Here is some supplemental information and opinion on cholesterol issues and chemistry.
I want to register some comments in this Journal about physicianship issues in America.
For most of October, as well as in early November, since I first posted this Revisiting Cholesterol, Part II installment, I have been dealing with client’s fear issues, as well as their polypharmacy issues.
I shall write a Journal on fear to refer clients to later. For now, I’ll comment on some negative developments in the medical industry.
In consideration of the cholesterol concern, many of the clients that I deal with are on a statin drug to control their cholesterol lab numbers. They have not had any advanced cholesterol particle testing to assess true cardiovascular risk, and so I question the legitimacy of using a cholesterol lowering drug which is becoming associated with more and more negative side effects. You can peruse the 2 previous Journal entries.
I think that the physicians who routinely prescribe statin drugs are, to some extent, medicating their own anxieties by medicating the patients’ cholesterol lab numbers.
Most Americans over the age of 60 are on multiple different drugs prescribed by multiple different doctors. These doctors often times do not share communicative collegiality. Egos simply get in the way. I have a few stories about this phenomenon from my own experience as a physician of 36 years.
Polypharmacy is the combined usage of multiple drugs, none of which are natural to our native biochemistry. These drugs create nutrient depletions in their metabolism, and often are contraindicated for simultaneous usage. There can be negative or positive excess synergistic interactions between the drugs.
Oftentimes, there are deaths. In most other instances, there is going to be some kind of abnormal decline, or other negative event if the drug is just continued indefinitely.
Pharmaceuticals, well used, can be life saving and life altering in a positive sense. I do not believe that patients should be left on most of the current day drugs indefinitely. I believe that reasonable attempts to judiciously wean the patient from the medication should be undertaken. All patients should make themselves intimately aware of drug side effects, drug-drug interactions, and drug nutrient depletions.
See the work and books of pharmacist Ross Pelton, PhD, at http://naturalpharmacist.net/. I recommend his works.
Indeed, it is now becoming more widely accepted that drug related complications are the chief cause of medical complications. Furthermore, medical complications of treatments is now more widely viewed as the number 1 to 4 cause of mortality and morbidity in the USA.
As we all know, at some level of our being, the human being is endowed with a natural intelligence which is the intelligence of Creation itself. This Intelligence is replete in the biochemical and psycho-energetic ability to heal. Healing is our most extraordinary gift.
I have never understood why more health care providers dismiss natural biochemistry and healing. Instead, they attempt to bombard and override this Intelligence with synthetic chemicals which are engineered for profit by Big Pharma. The polypharmacy endorsed Big Pharma is indoctrinated into the physician corps in the early days of medical school training.
If medical students and residents in training were taught more about natural biochemistry and functional medicine instead of polypharmacy prescribing, we would have a healthier population, and a better economy. Doctors should be taught how to wean patients off of their multiple drug regimens rather than getting patients on multiple drugs. Oftentimes a drug is prescribed to treat the side effects of other drugs!
The young physician is taught a fear based method of practicing in a compartmentalized and mechanistic manner. Physicians are taught to practice mainstream medicine and stay in the box of peer competitive mainstream practices. If a physician steps out of the mainstream medical box, then they will lose patient referrals. I know about this issue from my former surgical chapter.
The recent monthly November newsletter from a prominent malpractice insurer in Colorado (COPIC Insurance) states, “Physicians’ fears of medical liability lawsuits appear to drive them to order more diagnostic tests, even in states with medical liability damage caps, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs (August, 2013). According to this study, done by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), physicians’ perceptions of their risk of medical liability lawsuits—rather than their actual risk—predict their practice of defensive medicine.”…….”Reducing defensive medicine may require approaches focused on physicians’ perceptions of legal risk and the underlying factors driving those perceptions.”
Interestingly, the issue of fear based polypharmacy prescribing was not addressed in this article, but I perceive that this type of fear based practice has fully saturated the physician ranks. Pharmaceutical advertising in mainstream media is at an all time high, and the average citizen is as indoctrinated to use drugs, just as the physicians are indoctrinated to prescribe them.
In another recent article about physician burnout, seen below, the issue of polypharmacy is also not addressed, but some other very critical issues are well addressed. The issues brought to light in this editorial are undoubtedly entangled with the polypharmacy problem.
And so, from The New York Times editorial section The Opinionator, printed on October 2, 2013 comes a well written article which surveys the current sentiment of psycho emotional decimation in the medical corps, and what might done to assist the damaged esprit de corps of our medical troopers.
This accurate and helpful editorial, entitled “Who Will Heal the Doctors?” was written by David Bornstein and can be seen here.
Two honorable guidelines of good physicianship deserve some notice: 1) First do no harm, and 2) Physician heal Thyself.
These are simple words, and if practiced wholeheartedly, might bring about some needed change in the world of medical practice.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.
Associated Reading
- ‘The Big Fat Surprise’–Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Important Parts of a Healthy Diet…an interview with investigative journalist Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, who exposes biases and corruption in the food industry and the research it paid for back in the 1950s when the whole “saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you” myth really took off. This link also has a good written summary which supports the health benefits of cholesterol and saturated fat.
- Cholesterol: New Benefits for This Old Friend–Yes, Friend!…benefits of cholesterol are explained per recent research, posted here on 6-2-18.
- High cholesterol in late life may mean better brain health…a study of older people has found that having a total cholesterol level higher than it was in midlife is tied to a lower risk of marked cognitive decline in those aged 85–94.
- The 6 Greatest Cholesterol Myths Debunked…cholesterol is an essential molecule for our health.
- The Truth about Statin Drugs…Chris Kresser has a new comprehensive writing on the subject, posted here on 1-24-20.
- 10 Facts About Cholesterol and Why a Personalized Approach is Best…posted here on 2-11-21. This article is based on the evolving science of nutrigenomics. This one comes from the people at mygenefood.com, which is a service that analyses genetic information to determine one’s best diet type from a selection of 20 diet types. This article is informative about 10 key points about cholesterol.