And while it’s incredibly efficient at treating acute conditions, it fails miserably at chronic ones because it’s treating symptoms instead of underlying causes.
And sometimes those symptoms might actually be part of the body’s defenses against inflammation, which doctors suppress with pills.
The perfect example is elevated LDL cholesterol. This is a marker for heart disease, however it can be high due to hypothyroidism or due to inflammation. LDL cells are actually part of the body’s immune system and by suppressing their synthesis or by accelerating their clearance, the body could be less effective at fighting infections or at repairing arterial walls that have been damaged. Plus pills are a blunt tool with many unintended side effects.
It is no wonder then that people taking statins don’t have a reduction in all cause mortality and personally I’d rather die of a heart attack than die of cancer or dementia.
Also the DASH diet, the one that is supposed to prevent CVD, is effectively poison as it’s encouraging people to eat ultra-processed food and oils high in omega-6, due to encouraging a big chunk of energy to come from “whole grains” (i.e. products which are often a lesson in chemistry and that might not even contain whole grains due to weak regulation), plus the phobia for saturated fat.
Healthy people without any CVD taking statins experience no reduction in all cause mortality. People with a history of CVD definitely experience a reduction in all cause mortality.
> It is no wonder then that people taking statins don’t have a reduction in all cause mortality and personally I’d rather die of a heart attack than die of cancer or dementia.
So far statin's are associated with a reduced risk of dementia.(I have no idea about cancer, but can't imagine it increases the odds)
Also where are you getting that the DASH diet is effectively poison or ultra processed?
Actually it's people with a history of heart attacks and the reduction in all cause mortality is measured on average to be only a couple of months.
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>> So far statin's are associated with a reduced risk of dementia*
The common side effects of statins are headaches, sleep problems, muscle aches or weakness, drowsiness, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, rash.
There have also been reports of memory loss, forgetfulness and confusion. These are not emphasized, probably not so common, but the reports I've seen are freaking scary.
Also if there is no reduction in all cause mortality, but there is a reduction in heart attacks, this means there's an increased likelihood that some other chronic disease will kill you. It's simple math really, if you don't die of heart attacks, you're more likely to die of cancer or dementia, as these are the most common causes of death.
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>> "Also where are you getting that the DASH diet is effectively poison or ultra processed?"
By advising people to eat less saturated fat, you're effectively advising people to eat seed oils (the "heart healthy" oils), which actually increase the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, due to the very high omega-6 content, which is inflammatory, along with toxins from the extraction process. Here are some studies on this subject:
https://gist.github.com/alexandru/5e21b75363904004f837c23f03...
Also go into any supermarket and carefully read the label on any food labeled with "whole grains", especially those made of wheat. Most of them meet the definition of "ultra-processed" food and many of them are not even made of actual whole grains, because fiber has poor shelf life, so what they do is to use white flour and then add some bran back, which doesn't have the same effect. In my city I couldn't find any local bakeries that made bread out of whole grains. Corn is the same story, unless you're eating your home made polenta. And brown rice is toxic, so you're you're actually better off eating the white variety.
The problem with DASH in this regard is not the advice to consume whole grains, but the advice to make whole grains a staple food in the diet.
Ironically, anything that makes you live longer increases your cancer risk.
tl;dr - its way more complicated
LDL particles are not (at least directly) a part of the immune system. They are lipoproteins, generated primarily in the liver, that are implicated in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis (buildup of plaques in the blood vessels).
The immune system, however, plays an important role in atherosclerosis, as it is thought that inflammation in the vasculature contributes to atherosclerosis.
Statins (contrary to your assertion) have in fact been conclusively shown to improve mortality from cardiovascular events. You can find many studies in the last 20 years that have demonstrated this with high statistical significance (do a pubmed search or look for articles in the New England Journal of Medicine).
Perhaps most interestingly, the latest research suggests that statins may improve cardiovascular outcomes not solely from LDL reduction (which has been the classically accepted hypothesis, as statins target the enzyme in the liver that regulates LDL reuptake), but also through anti-inflammatory mechanisms. This idea has been further strengthened by research suggesting that LDL reduction alone (as with a newer agent of drugs called anti PCSK9) may not provide as strong of a mortality benefit, weakening what is known as the "LDL hypothesis". In addition, another recent trial (called CANTOS) found that an anti-inflammatory agent targeting IL-1, an inflammatory cytokine, improved cardiovascular outcomes (such as heart attacks), further strengthening the notion that the immune system plays a key role in cardiovascular disease.
I'm not sure if "fails miserably" is the proper characterization. It's just simple capitalism.
Just look at statins. They're something that they want to sell you for the rest of your life. Because statins treat symptoms, they're not a cure. But antibiotics? Just 10 days and you're done.
Hmmm. Which is more profitable? It it any wonder that the US government is looking into how to fund development of new antibiotics? Same with vaccines. The government has had to step in to fund them.
Gilead Sciences Inc. will continue to feel the financial sting this year of declining revenues from its hepatitis C business, forecasting combined 2018 sales of the drugs reaching only a fifth of what the biotech recorded at the height of its commercial success three years ago.
https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/gilead-hepatitis-c-revenu...
Contrast a statin for Pfizer: $125 billion in sales over 14 years. Lipitor alone "provided up to a quarter of Pfizer Inc.'s annual revenue for years."
Sure it’s not as successful as Lipitor (pretty much the most successful drug ever), but it’s total sales DWARF 95% of the drugs out there.
It certainly doesn't help that the science on diets nowadays contain so many contradicting studies. Moreso that some of them are pushed by powerful corporations for their own vested interests.
No one wonder people don't trust them.
Some people on here mention organ meats, but that does not mean that it's safe to eat liver everyday either.
Again though, traditional medicines were aware of this and it was typically recognized that diet was specific to an individual and their environment. There were (and still are) complex systems outlining how foods may affect different people and what it could mean.
Still, I'm not claiming anything here other than that it's interesting and worth considering. I take advil when my head hurts and I go to the hospital when I'm sick, and I'm not going to start treating cancer with fungus from my back yard. I just suspect there's a lot of useful knowledge in this tradition.
I'm sure modern science can find ways, but those must be taught to doctors too. The doctors I've met in my life only treat symptoms (with chemistry) and rarely have a holistic look at what's going on in your body. The ones digging into a problem are rare breed.
I saw an orthopedist who claimed to specialize in sport injuries. He immediately understood which part of the knee was affected. Also I'd expect a doctor who's out of his depth to suggest a specialist, not a "meh, try this".
I follow a carnivore diet and have always been a bit scared of messing up my microbiome, while finding it quite strange that I defecate non-negligible amounts of waste, once a day on average.
Only recently has my knowledge gap been filled when I found out that our microbiome can survive solely on amino acids. In fact, all this "gut-brain axis" stuff regarding the production and/or catabolism of neurotransmitters by gut bacteria only makes sense if bacteria can ferment amino acids. Thinking that some bacteria strain can produce neurotransmitters from fibre is an insult to intelligence: where does the nitrogen come from?
We're talking about basics, getting all the vitamins and nutrients needed for a healthy body. Exercise, eat about 5 servings of fruit and veggies a day etc ....
Take, for example, minerals (electrolytes). Calcium absorption is greatly affected by the rest of your diet (fibre intake, phytates, oxalates and other antinutrients). A person eating a high amount of nuts containing calcium might absorb less than someone eating only meat (fish), which contains much less calcium by weight, but none of the factors that negatively affect absorption.
In other words, RDAs are not fixed. Someone on a purely carnivore diet needs less than 80 mg of magnesium per day, while someone on a vegetarian diet might need over 500 mg to maintain magnesium status.
Pardon the math analogy, but regarding the direct comparison of different food items, it is clear that some order relation can be defined between them (e.g. an apple is better than a serving of fries), but that relation is far from being complete. Is an apple always healthier than an rib-eye? Are they even comparable? Is a bowl of steamed rice healthier than a slab of butter?
This advice literally (using the word in the correct sense) kills people.
> I just find it fascinating that we have and still often discount traditional knowledge, even after it's been virtually proven for milennia
Check out the infant mortality rates for milennia.
I agree prevention is better than cure. That is why I and my family are up to date on all our vaccines.
Meanwhile a holistic diet will do nothing to prevent most infectious diseases. The reason we have the luxury to entertain wellness bloggers, traditional medicine and faith healers is that we discovered antibiotics and vaccines.
Traditional medicines that work get incorporated into modern medicine. For example if you have a dietary deficiency you will be given supplements and told to eat better. If you have a headache you may take a compound first derived from Willow bark.
Modern medicine has even resulted in flour being fortified with vitamin B1 preventing the disease the article refers too!
Even modern understanding of healthy eating is derived from modern medicine not traditional 'healing'...
And a good diet absolutely will do something to prevent most infectious diseases - if your immune system is stressed/compromised due to a shit diet, you're much more likely to be infected when you're exposed. You're exposed to infectious disease constantly, and the reason you don't get sick the vast majority of the time is because you're successfully fighting those off.
While I remain skeptical about long term effects of the new fad carnivore diet there is no doubt it has helped a lot of people with inflammation to regain control of their lives. You can look up Mikhaila Peterson's blog or interviews about the subject.
Diets do terribly in long term RCTs.
If you compare something like "the food pyramid" diet, but with less calories to surgery I have no doubt the surgery will keep more people at lighter weight after five years. However that doesn't seem like a fair comparison. For one the usual diet that gets pushed to fat people isn't a good diet to being with. Next one requires much more dedication than the other, meaning if you are going through a surgery to alter your body so you can't eat as much, then obviously the adherence will be higher.
Also people who result into surgery are usually on their last legs. Doctors won't give you the surgery unless it is your only option. So if you had to loose weight or die in next year, obviously the adherence will be a lot higher than with loose weight or in 10 years you will have to have a surgery.
Most weight loss diets are fine. They involving eating less food, particularly unhealthy food, and more healthier food. Keto, Paleo, Mediterranean, DASH. It doesn't matter because the differences between these diets aren't anywhere close to the differences between surgery and diets.
If you can find just one 5 year study that shows diet works anywhere nearly as well as surgery I'll change my opinion. But they don't exist. I've looked.
And yet here we are almost 200 years later and many common illnesses are still closely related to diet, and many still feel as though treatment through diet is flakey or inferior to modern drugs or surgery.
It turns out one of the best things we can do for ourselves is eat well and strive to prevent disease before it occurs. If I recall correctly, this is a core tenant of many traditional medicines including traditional Chinese medicine.
I'm not saying we should all start practicing traditional medicine. I just find it fascinating that we have and still often discount traditional knowledge, even after it's been virtually proven for milennia. It's like we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I hope modern science can find more concrete conclusions around health and diet such that more people might have faith in food as a preventative medicine. To many of us it seems obvious, but to much of the world I suspect it isn't... Just like it wasn't in the Japanese Navy.