Dr. Ron Rosedale talks about common cholesterol myths.
Archive for July, 2009
cholesterol myths
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009“The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”, by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D, C.N.S.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Buy this book. It is like a text book on important food, so, as a reference, it is useful even without being read cover to cover. Amazingly informative. I have been working on converting to a fat burning metabolism instead of a diet of potatoes and breads.
Tracking Nutrition, part two
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
I have found interesting things by tracking my nutrition on www.dailyburn.com. Very cool tool. Keeping up with what you have eaten is no problem if you take the time to jot it down. It isn’t all that difficult to remember regardless. Inputting the information is where the breakdown can occur. I have Dailyburn as a gadget on my iGoogle homepage. This make compliance a cinch.
Tracking Nutrition
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009I found this site Daily Burn. It is pretty easy to enter the foods you have eaten throughout the day. Most of the individual food items are already in the database. It also helps you track your water consumption, a very important feature on these hot summer days.
You have to create an account which only requires an email. You can set your own goals. Each day you are able to see how closely you come to that end.
Drugs Companies
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Letter to Congress:
As a former drug representative for Eli Lilly, I spent 20 months increasing the market
share of my company’s drugs. I was recruited fresh from college with an eager desire to employ
my degree in molecular biology and biochemistry. Shortly after my hiring, it became clearly
apparent that a drug sale had much more to do with establishing personal relationships than it did
with understanding the latest science. However, any doubts I held regarding the effectiveness of
such methods were dispelled by the results of my persuasiveness and the financial rewards I
received for my efforts. The latter also helped me rationalize the many ethically dubious
situations I routinely encountered in my work. Upon my departure from the industry, I began
working for the public’s health. Seven years later, as a result of my experiences and education I
am more convinced than ever that the goals of the pharmaceutical industry often stand in direct
conflict with the practice of ethical and responsible medicine. Nothing in my recent research
causes me to believe that my experiences were anything but typical of the training and practice
of the majority of drug reps plying their trade today.
The Role of Drug Reps
“There’s a big bucket of money sitting in every [doctor’s] office.” – Michael Zubillaga, Astra
Zeneca Regional Sales Director, Oncology
Ostensibly, the drug rep provides a valuable service to the practicing clinician. Their role
is explained by the industry as a means to provide valuable education to physicians and to supply
all-important samples, especially to those patients who normally can’t afford to pay for their own
medications. I am convinced that these justifications are nothing more than a distraction from the
actual purpose of pharmaceutical sales representatives: to sell. To sell pharmaceuticals means
convincing doctors to prescribe your product more than your competitors despite what might be
the more suitable drug for the patient. It means swaying doctors to use your product in instances
where they may not think to despite what might be medically acceptable usage. It means
persuading doctors to use your drug when a non-medication therapy would be a better
alternative. This means rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your
product and company despite what might be ethically appropriate. This means to sell, as one
would any other marketed product. MORE>>>
Lipoprotein
Sunday, July 5th, 2009The post below is from Chris Hardy. He will be a contributing author to Yaboga.com. As a result, lots of good dietary information is forthcoming.
Hey everyone,
The below article is about Lipoprotein A (AKA Lp(a)) as a cardiac risk factor. This has been in the literature for several years especially among progressive cardiologists. Niacin supplementation (Vitamin B3) is the best method for controlling this initially, while dietary modification is the long-term fix. I guarantee you they will try to market a drug to lower this. Niacin already fits the bill, but then again, you can’t make a profit on something consumers can buy over the counter…………
Christopher G. Hardy, D.O. MPH CSCS
“Posts by this author are for informational purposes only. They are not intended, nor should be taken as medical advice. Please consult your physician before starting any new nutritional and/or exercise program. The views expressed are the author’s alone, and are not necessary those of Johns Hopkins University or the United States Navy.”
Another Blood Fat Fuels Heart Attack Risk
Danish study fingers high levels of lipoprotein(a)
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
(HealthDay News) — Yet another type of blood fat may be linked to higher cardiac risk, a new study suggests.
A Danish study finds an increased risk of heart attacks in people whose genes give them high blood levels of a cholesterol-related blood fat, lipoprotein(a), but the researchers say more work is needed to justify treatment to reduce those levels.
“We show that those with the 10 percent highest lipoprotein(a) have a two- to threefold increased risk of myocardial infarction [heart attack], similar to that for the highest LDL cholesterol levels,” said Dr. Borge G. Nordestgaard, a professor of clinical biochemistry at Copenhagen University, and lead author of a report in the June 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
However, a large-scale trial is needed to tell whether drugs aimed at reducing lipoprotein(a) (LPA) levels would lower the risk, Nordestgaard said. One compound, niacin, also known as nicotinic acid or vitamin B3, is known to reduce LPA levels, he said.
“I am not aware of other drugs being developed to lower lipoprotein(a), but I certainly hope that our study will make big pharmaceutical companies interested in developing such drugs,” Nordestgaard said.
LPA consists of a molecule of LDL cholesterol, the “bad” kind that clogs arteries, attached to a number of units of protein. The number of protein units attached to the LDL unit can vary widely.
Nordestgaard and his colleagues have been studying the relationship of LPA to heart disease for years. Their latest report uses data from three studies that included more than 40,000 Danes, with follow-up periods as long as 16 years.
“We observed an increase in risk of myocardial infarction with increased levels of lipoprotein(a),” the researchers wrote. The risk was highest in people whose LPA had a smaller number of lipoprotein attachments, they noted.
Caution is needed in interpreting the results because all the people in the studies were white, Nordestgaard said. “People of African descent have the highest lipoprotein(a) levels, while those of European descent and most Asians have similar levels, but lower levels than blacks,” he noted.
The studies of LPA levels and heart disease in ethnic groups other than whites have been limited, Nordestgaard said. “It is likely that high lipoprotein(a) levels are also important in other ethnic groups, but we need new and much larger studies to confirm this,” he said.
The findings could influence medical efforts to reduce heart attack risk, Nordestgaard said. “People who develop heart attacks despite cholesterol-lowering statin treatment may have high levels of lipoprotein(a),” he said. “Also, in medium-risk individuals, an elevated lipoprotein(a) level may suggest that the patient should be given a statin or niacin.”
The new study is “an elegant biological demonstration of the link between lipoprotein(a) and heart attack,” said Dr. Christopher J. O’Donnell, associate director of the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Framingham Heart Study, and co-author of an accompanying editorial
“But it doesn’t alter the balance of evidence that to date doesn’t support doing a test on the serum level or a genetic test for LPA,” O’Donnell said. “There would have to be some type of evidence that direct treatment of LPA lowers the risk or that a subgroup of people with an elevated risk have their risk lowered in some way.”
Such evidence would have to come from a truly large-scale study, O’Donnell said. “We would have to screen an entire population,” he said. Meanwhile, there is “no compelling evidence” that LPA-lowering therapy would affect coronary risk, he said.
More information
The means and meaning of testing LPA levels are described by U.S. National Library of Medicine.
SOURCES: Borge G. Nordestgaard, M.D., professor, clinical biochemistry, Copenhagen, Denmark; Christopher J. O’Donnell, M.D., associate director, U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Framingham Heart Study; June 10, 2009, Journal of the American Medical Association