Over the Counter Natural Cures (8 page)

A study published in the
British Medical Journal
has reported that only 30 percent of statin drug trials reported the number of participants with one or more negative side effects caused by the drug. According to
USA Today
, the U.S. government is not sending out warnings either. The article stated: “Statins have killed and injured more people than the government has acknowledged.”
⁴⁴

“Your trust is misplaced. The FDA isn't watching out for you, bro. I am. And trust me, Lipitor sucks.”

Regardless of its ability to drop total cholesterol, Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) won't stop heart disease. In a three-and-a-third-year study, the drug reduced the rate of heart attacks from 3 percent to a whopping 2 percent. That means out of one hundred people taking Lipitor, only on
e
person might benefit. All other statin drug trials show the same trend.
⁴⁵

Researchers from
Therapeutic Initiatives
performed an analysis of five major statin drug trials and pooled all the data. Known by their acronyms, the trials were PROSPER, ALLHAT-LLT, ASCOT-LLA, AFCAPS, and WOSCOPS. In the pooled data of these trials, statin drugs reduced the risk of death by 0.3 percent among those who showed no signs of having cardiovascular disease (primary prevention).”
⁴⁶

With respect to heart attack and stroke, the five combined studies showed that statins prevented these events by a mere 1.4 percent. Using
the data from other clinical trials like LIPS, PROSPER, GREASE, and HPS, an analysis showed that cholesterol-lowering drug use reduced death by a mere 1.8 percent among those who showed signs of having cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention).

“So what is cholesterol, and what does it have to do with heart disease? What can I do to avoid it?” Mike was now thinking. I could tell he was anxious to get off his statin drug.

THE FIRST STEP TO AVOIDING HEART DISEASE

“The absolute first step to avoiding heart disease,” I told him, “is to get off your drugs and let your cholesterol rise to where it belongs, which is usually far above 200. And when it does, don't freak out. You're not sick. That number 200 was invented by the NCEP to convert a young, vibrantly healthy college jock into a patient. Studies show that the higher our cholesterol, the longer we live!”

The Italians don't die from “high” cholesterol. In fact, the higher it is, the healthier they are. Monitoring three thousand Italians over three years, research published in the
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
showed that elderly people with low total cholesterol levels (less than 189 mg/dL) were at higher risk of dying than those with cholesterol levels from 276 to 417 mg/dL!
⁴⁷
Other powerful evidence exists to support this.

The Journal of the American Medical Association
, showed that as
people aged, death rates increased by 14 percent for every one-point drop in total cholesterol levels. Cadaver studies also prove this.
⁴⁸
Among those who die from a heart attack, more than half have low cholesterol. This explains why statin drugs fail to increase lifespan despite their ability to drop total cholesterol levels. There is no association between cholesterol lowering (LDL-cholesterol or otherwise) and the occurrence of heart disease.

Such risks are usually hidden from doctors and the media. Using clever techniques, Big Pharma hires ghostwriters to cleverly weave positive drug stories.

HOW TO MAKE STATIN DRUGS LOOK GOOD

Statins have life-threatening side effects and high cholesterol is protective, not detrimental. These cold hard facts are usually buried in an avalanche of deceit. This is Big Pharma's dirty secret. The companies work relentlessly to protect the secret with ghostwriting.

Ghostwriting is akin to giving an old, beat-up car a new paint job. It makes something look better than it really is. Officially, ghostwriting is the scandalous act of paying writers to hype drug benefits, while concealing side effects, and then paying prestigious doctors to put their names on the report. Once done, the paper is published in medical journals to sway doctors into heavy prescribing habits.

Like a good body shop, the best ghostwriters can make anything in the drug business look great. There are two tricks of the ghostwriting trade that you must be made aware of: statistical contortionism and checkbook science. Understanding both of these will help you thwart drug hype in the headlines—and stay alive.

NUMBER ILLUSIONS

Statistical contortionism is simply number illusions. It uses percentages to exaggerate drug benefits. For instance, if drug XYZ led to a 3 percent reduction in the risk of a given medical complication (like heart attack), and the placebo group (those who took a sugar pill instead) experienced a 1 percent risk reduction, the absolute difference is merely 2 percent. This doesn't make for great news or drug sales. Enter the contortionists.

To make the difference look better than it is, ghostwriters use the percentage difference, rather than the absolute difference in percentage—confusing I know. Street magician David Blaine would be proud. Watch closely, because you've already missed the illusion.

To get the percentage difference, divide 1 by 3 (percentages from above) then multiply the answer by 100. You get 33 percent. This is called “relative risk reduction.” Technically, drug XYZ reduced the
relative
risk of heart attack by 33 percent. Presto! You've turned bland numbers into some serious profit-pullers.

As a corporate drug pusher, what would you cite to doctors, journalists, and patients—the absolute difference of 2 percent or the relative risk reduction of 33 percent? Relative risk reduction is always used in ghost-writing and in the headlines, especially when it comes to cholesterol-lowering drugs. Since most people can't balance a checkbook, the mathematical illusion is easy to disguise as science.

• The Long-Term Intervention with Pravachol in Ischemic Heart Disease (LIPID) showed a contemptible absolute risk reduction in total mortality of 3.1 percent. Drug pushers of Pravachol (pravastatin sodium) touted a 21 percent drop in relative risk reduction for total mortality.
  
• The Heart Protection Study (HPS) showed that users of Zocor (simvastatin) had a 1.8 percent drop in absolute risk reduction for total mortality. Another trial involving Zocor, the 4S trial, showed a minimal 3.3 percent drop in absolute risk reduction for total mortality among users. Zocor drug pushers touted a 29 percent relative risk reduction for total mortality.
  
• A clinical trial known as TNT (Treating to New Targets) showed the gross ineffectiveness of Lipitor. Sponsored by Pfizer, the drug's manufacturer, the trial found that those receiving low-dose Lipitor reduced their mean LDL cholesterol levels to 101 mg/dL, while those taking the high dose brought their LDL readings down to 77 mg/dL. After a median follow-up of 4.9 years, absolute total mortality was 0 percent.
  ⁴⁹
  Neither the high dose nor the low dose prevented early death! Lipitor drug pushers ignored this and touted a 20 percent relative risk reduction in coronary events while overlooking a 40 percent relative risk increase in side effects among users taking 80 milligrams per day.
  
• The most recent display of deceit was seen with Crestor (rosuvastatin calcium) and the study results from the JUPITER trial. Popular media and drug reps touted that the cholesterol-lowering drug achieved a relative risk reduction of heart attack and stroke by 53 percent—regardless of cholesterol levels. The real difference was an absolute, paltry risk reduction of 0.9 percent.
  
• Even the American Heart Association missed the facts and got tripped up by the contortionism. Timothy J. Gardner, MD, AHA president, was so excited with the contortionism over Crestor that he insisted, “This one is pretty clearly a winner for statin therapy.”
  ⁵⁰
  Big Pharma money can be intoxicating. Like a frat boy with beer goggles, few health professionals or popular media outlets could see the ugly truth. Stanford University succinctly gave a reality check.
  

Commenting on the JUPITER study, Mark Hlatky, MD, of Stanford told the
New England Journal of Medicine
that “absolute differences in risk are more clinically important than relative reductions in risk in deciding whether to recommend drug therapy, since the absolute benefits of treatment must be large enough to justify the associated risks and costs.”
⁵¹

CHECKBOOK SCIENCE

The deceit doesn't stop with statistical contortionists. Money can't buy love, but it can buy research. Ghostwriters also rely upon checkbook science.

Leveraging their financial power, drug companies simply pay for the best research that money can buy. They structure the protocol designed to study whether or not a drug is safe, and they design their own clinical trials. They choose the investigators (from academics and government institutions) and in many instances are involved in the collation, interpretation, and reporting of data.
⁵²
This allows them to hype benefits while concealing risk. Real scientific, huh? According to one estimate, 75 percent of the clinical trials published in top medical journals—like
The
Lancet
,
New England Journal of Medicine
, and the
Journal of the American Medical Association
—are paid for by Big Pharma.
⁵³

Ghostwriting has become so widespread that leading editors have voiced their opinions publicly. Commenting on the false publication, the deputy editor of the
Journal of the American Medical Association
insisted, “This is all about bypassing science. Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don't know what papers they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn't want to believe. If you're getting a lot of money from a corporate sponsor, it's easy to get the impression that you'll get even more for future research if you don't write up the negative results.”
⁵⁴
This style of research has torn the fabric of the scientific
method by masquerading as science, but in reality it's nothing more than a dirty sales ploy that puts a patient's life at risk. Yet, the deceptive writing is the primary source of information for medical doctors.

At this point Mike was convinced. He hadn't been feeling well. His muscles had all but evaporated, and his libido was at rock bottom. Like so many others in his position, he was ready for change. From that point on, Mike never took another statin drug.

There were still more lifesaving facts for Mike to learn, but we had to get back to the wedding. Staying in touch, I eventually taught him the truth about cholesterol, pointed out the real artery butchers, and showed him how to obtain the best alternatives to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

CHOLESTEROL FACTS YOUR DOCTOR DOESN'T KNOW

Cholesterol is not a poison.

Cholesterol is the most important molecule in the body, next to water. First and foremost, the body uses cholesterol to manufacture steroids, or cortisone-like hormones, including the sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Cholesterol helps break down food into essential nutrients. Working in unison with the liver, it produces bile acids. These acids are essential for digestion of fats and ridding the body of waste. Cholesterol acts to interlock “lipid molecules,” which stabilize cell membranes. Therefore, it is a vital building block for all bodily tissues.

Lowering cholesterol causes the body to fall apart. To illustrate, imagine that your house represents your body and the nails holding it together, cholesterol. Now start pulling just a few nails out of the house. What happens? The house turns into a pile of rubble. The same is true for the body.

Cholesterol keeps your immune system working hard. It's crucial for
protecting you from biological nasties like bacteria and viruses. Once the body is invaded by foreigners, cholesterol can bind to and inactivate the nasties and then escort them out of the body. Even the potent MRSA strain of Staphylococcus bacteria has been shown to be no match for LDL-cholesterol.

THE REAL ARTERY BUTCHERS

You don't need a medical degree to understand the real cause of heart disease and how to prevent it. The anatomy of our arteries is as simple as a ham sandwich. To understand how arteries can be damaged, you only need to know a few parts. Therefore, if you know how to make a ham sandwich, you can learn how to avoid heart disease, even if you are eight years old.

The spaghetti noodles covering the heart are coronary arteries. They're important because they help deliver nutrients and blood throughout the body. They connect 100,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries. And they're most susceptible to damage due to the mechanical stress they undergo. (Think racing heartbeat.)

Unlike spaghetti, coronary arteries are made up of muscle, sandwiched between two structural layers, one facing the bloodstream and one outside. Muscle is the ham, and bread the structural layer. Stupidly simple, but it can get more complicated, like boiling water.

Heart disease can set in when the bread—the innermost structural layer that faces the bloodstream—gets disturbed or butchered. This layer is known as the intima, and it's made up of collagen and a specialized set of cells known as endothelial cells. Both are sensitive to a host of disturbances that can give way to coronary artery damage.

It's well known that tobacco smoke butchers arteries. Another notorious artery butcher is homocysteine. When the coronary arteries undergo
mechanical stress, the structural layer is stretched and exposed to the artery-scarring compound floating in the blood, allowing for increased chance of damage. As with an open-reel fishing rod gone bad, tangling among collagen ensues.

Initially, collagen tangling shows up as endothelial dysfunction, which, like erectile dysfunction, prevents the coronary arteries from expanding and contracting when needed. You can visualize this by comparing the arteries to tangled kite string.