Better treatments   --  3/18/15

Anticoagulants Recommendations:  “It is not true that most cases of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in medical patients can be prevented.”   Fails to show benefit over risk except for the very highest risk for coronary events and strokes.  Aspirin as an antiplatelet  reduces risk of stroke, embolism, and MI[1]; as an anti-inflammatory drug reduces for atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and rheumatoid & osteoarthritis; and because of activation of necrosis factor reduces risk of  cancer risk & increases survival; and these benefits are dose dependent. Thus take one or two 325 mg aspirin daily.  Other than a 4% increased long-term risk of gastric ulcer, aspirin is safe.  That 4% is much lower than the 3.43% of major bleeding per year with warfarin.[2]  Risk is greatly reduces with elimination of Helicobacter Pylori bacteria.  When all causes of death are included anticoagulants don’t save lives, see WARIS study.  From 1992 to 1996, I took under physician advice eight 325 mg (2.5 grams) coated aspirin per day for chronic back pain (inflammation), and had zero heart burn, and has since then takes 1 to 3, 325 mgs daily.  My blood pressure is 125 over 75, total cholesterol level low below 175, and in the 7^th decade I run once a week, swim once a week, and weight train 4 days weekly.      

Arrhythmia involves the greatest degree of complexity: in treatments tailored to conditions & in diagnosis relying upon technologies. Looking in from the outside, it would be inappropriate for me to judge physical interventions though given the record of corporate medicine caution is in line, e.g., catheter ablation has critics, drugs critics and so on.   1) Avoid drugs for arrhythmia (they are not magic bullets)--except during an emergency where a much different sort of drug is given.  Long term trials confirm that the great increase the death rate through pro-arrhythmia. “Treatment strategies designed solely to suppress these arrhythmias should no longer be followed” JAMA.  2) Arrhythmia is used as a reason for prescribing anticoagulants.  Take only aspirin in sufficiently high dose (325 to 975 mg/day) to prevent tolerance from developing & it has many other benefits. Low dose is a pharma plow, for long term it doesn’t have an antiplatelet effect—pharma studies in the last 20 on aspirin are all short-term or designed to exaggerate the risks. 

Atherosclerosis:  Healthful lifestyle of normal weight, low sugar diet, and regular exercise.  Don’t worry about cholesterol and saturated fats they are good for you.  Pharma still through their continuing education class teaches doctors the cholesterol myth which they treat with diet and statins.  Watch the documentaries exposing the myth.  For everyone, take CoQ10, Vitamin C, and aspirin are all protective.  Testosterone lowers risk of MI, heart failure, and metabolic syndrome.  Estradiol is why women don’t develop cardiovascular disease until after menopause. High blood pressure is associated with adverse advents because it is a marker for atherosclerosis, just like fever is for influenza.  It is not a cause of those events, except for the much less common hemorrhagic stroke.  But pharma makes billions telling doctors that hypertension is the cause of heart attacks and strokes; rather it is young, unstable plaque that leaks.    

Cancer chemotherapy:  For treatment and diagnosis a teach hospital is best.  Become knowledgeable.  Given the marketing bias in practice of medicine, in journals and in textbooks, start with a search of the critical journal articles concerning treatment and diagnosis.   Time counts; have a biopsy as soon as possible.  Read carefully the results concerning the abnormality of the tissue and size of tumor. The term cancer, malignant, and carcinoma can only properly be applied if the tumor has spread outside the tissue of origin, but often it is applied misleading to in situ tumors.  The greater the abnormality of the cells, the greater the risk,[3] and the more likely it will be called malignant though it is benign.  If the risk is substantial that the local tumor will evolve into cancer, have it removed.  Remember that time increases the risk of an indolent cancer becoming aggressive, and/or metastatic.  If chemotherapy is recommended, submit to it only when major benefits are clearly documented, and deduct for bias, which is the norm.  Don’t rely upon treatment guidelines, they are based upon marketing science, so too is the advice of the oncologist whose continuing education is given by pharma.  Published articles have an average bias of 32%.  Only for a few cancers does chemotherapy save lives, the rest are not curative (see hope’s hypothesis), nor does chemo prevent a missed indolent cancer from becoming aggressive or metastatic.  If it is curable, then see if an in vitro chemo-sensitivity testing[4] is available.  The term survival referring to chemo that is not curative, this term means to live a couple of months longer.  If the cancer is not cured in terminal patients as tested in phase iii clinical trials, then if your cancer is metastatic it too won’t be cured. If it isn’t metastatic then there is no need for chemotherapy, because it won’t stop the growth of a missed tumor.  In either case it is best not to poison yourself which often significantly reduces the quality of your remaining years.  In the majority of cases aspirin is the best prophylactic and best treatment because it activates necrosis factor NF-B.  Read Aspirin, & Aspirin's Cancer Protection. Take 325 mg of aspirin, or more, with each meal for the first 5 years.  This ability of aspirin is one more unstated reason for pharma to oppose the use of aspirin.  If aspirin irritates stomach take Tums and avoid a protein pump inhibitor.  If acid indigestion is severe, check for Pylori bacteria, which causes ulcers, and is easily eradicated.  For reducing risk of cancer take 325 or 650 mg daily.  JK has taken aspirin since 1992, an average of 650 mg, and this has reduced his cancer risk over 50%.  Testosterone and natural estrogen moderately reduce risks for certain cancers, though pharma claims otherwise.

Hypertension:  In over 90% of cases where the blood pressure is above 160/90, it is atherosclerosis that causes hypertension and the associated renal damage.  Neither can be reversed with drug therapy. “In developed countries, the two leading causes of death,  myocardial infarction , and stroke, may each directly result from an arterial system that has been slowly and progressively compromised by years of deterioration (see atherosclerosis)” Wiki.  But pharma stresses HBP for which their drugs can lower BP.  There is no quick fix for the damaged kidneys or clogged, stiff calcified arteries.  Encapsulated plaque with fibrous matrix cannot be removed (dissolved) with drugs. Treatment ought to be at stopping the process of atherogenesis and thus through revascularization healing will progress. Since the problem is not cholesterol, a drug such as a statins does not change the course of events—though pharma claims it does.  Its tobacco science, watch documentaries or read Cholesterol Myth.  For atherosclerosis there is a better approach:  long-term program of life-style changes involving exercise and low-insulin diet; supplements and drugs 325 mg aspirin and CoQ10,   natural estrogen (estradiol with progesterone reduces MI by 50%)[5] and testosterone which strengthens myocardial muscles, promotes healing, & reduces risk of metabolic syndrome, and diabetes.  These will stop atherogenesis and allow the body to partially heal.

Heart attack

Do List:  Myocardial Infarction, MI, Acute Ischemic Coronary Event, Heart Attack: 

Prior to event, take daily 325 mg of aspirin (it has many health benefits including reducing MI risk by 51%)[6]and live a healthful lifestyle. Past menopause, take  estradiol with progesterone (natural HRT)[7].  It is why MI for premenopausal women is rare.  It is very significantly cardiovascular protective.  Men, testosterone if level is below 350, for it increases muscle mass , strength, lowers MI risk; low testosterone is associated with metabolic syndrome, and aggressive prostate cancer.  See relevant portions above.  Find out where an angioplasty is available at all hours.  This and the injection of a powerful clot-busting drug are the only significantly effective treatment, but must be administered in the first three hours from onset of MI in the first 90 minutes, after that their value is not worth the risks. 

Acute Event With onset of symptoms take 325 mg of not-coated aspirin sublingually—the more the better.   Nitroglycerin is also very effective.  Keep your wits about you and resist and remember if testing doesn’t leading to usefully treatment, then don’t be tested.  In this case an angiogram after 2 hours is not worth the consequences.  

Recovery phase:   continue with hormone replacement therapy, 325 mg aspirin, and Q10.  Exercise reduces angina pain.  Angina will over several years diminish as revascularization occurs naturally.  Allow the body to heal naturally. 

Avoid list:  CRITICAL CARE:  (in order of importance):  downers (psychotropic drug), high blood pressure medication,  antiarrhythmics,[8] Protein Pump Inhibitor (PPI), heparin & other blood thinners but for aspirin, and  oxygen[9].   Instead of heparin or similar anticoagulant promptly take 975 mgs aspirin, followed by one every 4 hours.[10]  Downers (psychotropic drugs[11]) have many indications such as anti-nauseas, muscle relaxant, sedative. If drowsiness or mental confusion is a side effect, it is probably a downer (or an opiate).  Drugged, the patient is less likely to inform the nurse of a negative turn in their condition, or resist their doctor’s advice. Drugs for hypertension other than nitroglycerin do not lower morality Cochrane Library.  

RECOVERY:  PPI is recommended with the anticoagulant, but PPIs are addicting because of the rebound effect, and long-term usage causes serious life-shortening, side effects such as osteoporosis & colitis.  Tums is a better choice.  Statins are justified only by marketing science.  Counter to their marketing science improved lipid profile[12] is like lowering fever instead of treating the infection; statins lower quality of life.[13]  Ventricular assist devices cause MIs thus shorten life.  PPI, statin, blood pressure drugs[14], blood thinner, antiarrhythmics drug therapy, and downer lack quality evidence that prove their net worth and superiority to other choices; yet they are routinely administered in the hospital and nursing home, when the patient is most vulnerable.  Keep it simple; Doctors are pill pushers.  Avoid polypharmacy because it multiplies the risk of major side effects.  All too often their side effects are treated with additional drugs.  All side effects are grossly under-reported.  Most drugs started in the hospital and nursing home will be continued long-term.  As stated above, treatment protocols are “messaged” by the pharmaceutical industry, and doctors find it very prudent to follow them, unless you instruct them otherwise.  While recovering, avoid both stent and bypass operations:  “studies have failed to find reduction in hard endpoints for angioplasty vs. medical therapy in-stable angina patients.  The artery-opening procedure alleviates chest pain far more quickly than medical therapy, but has not been shown to prolong life.  The vast majority of MIs do not originate with obstructions that narrow arteries" Wiki.  An exception would for acute STEMI with unstable refractory angina with objective evidence of ischemia, UK study.   My father in 1953 had a very severe heart attack; a second one 2 years later. In the era before drugs, angioplasty, bypass operations, statins, hypertensive drugs he receive morphine and lidocaine for heart beat.  And subsequently he had little pills of nitroglycerin which he placed under his tongue for attacks of angina.  The angina lasted 10 years and he died of a stroke in 1976, 23 ½ years after his first heart attack at the age of 76.  Twenty-three years of bad health was the price he paid for smoking 2 packs of Camels daily.   In that same era, Dwight David Eisenhower also smoked 2 packs a day.  He had had a major heart attack in 1955 and was cared for in the same year at the same hospital as my father.  Ike had 7 heart attacks and died of congestive heart failure 12 years later in 1969 at the age of 78.    

Bad Pharma:  Any discussion of what people take for health must be prefaced by an assessment of the ploys of the major pharmaceutical corporations, hereafter called (big) pharma.  On point are three statements.  Harvard Professor Marcia Angell MD, states “We certainly are in a health care crisis ... If we had set out to design the worst system that we could imagine, we couldn't have imagined one as bad as we have.” Dr. Philippe Even describes it”  “The pharmaceutical industry is the most lucrative, the most cynical and the least ethical of all the industries.  It is like an octopus with tentacles that has infiltrated all the decision-making bodies:  world health organizations, government agencies, parliaments, high administrations in health and hospitals and the medical profession."  Dr. Des Spence a British Medical Journal columnist describes this process “Conduct questionable research and control the original data[1], then schmooze health regulators and patient groups to established more inclusive drug-treatment protocols that is supported by the questionable science.”  The 800 pound gorilla (a phrase used by Dr. Marcia Angell) gives the continuing education class required for doctors, who then repeat to patients what they have learnt from the gorilla’s thought leaders[2] & sales reps, and often officially approved in schmoozed treatment guidelines.  In our corporatist state, the FDA is a friend of pharma; and our corporate media won’t offend its major source of income.  The same forces which caused the tobacco companies to glamorize cigarettes in the 1920s fully aware of its health consequences, to aggressively market them, and to produce junk science to deny their harm; these forces operate upon all corporations, including pharma.  Pharma is very good at persuading doctors and the public that their new drugs are developed based on the latest sophisticated advancements in medical science, and thus that they are much better than older drugs.  While there are some, the vast majority of new drugs are short term barely better than nothing at all (a placebo) in phase III testing for the FDA.  They are not compared to older drugs.  They then are hyped based upon subsequent junk science phase IV studies generated by pharma’s marketing departments.  This “information” is fed in required continuing education classes to doctors by well paid thought leaders.  Their control of research which produces junk science and their influence upon treatment guidelines has turned upside down the decision process and forced doctors to rely upon thought leaders rather; a process that Prof. Ben Goldacre, MD calls, “expert based medicine”.  Every move made by pharma is designed to increase profits, which is the fiduciary duty of pharma.  Knowing what has happened to medical science:  an incredible amount of harm has resulted, and this website is dedicated to exposing it. 

Take a deep breath and absorb the dismal state of medicine; and if inclined to read more, start with Marketing Science.   What follows is the summation of several thousand hours of analysis of journal articles and medical textbooks on over 30 health/treatment topics.  This information has been used in the development of the http://healthfully.org website—started in 2004.  The results are at variance to the gorilla’s marketing science.

The purpose is both to advise and educate:  advice on what works, doesn’t work, and to educate on the relevant basic biology.  What follows below is based on careful analysis of the journal articles adjusted for marketing-science bias.  For confirmation of claims here made, go to http://healthfully.org/rc/ and /rl.  Based on a large body of published journal articles, three drugs are clearly very healthful.  Aspirin and natural hormones—estradiol and testosterone--have come under attack by pharma (corporate medicine).  Minor health concerns with these drugs are blown out of proportion by junk science, and their benefits contradicted by more marking (junk) science, or simply ignored.  The third Q10 is totally safe; thus only its benefits are denied and/or ignored.  Pharma’s recommended doses are well below the ideal.  That is to be expected from profit seeking corporations, since these drugs would dramatically lower the sales of their block-busters.  Moreover, physicians are taught by pharma in continuing educations class that that if a patient insists on taking aspirin or hormones, that because of “serious health risks” they should be taken in the lowest dose for the shortest time.  At http://healthfully.org/rc/index.html you will find the evidence based upon meticulous journal research (links provided) and the basic biology of the medical conditions.  Remember that Pharma hawks remedies by hyping benefits and hiding side effects.  They do junk science to support those claims and to eliminate off-patent competition such as from aspirin and hormones.  The corporate forces that shape the tobacco companies are at work upon pharma. Corporations are profit-maximizing entities.