Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

[OM] Cardio Vascular Disease [was: Pungo Creek Butcher]

Subject: [OM] Cardio Vascular Disease [was: Pungo Creek Butcher]
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 23:12:20 -0700
On 9/6/2013 2:10 PM, Brian Swale wrote:
> Moose wrote about what I wrote
>> .........
> Michael C. Johnston seems to have just taken a broad-based look at the
> range of diet books without going into important science.

Agreed. I only linked to it because it is such a good summary of the range of 
firmly held, 'correct' ideas about diet. 
In the world of nutrition science, the main difference seems to be that the 
professionals don't have best selling books. 
I like the video I linked to in part because Christopher Gardner does not take 
himself too seriously as some sort of 
expert who knows all the answers.

> I watched about 20% of the video
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo
> ie, 16 minutes of the total 1 hour 16 minutes, and it seemed that what he is
> on about is obesity and weight-loss.

Impatience ... It's at minute 23 that he starts showing the effects of the 
different diets on cardiovascular blood 
chemistry risk factors. From then on, it's a mixture of  stuff about losing 
weight and the effect of diet on health and 
well being. Only an hour long, before a question period. You forced me to watch 
it again - but I'm not sorry.

If you watch the whole thing, I expect you will find it hard to support a high 
carb diet for the majority of people. 
That is what you proposed in your post, and one of the things in it with which 
I disagree. Gardner is too smart to 
explore the possibility in public, but there is the possibility that high carb 
diets, as recommended by the 
medical/nutritional establishment, have contributed to the large increase in 
incidence of diabetes. Can't likely be 
proven, but the differences in response to a high carb diet by people with 
different insulin responses, near the end of 
the video, is suggestive.

> Those are irrelevant to what interests me, which is the total obliteration of
> the leading cause of premature death in the Western World; vascular
> disease, caused by atherosclerosis and arterosclerosis. Currently,
> somewhere around 35% of premature deaths are cause by heart attacks
> and strokes, and nearly all are preventable; BUT most of the health advisers
> seem to think these are not avoidable. Through knowledge of biochemistry
> relating to artery health, these premature deaths ARE avoidable, and if a
> person has arterial disease already, this can be reversed.

The problem is that there are many conflicting opinions about how to 
stop/reverse the course of the disease. Many are 
from important authorities who simply disagree.

> Please look at this 10 minute video; the voice is that of Dr Joe Prendergast.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqLcblMyIY

Well, that was a fairly slick piece of promotion, almost completely lacking in 
anything substantive. I am not quite the 
uninformed tyro you might assume. When Dr. Myer Friedman was recruiting 
subjects for a 10 year study of cardiovascular 
disease, he showed us what was then the most famous slide in cardiology, the 
first slide showing a ruptured plaque and 
the resulting clot that had killed the patient.

As the video says, up until an assistant of Dr. Friedman's found it, everyone 
assumed that plaque buildup eventually 
slowed blood flow to dangerous levels. What no one knew until then was the 
actual cause of the acute infarction. It 
doesn't really go with a very slow restriction, but no one had a cause of the 
sudden event.

So I've known about one of the great revelations of the video for well over 20 
years.  I did qualify for that study, 
which required NO evidence whatsoever of CV disease. I still had no signs at 
the end of my participation ten years later.

Dr. Friedman had followed up on his famous book, "Type A Behavior and Your 
Heart" by conducting a series of increasingly 
ambitious studies of the effect of time urgency and unwarranted, chronic anger 
on the course of CV disease.

His immediate prior, five year, study tracked the lives of two groups of people 
who had just had a first heart attack. 
It was stopped early, based on ethical grounds. The results were so 
statistically strong that it was considered 
unethical not to offer the results to the control group, who were dying off 
much faster.

At that time, his protocol, which is entirely based on behavior modification, 
was the single, most effective treatment 
for reducing subsequent mortality of survivors of first heart attacks.

The study I was lucky enough to be a treatment subject in was a ten year study 
of people between the ages of 45 and 65 
at the beginning who had no detectable CVD. It was going well, i.e. my group 
was having fewer heart attacks and dying 
off more slowly, (we got periodic progress reports) when statins came on the 
scene.

It wasn't that they were more effective, or even whether they were effective at 
all. The problem was that the sample 
size wasn't large enough to statistically separate any effect from statins from 
the effects of the research protocol. So 
the study was never published. Unfortunate, as I believe it would be a major 
treatment had the study been publishable. 
More info here. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMopJ_eb3c>

Research starting in 1840 has shown endlessly that morbidity and mortality are 
closely linked with social status. The 
facts aren't in doubt. The question was always what the actual physiological 
causes behind this are. Research carried 
out by Robert Sapolsky on the metabolisms of apes in Africa shows the vast 
difference between dominant males and 
submissive males, and its health effects/implications. Friedman's research and 
theory is similar, in that it posits 
metabolic and physiologic effects of long term chronic, as opposed to 
occasional acute, 'fight or flight' bodily 
chemistry, as caused by certain common behavior patterns

I bring all this up to point out that not all prominent, expert investigators 
of CVD believe that the chemical magic 
bullet approach is even a useful path. And not all research points that way.

As Chuck has pointed out, using the Nobel Prize for discovering the messenger 
effect of nitric oxide in such a way as to 
seem as though it is also an endorsement of the L-A treatment is unethical, to 
my mind. It isn't stated directly, but 
clearly implied, in the video. And didn't Dr. Prendergast later drop that 
treatment, over concerns about side effects? 
Was this video made before that? If not, it's simply blatant misrepresentation 
today.

As to the claim of making no referrals to hospitals, I believe that is either 
another misrepresentation, as presented in 
the video, in neglecting to say it's only no CV related referrals, or a good 
reason to pull his license to practice 
medicine. My mother had diabetes, and I was her primary support through her 
final years. Her primary care physician was 
an endocrinologist, very highly regarded, and he sent her to the hospital 
several times, none CV related. Diabetes, 
especially in the elderly, is a serious disease, with many effects/symptoms, a 
number of which may require 
hospitalization. People, especially the elderly, not uncommonly require 
hospital treatment for other causes, as well.

He is either a liar, in the video, or an incompetent physician, if he has 
treated thousands of patients without a single 
hospital referral in 15 years.

All of that aside, I believe, as someone with more than usual lay knowledge, 
that the causes of CVD are too varied, 
complex and interactive to be fully understood to date. I also strongly suspect 
that ingestion of large amounts of a 
single chemical is not likely to be a simple cure for everybody, or even a 
majority.

There is also the problem of placebo effect and Physician effects. The promise 
of cure from a treatment and the effect 
of physician personality, especially empathy and compassion and/or an aura of 
authority, on clinical outcomes is quite 
powerful, and one of the reasons for double blind studies, rather than 
anecdotal evidence, which is what the video story 
is, at bottom.

Sorry if this rains on your parade, but I believe my knowledge and experience 
make my opinions in the matter the equal 
of yours. I doubt that Dr Prendergast is a huckster, per se, but it seems to me 
that the video puts him in that light.

A. Skeptical Moose

-- 
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
-- 
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz