’m of the generation when polio, TB and so forth, were still very prevalent in the UK and knew friends who caught both. Was I wrong to have them when I was kid? Ok, I see that indiscriminate use is bad, especially when the motive is not protecting health but making a profit but don’t we run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Rejecting anything indiscriminately is never, by definition, a good thing. Perhaps some people suggest no vaccines ever, for anyone. However, to suggest that all vaccination must be good, no matter what, and must never be questioned. That seems like faith based reasoning. ‘The ways of vaccination are mighty and mysterious, and beyond the knowledge of man.’
I didn’t suggest that all vaccinations are good but how is the ‘lay-person’ to know which is which? I’m pretty sure that back in 1956, my chances of contracting polio from my school swimming pool was pretty high without the vaccine. However, it’s different when live vaccines were used on African people, one, because it was cheaper and two, because the people being infected had no idea they were being used as guinea pigs.
barbrovsky: Read “Dissolving Illusions” as a comprehensive look at the history of infectious diseases and vaccination, and the late Dan Olmsted’s two excellent series on polio (AgeofAutism.org), from 2011 and 2016. What we have been taught about these subjects is at great variance to what really happened.
barbrovsky: What those of who question vaccination policy are asking for is informed consent. This does not exist in the U.S. The package inserts for vaccines are horrifying, but even asking to read them can get a parent kicked out of a pediatric practice. We have traded transient, acute childhood illnesses, which nearly everyone survived, for chronic ill health among a high percentage of our children. By the way, you can read the package inserts on line.
It seems we are to be managed and protected from ourselves, our ignorance, our freedom to become, via the internet and such, knowledgable. There is no wider discussion about who is right. It is so important to discern the wheat from the chaff by reading and questioning.
It takes some effort to arm yourself and sites such as this are invaluable.Keep your curiosity alive. In my view, you can try to take the best from everything, pick and mix. I am sure a young immune system is battered by too much to soon. Is it France who separates their vaccination for the very young, seems sensible.
Even for my dogs, after a couple of years, I no longer take them for boosters. Am I right, don’t know, I feel it is right. Sorry to compare animals with people.
Dr Kendrick, your wonderful efforts are so appreciated.
AH, a good point. I wonder why don’t senior people at Merck don’t vaccinate their own children? In the 11 minute attached clip, the comment about a Merck executive comes at 4.30. The person being interviewed is an American Prosecutor, not some swivel-eyed conspiracist
I don’t know if some vaccinations are still good, but I’m sure that the ever increasing number given to babies and toddlers, and the immunity from prosecution given to drug companies, is a very bad thing. In America they give babies a vaccination on the first day of their life for a disease that is sexually transmitted or caught through illegal drug use.
The attempts to close any debate down are a warning signal. The use of ‘denier’ to describe anyone who questions current vaccine policies makes me more suspicious of wrongdoing. We need a genuine investigation, free of pharma, and parents need real information and a choice.
AH Notepad: You know they are getting desperate when they resort to viciously attacking RFK, Jr., and calling him a vaccine skeptic! He has stated repeatedly and publicly that he is pro vaccine. If the author had read his book, “Thimerosal, Let the Science Speak,” she would realize that it is science from cover to cover, and with an introduction by Martha R. Herbert, PhD, MD, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and pediatric neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
I admit to being a vaccine skeptic, having delved into Suzanne Humphries’ Dissolving illusions, and more recently Elliot Freed’s Vaccine Primer. (You can find information on vaccineprimer.weebly.com as it has no ISBN)
I am interested if anyone has an opinion about this book. I found it revealing, and worrying. The way vaccines are made and administered appears to not just prompt immune systems to mount a defence against a disease, but in many cases looks like a wholesale assault, which, in circumstances other than a medical practice, would amount to a serious criminal offence, and I suspect result in multiple charges.
AH Notepad: What is becoming increasingly clear in the research in the last 5-10 years is that it is the aluminum adjuvants which are driving the increase in both neurological injury and autoimmune conditions. The world’s leading auto-immunoligists are very concerned, but their warnings are falling on deaf ears; such is the level of control pharma exerts over the government and media in the U.S. One thing to keep in mind is that the vaccine schedule has tripled since 1983, so the Al burden has tripled as well. The MMR is often called the culprit for vaccine injury, but in the U.S. by the time a child receives it at 12-15 months, they have already had 2 Hep B, 3 DTaP, 3 Rotavirus, 3 Hib, 3 Pneumococcal, 2-3 polio, and at least 1 flu, so the MMR may simply be, for some children, what puts them over the edge. Vaccinepapers, a web site run by an anonymous and very sharp scientist has a lot of information about the dangers of injected Al (which MMR does not contain, but Hep B, DTaP, Pneumococcal, and some Hib do). J.B. Handley recently wrote an excellent article connecting a lot of dots.
Sylvia,
“Feeling” it is right – sounds like “faith based reasoning” to me!
(Throwing cols water on a petrol fire only makes it worse. 🙂 )
Malcolm,
Your framing around the ambiguity of the “science” involve in medicine is well done in my eyes.
When anyone is trying to make deep “digging” into the subject of science and in whatever medical discipline he gets, to my own experience, almost completely lost among the details and the complexity involved – it may be CVD, diabetes, cancer or any psychiatric disorder.
So, in my eyes the medical establishment is in essence criminal when the people there are advocating dogmatic “solutions” without or with very weak “scientific” foundation through “real open experimental research”. The only beneficiaries seem to be the huge corporate industries involved. The patients are those who in the end will pay for this deliberate ignorance of more efficient and less harmful alternative treatments. Actually we pay to an “uninterested” industrial business bringing more harm than good to us.
I am now slowly closing in on my reading of “The Molecular Biology of THE CELL” (Alberts et al.) a book which to my understanding is as close as you can get to the “medical science” since it is a book with a very humble scientific attitude and constantly admitting how little we understand of “what life is and works” already on the single cell organism level. When multicellular organisms are treated in the last chapters of the book this humble attitude increases when admitting our almost complete ignorance of the metabolism involved and how life comes to be.
What a huge contrast between this “humble scientific” attitude of the book and all the stupidity and “criminal” dogmas I have personally encountered in the different areas of our “health care system” – statins and bypass operations for CVD; gastric bypass for overweight; carbs and insulin to diabetics; operations, radiation and cytostatic treatments for the cancer patients and not least what happens in the most criminal medical area, the psychiatric one, where the drugs and the practices are so incriminating for Big Pharma and so harmful for the vulnerable patients I would rather cry.
I once asked a medical student what she knew about the molecular biology. She straightforward admitted: “It is such a difficult subject!”
Yes Goran. But most people hate ambiguity and uncertainty. They crave absolute clear cut answers. Mind you they never seem to enjoy the clear cut answer ‘I don’t know.’
Malcolm, again a very apt remark.
I guess no one goes to see a doctor without thinking that the doctor “knows” and the doctor knows at least that part of his trade. So – you are right again! He cannot admit any ignorance.
Is it a kind of play between “fools” at a theater stage we are witnessing?
When I go to have my car fixed I though never question the competence of the shop – funny!
JDPatten: The writer of this piece appears to be thoroughly confused about the difference between belief and fact, and I suspect that he, like most people, knows little about either vaccination or climate science.
On vaccines . . . I believe that the theory of vaccines is pretty convincing; however, I am also *as* convinced that we do not know *exactly* how they work. For example, I have known for a number of years now that it has been shown that BCG not only protects against TB, but also has protective effects spread wider than just TB. Why?
On the other hand, the DTP vaccine, that has been shown to be effective against at least the tetanus and diphtheria elements (queries and court cases in California over the Pertussis), has also been shown to increase overall mortality in girls. So you seem to gear up the immune system to fight the targets but weaken the immune system as a whole. Why?
See: “Testing the hypothesis that diphtheria tetanus pertussis vaccine has negative non-specific and sex-differential effects on child survival in high-mortality countries” BMJ 2015 Aany et al
On the similar lines a couple of studies of the past years over flu vaccines, (mostly in Canada) . . one of which was reported in CBC news => ’Canadian problem’ : an example of odd effects of prior vaccination’ In other words, vaccination against flu in the previous year left you more likely to get the H1N1 in the following year. Why?
Why do some people who are vaccinated against H1N1 end up with narcolepsy? (Vigorously fought by the manufacturers)
The problem is that people are so wedded to the idea that vaccines are TOTALLY beneficial that they will not brook any sort of criticism. Unfortunately this means . . .
(a) we slow down the learning progress on vaccines – scared to following productive avenues that might turn out to be critical to the current picture – and hinder us in finding out exactly how vaccines and our immune system works.
(b) Vaccine testing is secretive and any failures hidden lest they sully the vaccine good name. (It does not help that the vaccine manufacturers in the US have protection against law suits – so how careful are they going to be in their testing?)
I used to feel that because of the ‘herd effect’ it was ok to sacrifice a few children for the good of all, provided we support that damaged and their families; however, having researched the issue I now realise the herd issue is an example of lazy thinking and the track record of governments supporting the ‘sacrificed’ has not been something to be proud of.
Well I got that off my chest.
Yes, this goes right back to the observations raised here about the best way to keep your immune system viable, is for children to catch diseases like measles or chickenpox as the immune system builds immunity! Duh! I had both.
My GP has been on my case to have a shingles vac but apparently, if you do have it, you not only stand a chance of getting shingles because of it, but it’s less than 50% effective anyway.
Worse still, children who have a chickenpox vaccination stand a greater chance of getting shingle later in life. Duh!
And the observation about one-day old babies getting a vaccination against STDs (and then another 24, yes 24 vacs!) reveals that all this stuff is not about health, once again it’s all about money.
Gary Ogden would know more about this but I think that going through some of those infections primes the immune system to fight future battles more effectively. Flu is one example. A small percentage of infants or older people with weakened immune system would have serious consequences but majority of kids who get a flu actually get stronger from it later on. At least, that’s my belief and personal experience…
Other actors may also be in play.
Since going LCHF/Paleo/ketogenic I seldom get colds let alone the flu. On HCLF I was riddled with constant minor but chronic infections,
Recently I managed to get vitamin D tested – 95. There’s an “epidemic” of vit D deficiency, does this correlate with low fat or statins or both? Or sun avoidance, or . . .
There’s some evidence that an underused immune system may go rogue and turn on the body’s own tissues, hence increases in autoimmune diseases. Too much hygiene?
WRT vaccines maybe they would work better if they didn’t insist on putting stuff like mercury and aluminium in them? Calling people who ask such questions “deniers” is not a lot to do with science.
Sasha: You’re absolutely right. Childhood infections prime the immune system, and thus eliminating this essential path in development has biological consequences apart from the ingredients in vaccines.
Gary: I remember getting a flu a couple of times before I got to be around 12, I suppose, and that’s exactly how it felt, once the illness was gone. Like the body was refreshed and rejuvenated. You actually feel better afterwards than you felt before the illness…
There’s a Vice special on HBO GO about a new approach in treatment of adult cancers by using weakened viruses of measles, etc. Could it be that going through some of those illnesses and acquiring life long immunity, primes your immune system to identify and eliminate cancer cells later in life? While interrupting this process with indescriminate vaccinating actually predisposes people to developing malignancies later on?
On a side note, for anyone interested in autoimmune diseases, specifically thyroid issues, there’s a pretty interesting documentary on http://www.thethyroidsecret.com
They air an episode every 24 hrs, free to watch in that window of time. There are 6 left, I think.
Sasha: Yes. Interestingly, having had measles appears to be protective against non-breast cancers (and CVD and stroke). I don’t have the link at hand, but it is searchable.
My understanding is that the immunity from actually getting a disease, for the most part, is life long; whereas, the immunity gained by giving vaccines is limited and requires booster shots in many cases. So what is the difference? Why do vaccines have a problem? Why do they need adjuvants to work effectively. (I presume the adjuvant poisons the system just a little – hopefully not doing too much damage, neurological or otherwise – so that the immune system is in a state of alert . . . temperature goes up, feeling of illness . . . and in this heightened state, the immune system processes the vaccine antigens . . . setting up the memory B cells . . . temporarily?)
On the flu issue: An N=3 study, Starting last year and on going – One person takes vitamin D (10,000-15,000 UI a day) during the Winter and in the Summer sun bathes virtually every day for at least 45 mins – Sun permitting.
On 3 occasions during the year the control pair came back from work (same office) with either very bad colds or flu, (flu was diagnosed in the person at work who gave it to them). The treatment arm was unaffected, apart from feeling a bit depressed during the flu episode.
One member of the control arm jumped arms after the 3rd cold/flu episode and started taking vitamin D, but a more limited dose. Just before Christmas the remaining control member came home with norovirus (I would not wish on anyone . . . 3 days in bed when he wasn’t heading for the bathroom.) The original member of the treatment arm just felt a bit sick for about 1/4 hour then it went away. The newer member felt slight collywobbles during the night – loo visits etc – but was ok the next day . . . but then she was on a lower dose of vitamin D.
Conclusion: Vitamin D levels are associated with lower incidence of colds/flu. In the case of norovirus there appears to be a dose-dependent protection against the severity of reaction.
Addendum: The remaining member of the control arm has now joined his mother and father in taking winter vitamin D.
I would love for someone to do a study on comparing the protective effectiveness of healthy serum vitamin D levels and flu vaccines . . . A cost-benefit analysis would be good.
Amen. May the remaining member of the control arm always see the wisdom of his parents…
Yusuf in the cross-hairs:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/63527?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-03-03&eun=g42415d0r&pos=0
(Oh, and that’s throwing COLD water: the above comment)
JDPatten: They have their daggers out; all the usual suspects.
The daggers may be out for Salim Yusuf, but the agressive tone with which the present their points does mane them look insecure rather than confident.
Hahahaha the responses are priceless!
These guys come in from left field
https://therussells.crossfit.com/2017/01/12/the-four-hallmarks-of-big-soda-bs-nutritional-propaganda/
One of a whole bunch of posts looking at the Puppeteers who are not only behind dietary but also “fitness” policy. ILSI recently published a paper dictating how they required dietary research to be carried out.
This gentleman takes on the French “paradox”.
Oh, and statins – in earnest!
yourhealthbase.com/ihn275.pdf
Good stuff. I liked it – as of course, I would.
Thanks JD . . . what a treasure of a find. I strongly urge others to have read. Well argued and referenced.
Jd Patten
Ve,ry interesting indeed.
Howj does it fit with Dr Kendricks theory that diet and CVD are unrelated?
I don’t think I have ever said diet and CVD are unrelated. I have ‘I think’ only stated that diet does not play a significant role in CVD. Of course I have never, cunningly, defined what I mean by significant. I need a bit of wriggle room.
Dr Kendrick,
Aren’t we due a separate blog on all things vaccination related from Gary?
We are, when I can work out how to do it. My techno buddy is on holiday till next week.
Malcolm,
It’s simple (I have four going right now). Either, create a new blog if you’re hosted by WordPress, or if you don’t want to do that, create a new Category: Vaccinations. But if you do the latter, it would be on this blog and people would have to select the category, Vaccinations.
If you saved the heavy intellectual – not to mention emotional – vaccine issues for that, it could all be properly laid out and thought about.
I just received a newsletter from Dr Feinman a main LCHF advocate and a letter which might be of interest
Feinman makes to me a new connection relating to the “inquisition” going on in Australia against the surgeon Gary Fettke, who advocated LCHF to his diabetic patients as a means to avoid amputations and the necessity for fundamental medical reforms. He makes analogies with the religious reformation that took place 500 years ago.
In the newsletter I find the following quote well related to what we are presently discussing here at this blog.
“That becomes the most distressing feature of this analogy. The quotation above, “There is nothing associated with your medical training or education that makes you an expert or authority in the field of nutrition, diabetes or cancer,” was in a letter to Dr. Fettke that continued “Even if, in the future, your views on the benefits of the LCHF lifestyle become the accepted best medical practice, this does not change the fundamental fact that you are not suitably trained or educated as a medical practitioner to be providing advice or recommendations on this topic as a medical practitioner.”
This statement that treating disease is less important than loyalty to political power stands as the greatest statement for the need for Reformation in Medicine.”
Thank you Goran
A useful link to a major supporter of LCHF based on his knowledge of biochemistry. His castigation was disgraceful but what was far worse was that Jennifer Elliott, a dietitian lost her job. This is medical administration gone berserk; and all because food corporations along with Big Pharma dominate medical research through their KOLs for profit at the expense of patient health.
A solid bit of research concerning sugar was quoted by Linus Pauling. From Linus Pauling In His Own Words page 278:
(“were kept in a locked institution” is a polite way of saying the eighteen subjects were prisoners who volunteered to take part in the study.)
So sugar causes cholesterol to rise which causes heart disease according to medical dogma (and Linus Pauling himself believed).
Why then did the medical profession not treat sugar like they treated tobacco, as something to be avoided?
And if, as we believe, cholesterol has nothing or very little to do with heart disease, then sugar must cause heart disease by some other mechanism. What could it be?
I wonder if fructose on its own creates this rise of cholesterol. Everyone assumes that sucrose=fructose+glucose, but I do wonder if sucrose might do something harmful in the body before it gets hydrolysed.
David
Good question. Fructose is in fruit and fruit is good according to some experts at least. Judging from the money spent on trying to protect sugar (sucrose) is “good” you may well be right
David, I think you’d enjoy Gary Taubes latest book, ‘The Case Against Sugar’. I wasn’t sure I needed a book on sugar, but I found it fascinating.
Martin
Why then did the medical profession not treat sugar like they treated tobacco, as something to be avoided?
There is big money for research supporting sugar – the medical research establishment depends on MONEY
Martin:
And if, as we believe, cholesterol has nothing or very little to do with heart disease, then sugar must cause heart disease by some other mechanism. What could it be?
Glycation? Especially of blood particles? Glycated blood particles causing damage to the endothelium?
Evidently I must now add vaccination to my list of medical corruption practices. The evidence seems overwhelming.
Except for antibiotics is there something else I can add on my list of beneficial medicine?
Antibiotics? Except for Life threathening diseases, they are dangerous and often useless.
But they allow intesively reared animals to avoid infections and put on weight faster. Faster growth = more money. 🙂
paola,
I certainly agree with you.
Antibiotics for sure saved my life a few month ago when I was down in bed for a whole month with a serious pneumonia. I am still recovering from that very unpleasant experience.
Göran,
Assorted skeletal repairs,
Removal of primary cancers,
Appendix removal,
Vaccination against at least some diseases,
Keeping crash victims and people with sports injuries alive through the critical hours,
Resuscitating people after heart attacks,
A lot of things that are fixed with physiotherapy,
Oh and probably a few thousand other things………..
David,
Partly I agree with you.
After a car crash I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to have “them” remodel me 🙂
Removal of primary cancer I would also, most probably (with professor Seyfried), agree to. First I would though try a host of alternative and “innocent” treatments to see if a “natural” remission is possible.
What “they” suggest to people having had heart attacks, e.g. bypass, statins or betablockers, is to me very doubtful to use an understatement.
However – to me, today, it is all about preventing recurrence of metabolic ailments as diabetics or heart attacks and here you can do a lot through alternative means to improve your insulin sensitivity – periodic fasting seems here to be a good advice but no advice supplied by the NHS.
But whatever you do – do your homework before making your decisions – and avoid all dangerous approaches to your health!
Surgery. Some of it…
Dr. Göran Sjöberg: You can add emergency medicine to your list. It is excellent, thanks to the war-making humans seem overly fond of engaging in.
I often wonder that myself, and have for awhile, everything can’t be wrong. If I was in a car accident, broke a bone, I consider the ER a likely good place to go to.
As I walked into the TV room this morning, visiting my parents, CBS began showing an airing on vaccines and Bill Gates. I didn’t watch the show. For better or worse it is something frequently promoted all the time here though. The more the better seems to be the theme.
From “The Fat Emperor”—-what correlates with a high CAC score—-surprise
http://www.thefatemperor.com/blog/2017/3/4/what-things-properly-predict-atherosclerosis-extent-have-a-look-
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The following paper is well worth reading
BMJ 2012;345:e7031 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e7031 (Published 1 November 2012)
Written by two leading authors opposed to “flawed” research, It outlines the importance of excluding conflicted experts on guideline documents. Not that this happens.
Michael Eades, MD has written a blog on the Salim Yusuf video along with yet another video source. Some very interesting comments:
https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2017/03/04/dr-salim-yusuf-and-the-pure-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drmikenutritionblog+%28The+Blog+of+Michael+R.+Eades%2C+M.D.%29
Dr. Yusuf begins his talk saying “I am not a nutrition scientist.” He is disclosing that he has no formal training in the subject that he is about to speak on. He is basically saying that he does not have the faintest idea what he is talking about.
Ancel Keys was a nutritionist, NOT a cardiologist like Dr. Yusuf.
Dr. Yusuf is a cardiologist NOT a nutritionist like Ancel Keys.
Would you go to a nutritionist to perform bypass surgery on your heart, or to get a heart valve replaced under with open heart surgery? Would you go to a cardiologist for nutritional advice on how best to avoid Atherosclerosis?
Remember that Atherosclerosis is a disease of the arteries, not of the heart. How diet gets that cholesterol into your arteries and how to reduce the risk is a nutritional matter, not cardiological. If a chunk of cholesterol dislodges from an Atherosclerotic artery and reaches your brain to cause a stroke would you consult a cardiologist or a neurosurgeon?
Would you want the cardiologist Dr. Yusuf to cut a chunk out of your skull and perform brain surgery on you? If you did, you would wake up from the operation with as much intelligence as a potato.
But if a dislodged plaque from your hardened arteries reaches your heart and causes a heart attack, you might be wise to employ Dr. Yusuf instead of a brain surgeon or a nutritionist to use to save your life.
In his talk Dr Yusuf provides plenty of evidence that he is ignorant of how nutrition affects Atherosclerosis. He rambles on for twenty minutes until approximately three minutes before the end of his talk he demonstrates that he does not know the difference between Ancel Key’s Six Countries Study and his Seven Countries Study. Dr. Yusuf describes the straight line graph which he mistakenly says is taken from the Seven Countries Study.
Can’t he count? Not only does he not understand nutrition but he also appears to be ignorant of primary school maths. There are SIX countries on that chart, NOT SEVEN! And the reason that there are only six is because the Seven Countries Study is a completely different study!
The Six Countries Study was a cheap, small, preparatory study prior to the massive international Seven Countries Study that commenced in 1958, involved eighteen countries (nineteen if you allow for the fact that Italy joined twice so that they could study two different regions) and sixty year later the study is still ongoing! The Seven Countries Study may NEVER END because it is still yielding substantial amounts of valuable data on the link between diet and Atherosclerosis.
The straight line graph that Dr Yusuf mentions, has nothing to do with the Seven Countries Study. That graph was from the Six Countries Study!
Moreover the original seven countries in the Seven Countries Study and the additional eleven/twelve that subsequently joined the study were NOT chosen by Ancel Keys. They chose themselves because the US government refused to pay the many millions of dollars for the entire trial and only funded two hundred thousand dollars for the American part of the data collection. The other countries were only included if they volunteered to pay the entire cost of the study in their own countries. In a post-war world money was very tight and most countries had better things to spend their scarce resources on than trying to help Ancel Keys solve the Atherosclerosis puzzle.
That’s why only seven countries agreed to join at the start and later many more countries realised that it was a great study and asked to join and to fund it in their country.
The Seven Countries Study conclusively proved that Atherosclerosis in humans is a function of the increased intake of cholesterol and saturated fat in the diet on a national and international scale. The study continues to this day and is constantly throwing up new data to guide nutritionists how best to fine tune the diet of humans to mitigate the risk of diet induced disease.
That is why the global medical profession laughs at the LCHF conspiracy theory pioneered by the newspaper hack Gary Taubes.
Sure the LCHF people can find a few tiny, short term, badly run studies here and there that “prove” that LCHF might not be quite as dangerous as previously thought. But it is the virtually unanimous view of the international medical profession that LCHF has been buried beneath the Seven Countries Study and mountains of other evidence that proves that LCHF is going to shorten your expected lifespan by a considerable number of years.
I am not surprised that Dr Yusuf is being replaced as president of the World Heart Federation. Their website shoots Dr Yusuf down in flames by stating:
“Comparisons between a diet low in saturated fats, with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, and the typical diet of someone living in the developed world show that in the former there is a 73% reduction in the risk of new major cardiac events…….Research makes it clear that abnormal blood lipid (fat) levels have a strong correlation with the risk of coronary artery disease, heart attack and coronary death. In turn, abnormal blood lipids are related to what you eat. A diet high in saturated fats and trans fats leads to high levels of cholesterol. Saturated fats are found in animal products. …….. Saturated and trans fats raise cholesterol levels in the blood, which in turn can lead to atherosclerosis. Unsaturated fats, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated are beneficial for heart health.”
See: http://www.world-heart-federation.org/cardiovascular-health/cardiovascular-disease-risk-factors/diet/
In my opinion Dr Yusuf’s remarks about LCHF were lifted without fact checking from Nina Teicholz’s book ‘The Big Fat Surprise’ which he mentions in his talk. He should go and get a job from Donald Trump, because his invented false facts would be admired in a White House awash with conspiracy theories.
Gdear John Bedson,
Dr Yusuf was pre-presenting data from PURES, a very large multi-country epidemiological study with over 100,000 participants. This puts it up there with many other studies which nutritionists have applauded as they agreed with the findings.
PURES is a case control study which is the lowest from of evidence study. Case control studies show correlation not causation. If a case control study suggests some interesting hypotheses they have to be followed up by randomized cohort studies to test the hypotheses.
Dr. Yusuf himself in this paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/0006528136 has argued against the value of case controlled studies in favour of randomized cohort studies. So why he is now arguing for global nutritional advice to take a 180 degree turn based on one case control study is bizarre.
He should have said that his study had yielded some strange results that contradicted commonly accepted nutritional advice and that further specialised studies were need to clarify his findings.
But hundreds of randomized cohort studies on this subject have already been conducted and the great majority of them disprove his opinion on the result of the PURE trial. There would be no advantage to be gained by spending many millions of dollars to duplicate those trails and arrive at the same answers.
LCHF has been buried under that evidence and 99.99% of the medical profession know that fact which is why they ignore LCHF as irrelevant. It is a great diet to lose weight, all are agreed. But if you adopt LCHF as a continuing lifestyle your lipid profile will go haywire and you will substantially increase your risk of CVD.
The only people who deny what I have just written are the journalists who are making money off the promotion and sale of their books and their readers who appear to suffer from a degree of paranoid psychosis (eg. “the entire medical profession and pharmacological industry are plotting against us by keeping the truth hidden”) and apophenia (eg. human pattern seeking behaviour that leads to false conclusions that contradict a commonly accepted conclusion or fact).
Dr. Yusuf was not authorised to give findings of this study because the study findings have not yet been published by the committee and it is likely that the official report will be completely different to Dr. Yusuf’s opinion. He was merely offering his opinion. An opinion that flatly contradicts all of his other work during a long and distinguished career. An opinion that contradicts the advice on their website and goes against 99.99% of international medical opinion on this subject. The study results will have to be peer reviewed and after that Dr. Yusuf will have to hang his head in shame after bringing this disgrace on the World Heart Federation and Zurich Heart House who are frantically trying to stop the video being uploaded to any reputable website like You Tube by claiming infringement of their copyright. That’s why you can’t watch the video on Dr Kendrick’s website. Zurich Heart House pulled it because it was nonsense.
The PURE study should have been called the POOR study because it was predominantly a study of medical care in the poorer countries of the world. They don’t eat high fat diets in those poor countries because they can’t afford the high price of meat or keep cows for dairy produce. They mostly exist on rice, grains and pasta with virtually no meat or dairy. Those are the countries that Ancel Keys and hundreds of others have demonstrated have little or no CVD. Only when they become better off and start to eat the Western high fat diet do their rates of Atherosclerosis climb.
Dr. Yusuf warned us at the start of his talk that he knew nothing about nutrition. It’s as if an airline captain were to announce to his passengers as they rolled down the runway for take off that he was a ship’s captain, not a airline captain and that he had received no training in how to fly an airplane. There would be uproar on the plane until they reached the end of the runway and crashed in flames.
Dr. Yusuf has crashed in flames. Please don’t climb aboard his opinions about nutrition or you will also risk a premature death.
Which randomized controlled study, or randomized cohorts studies (among the ‘hundreds’ that you quote), would you say, most powerfully support your argument? I would also welcome your view on the MCE study. A randomized controlled study done by Ancel Keys whereby saturated fat was replaced with unsaturated fat. Cholesterol levels fell and the rate of death from CVD went up. Perhaps you could also furnish us with the evidence to support your statement that 99.99% of the medical profession know that LCHF has been buried under the evidence? Has there been a review of some kind – maybe I missed it. I would welcome a reference to this fact.
“The PURE study should have been called the POOR study because it was predominantly a study of medical care in the poorer countries of the world. They don’t eat high fat diets in those poor countries because they can’t afford the high price of meat or keep cows for dairy produce. They mostly exist on rice, grains and pasta with virtually no meat or dairy. Those are the countries that Ancel Keys and hundreds of others have demonstrated have little or no CVD. Only when they become better off and start to eat the Western high fat diet do their rates of Atherosclerosis climb.”
I treated patients for 6 months in rural West Bengal where most of the patients subsist on white rice and lentils, sometimes a few vegetables – the only things they can afford. They get heart attacks, strokes and most of them at 50 look like they are 70. It’s also very common for 40 year olds to suffer from very high BP. A clinic next to us treats strokes only and they get up to 70 patients a day, most poor farmers with the same diet.
To claim that they have little or no CVD is total nonsense. You should really stop saying things of which you understand very little.
Mr Bedson, Dr Yusuf has not crashed in flames; nor did he give his opinion. He was simply reporting the results of the PURE trial. Please tell us who you are, your qualifications in this field, and who retains and pays you? I followed the link you gave in one of your posts to see how wonderful you look at the age of 65, and was forbidden access with three exclamation marks. I tried to find you or your website and could only find an Australian John Bedson who was a convicted murderer! And good luck with eating an artificial food like margarine for the rest of your life…
Some people do seem to have the ability to draw unsound conclusions.99.99% of the medical profession ignore LCHF diets because they have been told something else is correct, and they are paid to believe it, and those who step out of line are pilloried for doing so. (One recently in Australia no less). A LCLF diet seems to cause cognitive deficiency. The fix is easy, eat more fat. After all it’s the largest constituent of the brain.
AH Notepad: I think you’re right. Last night in the restaurant I ate a full rack of ribs, left the bread in the basket, but ate the butter right out of the wrapper. My brain seems to be functioning on all eight cylinders this morning!
John, people who write verbose posts don’t understand the concept of “less is more”. (in many cases, and particularly on blogs).
Saying “[Yusuf] does not have the faintest idea what he is talking about” is a statement without any credibility. Someone would have to know a person particularly well to know the depth and breadth of their knowledge.
As for the statements about nutritionists heart surgeons and neuro surgeons, the only person I would not consult would be a nutritionist if I was considering surgery. The surgeons would be best consulted for their relevant field, but I would be surprised if they did not know quite a lot about the diet related problems. They might be wrong, but then so are many nutritions who promote carb diets for diabetics, for example.
I wouldn’t trust the World Heart Federation unless I knew who funded them, since in many cases we find it is the food, pharma, or soda indistries.
Stating at length about Keys’ work in another post made it rather pointless to repeat it.
Michael Eades has written a reasoned review of Yusuf’s video, well worth a read.
How can I reply to a Dr. Kendrick comment/question to me when there is no “Reply” link below his comments for me to reply to him? I would have to reply to another person, like this one, in order to reply to Dr. Kendrick and then he would not know which comment I was replying to and he might think that I was a fool replying to someone other than himself.
Almost everyone (except me) makes brief comments supporting Dr. Kendrick and he winds up lamenting that the blog is merely “an echo chamber” which sadly is what it has become. Someone like me who understands and can make a sensible presentation supporting mainstream medicine against LCHF has to write at considerable length exposing LCHF misunderstandings about Ancel Keys and hundreds of other issues where I think that you guys are wrong. But when I write anything in detail I am immediately accused of being “verbose.”
It is impossible for me to both deconstruct LCHF and at the same time present the reasons why mainstream medicine rejects the position of Dr. Kendrick without writing at considerable length and explaining all of the trials and other evidence. I can’t “Tweet” stuff like that.
I did not join this blog to deconvert any of you and certainly not Dr. Kendrick. I could not care less what you all think about diet, or Atherosclerosis. I joined because I am a recent deconvert from LCHF and a convert to the modern, scientific view on diet as held by the overwhelming majority of the world’s medical establishment.
So the question you might want to ask yourselves is this: Why did John Bedson decide to spend some of his time discussing with a group of medical heretic outliers on a LCHF blog?
The answer is that I wanted to test my decision to abandon LCHF and to accept modern scientific thinking. I wanted you guys to debate with me and to show me the weaknesses in my thinking. I wanted you to pick holes in my presentation and to show where my evidence for my new belief is weak.
That won’t happen for me on other medical blogs that accept modern science. They are also boring “echo chambers” of agreement. I need Dr. Kendrick and the other smart people on this blog to either overturn my new found faith in modern medicine and to show to me why I was wrong to lose my faith in LCHF, or to debate with me and show me where I am on thin ice and allow me to strengthen, with better evidence, where my new understanding is not sound.
That would put me an a win/win situation. Either I return to the LCHF flock, or I would become increasingly convinced that the modern scientific theory about diet is correct.
I could not care one bit about which way that goes, so long as I move ever closer to the truth of these things. I love to understand modern science in all of its many different fields. I have studied science since 2003 when I retired from work. I shall continue to study science until my last days on this Earth. I adore science and I love the Scientific Method of investigation and establishing theories. I feel the same way about the diet/heart hypothesis. I want to know what is the theory that is likely to be closest to the truth. It is a piece of science that intrigues me, especially as getting it right might lessen future morbidity and lengthen my lifespan with my family.
But you people want me to shut up or to be “brief” and one commenter even wants me banned.
OK. I get the message. You won’t hear from me again on this website. I will restore your “echo chamber” to the state that it was before I arrived and I will find another LCHF discussion group to help me enrich my thinking on this subject.
You can reply to a named individual. That function is open to all. I would not expect any to attempt to explain all of the trial (in one post). I would, however, wish to see an attempt to discuss one trial. For example MCE. Or, choose a trial of your own. Repeatedly stating that Yusuf is not a nutritionist, therefore cannot understand anything about nutrition and should not write anything about nutrition, does not constitute scientific argument. Albert Einsten was a patent clerk when he wrote his paper on the special theory of relativity. Perhaps it should have been rejected on the basis that he was not an ‘expert’ physicist.
I think you should also note, as should be obvious from my writing, that I have never advocated the LCHF diet anywhere, in anything that I have written. I have attacked the HCLF dietary advice, on the basis that that it is unsupported by the evidence, and most likely causes harm – in a large number of individuals. My main statement on the matter, which caused much controversy on this very blog, is that I do not believe that diet (in most people) is plays a significant role in CVD causation. Other than, perhaps, indirectly in those who eat excess carbohydrates, develop type II diabetes, and then greatly increase their risk of CVD.
Dr. Kendrick: Thank you. I think you’re correct. If one examines traditional diets around the world, with their enormous variance in macronutrient ratios, but which produced excellent health generation after generation without producing degenerative diseases, it becomes clear that you are correct. Heart disease is a 20th Century phenomenon. Not that it didn’t occur, but it was relatively rare. What human groups discovered over many generations of evolutionary history was how to extract from their environment sufficient nutrients to survive to reproduce. It is nutrients, not macronutrient ratios, which are crucial for health. And there are a wide variety of dietary practices which are health-promoting.
Dr K, I think you are being very tolerant of Mr Bedson and his views, in light of his thinly veiled derogatory references to you and others on this blog. I think I understand that you are letting him condemn himself out of his own mouth: for example, when he disses a well-respected writer such as Gary Taubes as “a newspaper hack”, such derogatory terms reveal the personal attack, not science. He considers the junk that fills the supermarket shelves as evidence that the high carb low fat guidelines have been instrumental in reducing CVD, without mention of the obesity/diabetes/Alzheimers epidemics that have also happened in the last fifty years. Mr Bedson thinks the increasing evidence reported by Dr Yusuf and others that high cholesterol does not cause CVD, is a “conspiracy theory”, alongside the whole LCHF movement. The conspiracy theory term is used to dismiss anyone whose views differ from the “entire medical world’s” take on nutrition, but such antagonistic use of the term takes no account of the actual scientific evidence, which Dr Yusuf is simply reporting. The attacks on Dr Yusuf are a giveaway, as is all the nonsense on who you would prefer to operate, for what problem; all distraction techniques to draw attention away from the increasing evidence that the official guidelines have been wrong for fifty years. I would love to know if Mr Bedson receives an honorarium from any company which would stand to gain from his support…
John,
You have clearly drunk deeply of Keys’ Kool-Aid and there is no arguing with you. I personally will continue to put my faith in the Two Countries study which compares the US and France and conclusively proves that more saturated fat is healthier (and tastier).
I note that Keys was sensible enough to retire to Pioppi in southern Italy, far from the Standard American Diet, where he undoubtedly enjoyed plentiful fresh air, sunshine, and traditional food prepared daily from fresh, unprocessed ingredients.
Nutrition seems to be a favorite “war arena” in medicine where dissidents can be nailed down and where the official nonsens still has the upper hand after ruling for more than a century.
Now, here is the latest news from South Africa on one of the more famous low carb dissidents – professor Noakes.
http://foodmed.net/2017/03/05/mistakes-mischief-naude-review-noakes/
It’s no good, I just can’t keep my trap shut any longer. Why is it, or so it seems to me, that those who oppose the main theory that most of us following this blog espouse always come in all guns blazing, shirty and with a somewhat aggressive tone – what we midlanders would call “having his arse in his hand” Everyone, of course, is entitled to his/her opinion, but just because a poster doesn’t agree with the main thrust of this blog doesn’t mean that we are wrong or that he is right. Notice I’m not naming names or directly replying to this particular post in question, but please, people, keep it nice, keep it kind.
What I really love about this site is the ‘kindness of strangers’ encountered here – a place to learn and to air ideas.
Dr K., your blog has brightened my life immeasurably for which I thank you most sincerely AND, another post has just landed in my inbox. Lucky, lucky me. Thank you.
…..Or maybe it’s me and that li’l old confirmation bias again.
Still, that cuts both ways.
@John
Conflicting Science/Intellectual positions. (Something I enjoy)
FOUR danger signs that indicate a proponent is non-fully confident in the view they are holding or is desperately fearful of having a deep long held brief undermined.
1) Ad hominem attacks: “ … Yosef is not a nutritionist”
2) There is an overwhelming consensus: “… the advice on their website and goes against 99.99% of international medical opinion on this subject”
3) The opposition view should be quashed and/or the proponent should be chastised or sanctioned in some way. (not guilty)
4) Pronouncements are given within a quasi-religious paradigm: ” … my new found faith in modern medicine” . “ …show to me why I was wrong to lose my faith in LCHF”… “Why did John Bedson decide to spend some of his time discussing with a group of medical heretic outliers?”
On the language of religion:
“But if you adopt LCHF as a continuing lifestyle your lipid profile will go haywire and you will substantially increase your risk of CVD” Or should CVD = HELL
For being so nasty I will now, like Harry Potter’s Dobby, go and beat my head against my study door in an act of contrition.
I think that constitutes robust debate. But you can beat your head if you like.
Antony, perhaps you can add to your list of giveaways that the Yusuf video was “pulled because it was nonsense”, which is the equivalent of burning books you don’t like. Also the declaration that he “doesn’t care” what anyone thinks, while demanding debate; and the blaming of everyone else for his uncertainties while claiming certainties. Mr Bedson claims to have read all the books on LCHF, but if they haven’t convinced him I would suggest that we are unlikely to either.