Before I stop with the diet stuff, I want to touch on Dr. Ancel Keyes one last time. The reason for that is I saw a title to a video on how Keyes was the guy who is responsible for the Statin drugs becoming a very big thing.
I don't know if he personally had much to do with it, but once his view on cholesterol and heart disease was adopted by the public, the medical establishment, and the drug manufacturers got busy.
In 2005 the market in the US for Statin drugs was estimated at about $19 billion dollars. Not chump change, we could say. What does that work out per person? Lipitor is the most successful drug ever developed by 2003, with a sales of about $12 billion in 2008.
All of this is based on Keyes' lipid heart disease hypothesis.
Besides the cost, there are some fun side effects with these drugs. Muscle issues, more diabetes, and liver damage. One might ask if they do any good. I would answer that they do lower cholesterol. And then I might ask back, why would you want to lower your cholesterol. You could point to Keyes and say, there you go.
LDL cholesterol is supposed to be the bad actor. However if you want to look at what Dr. Ali says on YouTube, you will hear that LDL is a real important item and you don't want to suppress it. Also the older you are, the more protective all cholesterol levels are. The higher the better. There is no study that links high LDL with heart disease. Dr. Ali is a cardiologist with a fair amount of experience. Worth listening to, he is an interesting speaker.
(High triglycerides are associated with heart problems however. I don't know if the Statins will lower those, but a low carb diet with deal with them quite effectively.)
Dr. Ali feels that his eyes were opened. He used to toe the default line and probably did not care much about Keyes or the position of the standard of care for cardiac patients. He has decided that he and the standard of care and his fellow cardiologists were wrong. In fact with the traditional treatment, he feels that doctors were actively killing patients.
The current research supports his new view.
One more factoid and I'll leave the low carb band wagon behind. Back in the 30s before there was commercial insulin, the standard of care for diabetics was a low carb high fat diet. When insulin became available the care changed over from diet to drugs. There are a number of doctors who have gone back to a diet based care. Diabetes in patients has either moved into remission or is in control, frequently with no drugs or a much lower dose.
I think that blood sugar is the motivation I had to stop eating carbs. When I was at my last place of work they would do blood work every year for free. Over the 10 years my fasting glucose went from about 102 to about 125, it steadily bumped up a few points every year. There is some higher blood sugar in the family. My grandfather took oral insulin and I think my dad had some indications of creeping issues. I figured I was going to have to face this eventually. Sadly I can't report the current numbers. I'll follow up with a wellness check with the doctors once they get back to work. However I have to think that I'm doing myself some good. I've lost about 10% body weight and last measure my blood pressure was falling - which was another item on the rise.
If anyone is interested, YouTube is a great source to look into some of these items. Dr. Ali is there and Dr. Anwin, as well as many others. Search for low carb high fat or keto and lots of stuff will come up. I watched a bunch of talks from the low carb conferences, which have been held over the last 5 or 6 years. It's fascinating to hear the history of all this.
No comments:
Post a Comment