How statins drive up health care costs and provide poor heart protection, part 2....
Today's Post: Friday, 7-2-2010
Yesterday, we posted that statin drugs are not very effective in preventing heart disease and heart attacks since 100 people need to take them to prevent one heart attack and that they are not effective enough to be worth the very high dollar cost and significant harm that having so many people get from the side effects of statins.
We then point out that doctors would be far more effective in preventing heart disease if they had their patients turn off the direct causes of heart disease instead.
The best known and most harmful of these are:
1. Ingesting trans fats and other hydrogenated oils.
2. Eating lots of sugars and refined grains (&/or ingesting artificial sweeteners that boost your desire for those foods.)
3. NOT getting moderate physical activity and quite vigorous exercise every week.
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
Yesterday, we posted about why the first 3 things cause heart disease and what people can do to reverse each one.
Simply put ingesting trans fats and other hydrogenated oils and eating lots of sugars and refined grains -- and surprisingly artificial sweeteners – results in people getting far more of the small particle LDL that causes heart disease in their blood. Conversely, regular and vigorous exercise reduces small particle LDL in your blood.
That means if you stop ingesting these harmful things except for small amounts of sugar very occasionally and do regular and vigorous exercise most days of every week, you successfully clear your blood of the main direct cause of heart disease and heart attacks. AND, you do so dramatically more effectively than by taking statin drugs.
Today, we cover the 4th and 5th direct causes of heart disease and safer ways to lower your risk other than statin drugs.
Those two direct causes are:
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
Tobacco smoke is one of the most effective causes of heart disease and heart attacks.
Few smokers have any clue that this is so or if they have heard it, they have no clue how strongly this is so.
They have heard about the little problem from smoking, the cancers that it causes. Smoking is known to cause at least 30 % of all cancers and as much as 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer. That usually doesn’t trouble smokers. They just think it hasn’t happened yet and that they will be one of the people who doesn’t get cancer and keep smoking.
The problem is that they do NOT know that every cigarette they smoke or breathe the smoke of as second hand smoke makes a small deposit on to the plaque build up in their blood vessels and also speeds aging.
HDL is desirable because it helps clear your blood vessels. But smoking lowers your HDL and makes the HDL you still have less effective at clearing your blood vessels. Smoking also tends to harm the inner surface of your blood vessels and cause inflammation. So your body tries to patch the damage by laying down plaque to cover it.
Smoking also increases homocysteine. It’s still not certain that this causes damage directly though I believe it does. But it IS certain that people who have high homocysteine age faster and develop more heart disease than people who don’t. That’s true even if homocysteine is a marker for damage caused instead of a cause of the damage. So it’s certain that smoking has those effects.
Nor is this all. Far from it.
Scans of the blood vessels of smokers show a great deal more plaque in their blood vessels than nonsmokers. So, these changes that theory says should have this effect have been TESTED as doing so.
Worse. There’s more!
Tobacco smoke whether self-administered or as second hand smoke triggers heart attacks and does so in people who would escape those heart attacks if the smoke was not there.
(We know that because in communities that sharply increased the number of places people are not allowed to smoke, rates of heart attacks fell so much and so fast that this is the only explanation that fits the facts. And, this is backed up by separate studies of how quickly exposure to smoke boosts your blood pressure and causes other changes in your blood that add strain on your heart.)
So, if you want to escape heart disease, don’t take statin drugs. They are a weak after the fact effort to cut your risk a tiny bit. Instead act to remove the other direct causes of heart disease.
For this cause do these things.
Decline to start smoking. If you smoke quit -- even if you have to go to great efforts to do so. To the absolute best of your ability, avoid ALL second hand smoke. And, every time you can vote for increasing taxes on tobacco or cigarettes or restricting where people can smoke, do it!
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
Tobacco smoke causes inflammation which is one of several reasons it causes heart disease.
But there are two other causes of inflammation that cause heart disease that harm so many people they are worth taking action on also.
The first one is the big one.
People evolved to eat edible plants and animals and fish that were active and ate the food they evolved to eat.
The plant foods they ate either had very little oils or had mostly monosaturated oils such as those found in nuts, avocados, and olives. They did NOT contain any significant amount of omega 6 oils.
And the wild game and wild caught fish they ate had about as many omega 3 oils as they did omega 6 oils.
So our bodies we inherited from them are set to work properly on that one to one ratio between omega 3 oils and omega 6 oils.
But, grains are high in omega 6 oils as are many oils derived from them such as corn, soy, safflower, and canola.
But recently, people began to eat massive amounts of refined grains that didn’t even have fiber to reduce the uptake of the omega 6 oils. And we began penning up animals and fish & feeding them grains too instead of their natural diets. Then, both their fat AND ours began to have FIFTEEN times as much omega 6 oils as omega 3 oils.
This has two effects. It dramatically increases CRP inflammation. And, since the grains we have eaten and fed our farmed animals and fish have been grains on which pesticides and herbicides were used this has caused their fat and ours to contain bioconcentrated and larger concentrations of pesticides and herbicides than were on the grain itself.
The inflammation causes heart disease. And the inflammation plus chemical pollution tends to cause cancer.
So, that has several cures. Eat as close to zero refined grain foods as you can manage. Eat only whole grain foods and eat from almost none to only moderate amounts of whole grain foods. Do NOT buy or cook with or eat corn, soy, safflower, and canola oils.
Extra virgin olive oil is the best alternative. Small and occasional amounts of butter from cows fed only grass and coconut oil can be OK.
Eat meat only from animals fed their natural diet such as beef from cows fed only grass or pasture fed chickens. If you must eat meat or dairy products from grain fed animals, eat the leanest and lowest fat version you can manage and don’t do it often.
Those practices stop you from ingesting the killer amounts of omega 6 oils many people today are still exposed to.
But since you may well already have too much omega 6 in your system and it IS hard to avoid ALL these bad actor foods in practice, you also need to boost your intake of omega 3 oils.
If you aren’t allergic and can afford it, eat wild caught fish that are high in omega 3 oils and low in mercury and other toxins from once to three times a week. (Do NOT eat fish high in mercury or farmed fish. They will harm you in other ways.)
And, take omega 3 oil supplements from algae (where the fish get it from) or from purified fish oil every day. DHA and EPA found most in wild caught fish seem to be the most health supporting omega 3 oils.
Eating this way lowers your CRP inflammation and triglycerides. That will reduce the damage in the inner surface of your blood vessels that your body tries to patch up with plaque and cut the amount of small particle LDL that tends to deposit itself.
We also now know that the bacteria that inflame our gums if we don’t know how to keep them healthy and practice those methods daily, tend to also increase inflammation in a way that causes heart disease.
The key things are to floss before you brush and do so in a way that cleans the surface of the teeth on both sides at each location and them to brush the place on your teeth where the gumline is in a way that brushes more on the gums than on the teeth and do this at least once every single day.
It also is important to go to the dentist every six month or a year to clean off the gunk that even those methods still don’t quite remove.
People who do those things have healthy gums; get far less bad breath; keep their teeth; and get far less heart disease.
So, if you want to escape heart disease, don’t take statin drugs. They are a weak after the fact effort to cut your risk a tiny bit. Instead act to remove these other direct causes of heart disease.
Is it more work?
Yes it is. That’s truer today than it has been due to the sedentary nature of our work and lifestyle and the huge amount of cheap and bad for you foods now advertised on TV and sold everywhere.
But it’s worth it. These methods are dramatically more effective in preventing heart disease than statin drugs because they remove the many causes of it before you are harmed. Instead of harmful side effects, you also get health benefits such as being less fat and far less likely to get cancer. Because of your greater circulation and health, your sex life will also tend to be better.
Again I’m out of time today.
So the many other things you can also do to protect your heart we will cover in next Tuesday’s post. These other methods are also more protective and far safer than statin drugs.
Today's Post: Friday, 7-2-2010
Yesterday, we posted that statin drugs are not very effective in preventing heart disease and heart attacks since 100 people need to take them to prevent one heart attack and that they are not effective enough to be worth the very high dollar cost and significant harm that having so many people get from the side effects of statins.
We then point out that doctors would be far more effective in preventing heart disease if they had their patients turn off the direct causes of heart disease instead.
The best known and most harmful of these are:
1. Ingesting trans fats and other hydrogenated oils.
2. Eating lots of sugars and refined grains (&/or ingesting artificial sweeteners that boost your desire for those foods.)
3. NOT getting moderate physical activity and quite vigorous exercise every week.
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
Yesterday, we posted about why the first 3 things cause heart disease and what people can do to reverse each one.
Simply put ingesting trans fats and other hydrogenated oils and eating lots of sugars and refined grains -- and surprisingly artificial sweeteners – results in people getting far more of the small particle LDL that causes heart disease in their blood. Conversely, regular and vigorous exercise reduces small particle LDL in your blood.
That means if you stop ingesting these harmful things except for small amounts of sugar very occasionally and do regular and vigorous exercise most days of every week, you successfully clear your blood of the main direct cause of heart disease and heart attacks. AND, you do so dramatically more effectively than by taking statin drugs.
Today, we cover the 4th and 5th direct causes of heart disease and safer ways to lower your risk other than statin drugs.
Those two direct causes are:
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
4. Getting any exposure to tobacco smoke.
Tobacco smoke is one of the most effective causes of heart disease and heart attacks.
Few smokers have any clue that this is so or if they have heard it, they have no clue how strongly this is so.
They have heard about the little problem from smoking, the cancers that it causes. Smoking is known to cause at least 30 % of all cancers and as much as 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer. That usually doesn’t trouble smokers. They just think it hasn’t happened yet and that they will be one of the people who doesn’t get cancer and keep smoking.
The problem is that they do NOT know that every cigarette they smoke or breathe the smoke of as second hand smoke makes a small deposit on to the plaque build up in their blood vessels and also speeds aging.
HDL is desirable because it helps clear your blood vessels. But smoking lowers your HDL and makes the HDL you still have less effective at clearing your blood vessels. Smoking also tends to harm the inner surface of your blood vessels and cause inflammation. So your body tries to patch the damage by laying down plaque to cover it.
Smoking also increases homocysteine. It’s still not certain that this causes damage directly though I believe it does. But it IS certain that people who have high homocysteine age faster and develop more heart disease than people who don’t. That’s true even if homocysteine is a marker for damage caused instead of a cause of the damage. So it’s certain that smoking has those effects.
Nor is this all. Far from it.
Scans of the blood vessels of smokers show a great deal more plaque in their blood vessels than nonsmokers. So, these changes that theory says should have this effect have been TESTED as doing so.
Worse. There’s more!
Tobacco smoke whether self-administered or as second hand smoke triggers heart attacks and does so in people who would escape those heart attacks if the smoke was not there.
(We know that because in communities that sharply increased the number of places people are not allowed to smoke, rates of heart attacks fell so much and so fast that this is the only explanation that fits the facts. And, this is backed up by separate studies of how quickly exposure to smoke boosts your blood pressure and causes other changes in your blood that add strain on your heart.)
So, if you want to escape heart disease, don’t take statin drugs. They are a weak after the fact effort to cut your risk a tiny bit. Instead act to remove the other direct causes of heart disease.
For this cause do these things.
Decline to start smoking. If you smoke quit -- even if you have to go to great efforts to do so. To the absolute best of your ability, avoid ALL second hand smoke. And, every time you can vote for increasing taxes on tobacco or cigarettes or restricting where people can smoke, do it!
5. Having excessive inflammation from ingesting too many omega 6 oils & ingesting too little omega 3 oils without knowing the health harm that does and from failure to know and do the daily things that keep your gums healthy.
Tobacco smoke causes inflammation which is one of several reasons it causes heart disease.
But there are two other causes of inflammation that cause heart disease that harm so many people they are worth taking action on also.
The first one is the big one.
People evolved to eat edible plants and animals and fish that were active and ate the food they evolved to eat.
The plant foods they ate either had very little oils or had mostly monosaturated oils such as those found in nuts, avocados, and olives. They did NOT contain any significant amount of omega 6 oils.
And the wild game and wild caught fish they ate had about as many omega 3 oils as they did omega 6 oils.
So our bodies we inherited from them are set to work properly on that one to one ratio between omega 3 oils and omega 6 oils.
But, grains are high in omega 6 oils as are many oils derived from them such as corn, soy, safflower, and canola.
But recently, people began to eat massive amounts of refined grains that didn’t even have fiber to reduce the uptake of the omega 6 oils. And we began penning up animals and fish & feeding them grains too instead of their natural diets. Then, both their fat AND ours began to have FIFTEEN times as much omega 6 oils as omega 3 oils.
This has two effects. It dramatically increases CRP inflammation. And, since the grains we have eaten and fed our farmed animals and fish have been grains on which pesticides and herbicides were used this has caused their fat and ours to contain bioconcentrated and larger concentrations of pesticides and herbicides than were on the grain itself.
The inflammation causes heart disease. And the inflammation plus chemical pollution tends to cause cancer.
So, that has several cures. Eat as close to zero refined grain foods as you can manage. Eat only whole grain foods and eat from almost none to only moderate amounts of whole grain foods. Do NOT buy or cook with or eat corn, soy, safflower, and canola oils.
Extra virgin olive oil is the best alternative. Small and occasional amounts of butter from cows fed only grass and coconut oil can be OK.
Eat meat only from animals fed their natural diet such as beef from cows fed only grass or pasture fed chickens. If you must eat meat or dairy products from grain fed animals, eat the leanest and lowest fat version you can manage and don’t do it often.
Those practices stop you from ingesting the killer amounts of omega 6 oils many people today are still exposed to.
But since you may well already have too much omega 6 in your system and it IS hard to avoid ALL these bad actor foods in practice, you also need to boost your intake of omega 3 oils.
If you aren’t allergic and can afford it, eat wild caught fish that are high in omega 3 oils and low in mercury and other toxins from once to three times a week. (Do NOT eat fish high in mercury or farmed fish. They will harm you in other ways.)
And, take omega 3 oil supplements from algae (where the fish get it from) or from purified fish oil every day. DHA and EPA found most in wild caught fish seem to be the most health supporting omega 3 oils.
Eating this way lowers your CRP inflammation and triglycerides. That will reduce the damage in the inner surface of your blood vessels that your body tries to patch up with plaque and cut the amount of small particle LDL that tends to deposit itself.
We also now know that the bacteria that inflame our gums if we don’t know how to keep them healthy and practice those methods daily, tend to also increase inflammation in a way that causes heart disease.
The key things are to floss before you brush and do so in a way that cleans the surface of the teeth on both sides at each location and them to brush the place on your teeth where the gumline is in a way that brushes more on the gums than on the teeth and do this at least once every single day.
It also is important to go to the dentist every six month or a year to clean off the gunk that even those methods still don’t quite remove.
People who do those things have healthy gums; get far less bad breath; keep their teeth; and get far less heart disease.
So, if you want to escape heart disease, don’t take statin drugs. They are a weak after the fact effort to cut your risk a tiny bit. Instead act to remove these other direct causes of heart disease.
Is it more work?
Yes it is. That’s truer today than it has been due to the sedentary nature of our work and lifestyle and the huge amount of cheap and bad for you foods now advertised on TV and sold everywhere.
But it’s worth it. These methods are dramatically more effective in preventing heart disease than statin drugs because they remove the many causes of it before you are harmed. Instead of harmful side effects, you also get health benefits such as being less fat and far less likely to get cancer. Because of your greater circulation and health, your sex life will also tend to be better.
Again I’m out of time today.
So the many other things you can also do to protect your heart we will cover in next Tuesday’s post. These other methods are also more protective and far safer than statin drugs.
Labels: 6 ways to prevent heart attacks, eat to protect your heart, statins drive up health care costs and provide poor heart protection, turn off the causes of heart disease
posted by David at 2:38 PM
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