Just Say No

[Guest guest]

Your right. We taught them well. court martial will be the 23 and 24.

My husband and I are flying down the 22. How is Lucas doing?

[Guest guest]

Debra,

You couldn't be more right, I have often thought that. I don't know

how many opportunities my son was offered to take and even sell drugs

when he was in school. He worked selling candy, at a grocery stores

sacking and all the grunt work, at a barbeque resturant, at Mcs,

finally repairing computers and updating computer systems while still

in high school.

But while he was at the beginning of that difficult after school career,

he was offered the chance to use his bike to deliver drugs by kids who

had beepers and flashed 100.00 dollar bills and laughed at him for all

his hard work.

When it came to drugs, he asked me at least 5 questions everytime he

took so much as a Tylenol or Aspirin. What if I don't need it, will

that hurt, how much should I take, should I wait until I am sure I need

really badly....

And when he went into the military all the questions began, tons of

questions and tests, had he ever used drugs etc. They wanted the kids

who had the most respect for their bodies, kids who obviously had

respect for the rules, kids who took the high road not the easy path.

Then they wanted kids who had no respect for their bodies and would just

say yes, those who would be injected with (of all things!) the Anthrax

vaccine from that awful lab. What convoluted logic the military has.

Suddenly a generation's best virtue.. regarding their body, their life

with respect became less than a virtue... How were they supposed to turn

that " Just say no " attitude off and trust those who have a history of

lies and human experimentation. Worse yet it seemed that peer pressure

was in order, " ..the others are taking it! What's wrong with you? "

Isn't all that just the exact opposite of what we taught them??

The truth is that this vaccine has far more potential for dammage than

the marijuana we warned them away from will ever have! And even some

of the other things on my big " say no " list.

Gretchen

> From: Debra Westfall <dawn@...>

>

> I was sitting at my desk tonight trying to put together facts on the

> anthrax vaccine for our Ladies Aux. VFW meeting. When it hit me that the

> group of young people that are catching hell from the military are the

> first groups to go through the " Just Say No " to drugs program in school. I

> remember when the program first came out when Lucas was in elementary.

> It's ironic that we taught these people as youths to refuse unsafe drugs

> and other substances bad for their bodies and now the government is going

> against everything we spent so many years instilling in them. I just

> wanted to share this thought.

> Debra Westfall

>

>

[Guest guest]

Debra,

You couldn't be more right, I have often thought that. I don't know

how many opportunities my son was offered to take and even sell drugs

when he was in school. He worked selling candy, at a grocery stores

sacking and all the grunt work, at a barbeque resturant, at Mcs,

finally repairing computers and updating computer systems while still

in high school.

But while he was at the beginning of that difficult after school career,

he was offered the chance to use his bike to deliver drugs by kids who

had beepers and flashed 100.00 dollar bills and laughed at him for all

his hard work.

When it came to drugs, he asked me at least 5 questions everytime he

took so much as a Tylenol or Aspirin. What if I don't need it, will

that hurt, how much should I take, should I wait until I am sure I need

really badly....

And when he went into the military all the questions began, tons of

questions and tests, had he ever used drugs etc. They wanted the kids

who had the most respect for their bodies, kids who obviously had

respect for the rules, kids who took the high road not the easy path.

Then they wanted kids who had no respect for their bodies and would just

say yes, those who would be injected with (of all things!) the Anthrax

vaccine from that awful lab. What convoluted logic the military has.

Suddenly a generation's best virtue.. regarding their body, their life

with respect became less than a virtue... How were they supposed to turn

that " Just say no " attitude off and trust those who have a history of

lies and human experimentation. Worse yet it seemed that peer pressure

was in order, " ..the others are taking it! What's wrong with you? "

Isn't all that just the exact opposite of what we taught them??

The truth is that this vaccine has far more potential for dammage than

the marijuana we warned them away from will ever have! And even some

of the other things on my big " say no " list.

Gretchen

> From: Debra Westfall <dawn@...>

>

> I was sitting at my desk tonight trying to put together facts on the

> anthrax vaccine for our Ladies Aux. VFW meeting. When it hit me that the

> group of young people that are catching hell from the military are the

> first groups to go through the " Just Say No " to drugs program in school. I

> remember when the program first came out when Lucas was in elementary.

> It's ironic that we taught these people as youths to refuse unsafe drugs

> and other substances bad for their bodies and now the government is going

> against everything we spent so many years instilling in them. I just

> wanted to share this thought.

> Debra Westfall

>

>

[Guest guest]

Lucas is ok. When they revoked his email he really got down. But I just

told him maybe it would speed up things, we knew it would get bad. They

have taken away a number of his duties and assigned them to other. Though

they still let him carry a pistol and shotgun on watch. It seems so many

on ship are on restriction for one thing or another that they gave up not

letting the ones on restriction not do watch.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 6/15/99 2:05:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, dawn@...

writes:

<< Though they still let him carry a pistol and shotgun on watch. >>

This just shows you a little more how irrational the military has been making

decisions. If disobey a lawful order is that serious of a crime, would you

give a gun to that person? Someone you are pushing over the edge, you hand

them a gun?

[Guest guest]

I'm offensive, eh? I was'nt trying to be rude, but thanks for the lovely

mail. I appreciate it. Ya know, it's only degrading if you let it be.

I do adult modeling and am constantly told how 'degrading' it is to women.

Everyone is free to their own opinion, like I said, but I know, as an

average sized person, I see a dwarf just as I see any-damn-one else.

If you want to be nasty about it, and if you want to spend your life feeling

sorry for yourself, go ahead. Noone is gonna stop you.

But life is so much nicer when you forget the bad things and go out and

laugh a bit.

*sigh*

Well, I knew I'd eventually get flamed. Oh well.

>From: SauceyKitty@...

>brokenspirit19@...

>Subject: Re: Just Say No

>Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 13:48:10 EST

>

>Your not a dwarf, you'll never know what its like to be a dwarf. So I

>suggest that you back off. You don't know why " we " get angry, or what it

>feels like to be treated in a degrading and disrespectful manor. So get

>off your knees and stop telling " us " how to feel.

>

>

[Guest guest]

At 07:21 AM 12/23/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>What does it mean? Starting right now, the military cannot give you an

anthrax shot without your informed consent. You will now have the same

right as British or Australian troops (for anthrax vaccine only) to decide

whether or not you really want it.

>

>You heard right: you now have the right to say " No thanks! "

>

>It is possible that the President could invoke a presidential order

stating that servicemembers must take the vaccine without informed consent.

However, given the lack of ay biological weapons found in Iraq or

Afghanistan, and the upcoming presidential elections, it is almost 100%

certain that he will not do so.

>

>Meryl Nass, MD

Glad you are certain.............I don't trust these insane people

Just say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Sheri

>H 207 276-5092

>W 207 288-5082 ext 220 or pager 441

>C 207 522-5229

>

>

[Guest guest]

Considering the nature of the ruling, it is wondered whether its effects will

be retroactive, legally.

That could create some nasty (what a shame, huh?) legal issues for the

government/DOD.

> What does it mean? Starting right now, the military cannot give you an

anthrax

> shot without your informed consent. You will now have the same right as

British

> or Australian troops (for anthrax vaccine only) to decide whether or not you

> really want it.

>

> You heard right: you now have the right to say " No thanks! "

>

> It is possible that the President could invoke a presidential order stating

that

> servicemembers must take the vaccine without informed consent. However, given

> the lack of ay biological weapons found in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the

upcoming

> presidential elections, it is almost 100% certain that he will not do so.

>

> Meryl Nass, MD

> H 207 276-5092

> W 207 288-5082 ext 220 or pager 441

> C 207 522-5229

>

>

[Guest guest]

..> Glad you are certain.............I don't trust these insane

..> people Just say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The TROOPS are the ones who say " NO! "

I very much trust THEM to say it, with feeling!

========================================================================

========

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,

and as necessary in the political world as storms in the

physical.

... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of

government.

-- Jefferson

========================================================================

========

[Guest guest]

..> Considering the nature of the ruling, it is wondered whether

..> its effects will be retroactive, legally.

Right now, it's too early to tell. This is only a Temporary Restraining

Order. As good as that is, I suspect this case has a bit more to go

before the anthrax immunization is declared illegal and becomes Federal

case law.

If I can interest my attorney in doing so, I would be more than willing

to test its retroactivity in Federal Court as soon as the illegality of

the anthrax immunization becomes settled law. MY experience with it

goes back to September 1993, when I received it with neither my

knowledge nor consent in some type of illegal " experiment " . I got sick

some months later, and am now disabled from its consequences. And that

was after ONE shot. Am I lucky or what?

I'd like to combine the arguments in Doe v. Rumsfeld with those in our

class action against Bioport (going back to 1990) and take a bunch of

unethical people down all at once -- from the lowest colonel who ordered

me to get it all the way up to the Presidents and their cabinet

secretaries -- going back if possible to the 1990 illegal manufacturing

process change and extending through to the time our case is heard and

decided, whenever that is. There's the little problem of the Feres

Doctrine, but that might yield too if we can find a way to challenge it.

Right now, FERES makes it difficult even to get into the trial courts on

those issues.

In the interim, I'll vent my anger by throwing darts at the images of

the perpetrators of these crimes-against-humanity. If the Hague

Tribunal can indict and try a sitting head-of-state (Milosevic), then it

can try OUR criminals too, both past and present. (Hey, I can always

dream!)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------

[Guest guest]

Thank you Meryl, for all your efforts, time and expertise, and for hanging in

there. We read about the federal court decision on the anthrax vaccine in

all the Chicago papers yesterday. Needless to say, we and our ex-Navy sons were

overjoyed! I am sure the " war " is not over, but that is a big battle won.

God bless you. Happy Holidays. Boylan

[Guest guest]

At 07:09 PM 12/24/2003 EST, you wrote:

>Thank you Meryl, for all your efforts, time and expertise, and for hanging

in

>there. We read about the federal court decision on the anthrax vaccine in

>all the Chicago papers yesterday. Needless to say, we and our ex-Navy

sons were

>overjoyed! I am sure the " war " is not over, but that is a big battle won.

>God bless you. Happy Holidays. Boylan

And I certainly SECOND that big time.

And all on this list and elsewhere for all that you have done in these last

6 years.

Sheri

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

$$ Donations to help in the work - accepted by Paypal account

vaccineinfo@... voicemail US 530-740-0561

(go to http://www.paypal.com) or by mail

Vaccines - http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm

Homeopathy On-Line course - http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/homeo.htm

ANY INFO OBTAINED HERE NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL

OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE

DECISION TO VACCINATE IS YOURS AND YOURS ALONE.

******

" Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.

Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy

knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information

and religions destroy spirituality " .... Ellner

[Guest guest]

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/1129/102_print.html

Just Say No

Langreth, 11.29.04

Do you really need all those prescriptions pills you are popping? Maybe not.

There's a backlash building against the cost, risk and side effects of

medication, and it's bad news for the pharmaceutical industry.

Wesley was a walking medicine cabinet after undergoing triple-bypass

surgery in 1994. By late 2001 he was on 16 drugs, including Lipitor for high

cholesterol, Glucotrol for diabetes and three pills to lower his blood pressure.

He couldn't walk from his front doorstep to the mailbox without doubling over in

chest pain. At one point tests showed the blockages were back and that his

arteries were too damaged to risk another operation. He thought he might die.

But , now 65, a former hospital food-service director in West Virginia,

discovered a lifesaver--not more drugs but a program of daily exercise, stress

reduction, group support and a diet very low in fat and high in vegetables and

whole grains. After seven weeks on this low-tech form of medicine, recommended

by his doctor and designed by California health guru Dr. Dean Ornish, Wes

started to get better. The angina attacks faded. In eight months he lost 40

pounds. His blood pressure eased off, his cholesterol level fell from 243 to

110, and his blood sugar normalized.

Today the only drugs he takes are a daily aspirin and one pill for hypertension.

He regrets that he didn't sign on sooner. " It has totally changed my life and

given me reason to live again, " he says.

Let the Un-Drugging of America begin. The pharmaceutical industry, despite a

golden age of biology that has unraveled mysteries of the genetic code and

yielded miracle drugs that save thousands of lives, may be on the brink of a

backlash. Millions of us are popping prescription pills for innocuous ills, when

simple lifestyle changes of diet and exercise--harped on by physicians for

decades--are more effective and a lot cheaper.

The results of pill dependence are insidious and devastating: billions of

dollars in ever-higher drug costs; millions of people enduring sometimes highly

toxic side effects; and close to 2 million cases each year of drug complications

that result in 180,000 deaths or life-threatening illnesses in the elderly, one

major study estimates. And every few years comes the ultimate medical

catastrophe: a miracle cure that turns out to be toxic.

The latest involves Merck & Co.'s Vioxx, withdrawn from the market in September

because the painkiller boosted heart attack risk. Estimates of the number of

injured patients range from 30,000 to 100,000. Merck dismisses the high numbers,

but it likely faces one of the biggest liabilities in drug history. This comes

on top of new evidence that Prozac, Paxil and other antidepressants cause

suicidal thoughts in children and recent findings that hormone replacement

therapy, touted for decades as a panacea for menopause, could increase the risk

of heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer and dementia.

In the wake of the Vioxx debacle, a broader backlash could scare some patients

into a wholesale retreat, hurting drug sales (and drug stock prices). Some

opponents of the drug business say it's high time America went through

withdrawal. " We have this idea that we can pop a pill and solve everything. It

is craziness, " says pharmacologist of the University of British

Columbia. " People are dying from taking too many drugs at too high doses for

mild conditions where they have little chance of benefit. "

Dr. Abramson, a Harvard Medical School instructor and author of Overdosed

America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, adds: " We have this

exaggerated belief in biomedicine, in the same way that primitive society

believed in folk cures. " He blames drugmakers for exaggerating the benefits and

minimizing the side effects of patented medicines, and he urges the medical

establishment to emphasize cleaner living.

But Big Pharma argues the opposite case: that the real problem is

undermedication. For great numbers of people, better diet and more exercise

simply aren't enough, this argument goes. A Rand Corp. study a year ago found

significant undertreatment of diabetes, heart disease, asthma and stroke.

Congress last year extended Medicare coverage to drugs in part because of such

concerns.

And yet America, which leads the world in developing new drugs, ranks a mediocre

29th in life expectancy. Demographics have something to do with this, but

another reason is that we are fatter and more out of shape than ever before. A

fourth of Americans are obese (i.e., at least 30 to 40 pounds over their

recommended weight). Thirteen million people live with heart disease. Another 18

million have diabetes, which could soar to 30 million in 25 years, despite new

designer drugs.

In a perverse kind of symbiosis, the cascade of disease and medical

complications growing out of America's excesses and lack of fitness triggers

more demand for more drugs. In the U.S. employers, government and consumers

spent $216 billion on prescription drugs last year (or 2% of the U.S. economy),

up 11.5% in a year, says IMS Health. That paid for 3.4 billion prescriptions, a

dozen for every man, woman and child in this country.

This penchant for chemicals, stoked in part by $3.2 billion a year that

drugmakers spend on ads to reach consumers (part of a $25 billion marketing

budget), distracts doctors and patients from the lifestyle changes that could

have far greater impact. Decades of nagging from doctors have failed to get

people off the sofa and into the gym. " Physicians are somewhat hardened, " says

Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Topol. " There is a sense that we have tried

[to preach better lifestyle], but patients don't do it. "

Epidemiological studies have found that bad living--smoking, drinking too much

alcohol, feasting on cheeseburgers--is responsible for 80% of one's risk of

heart disease and almost all of the risk of diabetes. Cleaning up your act would

do more to reduce that risk than popping a plethora of new pills. Quit smoking

by age 40 and you can add nine years of life; stop by 50 and you can buy six

years. Walking briskly three hours a week adds six years of life, if you start

at age 45.

Heart patients who go on a Mediterranean diet reduce their risk of future heart

attacks and cardiac death by up to 70%; cholesterol-lowering drugs cost us $13.9

billion a year and lower the risk only half as much. Shedding a few pounds and

exercising lowers the chances of developing diabetes by 58% in those at risk;

Bristol-Myers Squibb's Glucophage and similar drugs are taken by 6.5 million

patients. In a test of its power as a prophylactic it reduced the incidence of

the disease by only 31%.

This is the inherent bias in a system of medical benefits that reimburses

employees for drugs and hospital visits but (usually) doesn't subsidize their

trips to the gym. " People say diet and exercise have failed, but the system

never gave diet and exercise a chance. Doctors don't learn about it in medical

school, while every day pharmaceutical reps are pounding into their heads the

benefits of drugs, " says Church, a preventive medicine researcher at the

Institute in Dallas. " If corporations spent just a tiny fraction of what

they spend on drugs on lifestyle modification, we could save hundreds of

millions in health costs. "

" Eat your broccoli, dear. " That advice is a century old. What makes it more

relevant now?The very fact that the drug industry has come up with so many

genuine lifesavers like antibiotics or cancer drugs for which there is no

lifestyle substitute. Since drug interactions are always a risk, you would be

better off living a clean life, avoiding the drugs that can be avoided and

saving room in your bloodstream for the lifesavers.

Are Americans prepared to jump on the treadmill? " Human nature is working

against us, " says Palmer, a vice president at Pfizer, which makes Lipitor.

He's right. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Herewith are specifics on

drug avoidance, in seven categories.

High Cholesterol

Lipitor and other statins can be lifesaving for anyone with proven heart

disease--a market of 13 million patients. Federal guidelines now recommend the

drugs for up to 24 million more Americans who don't have heart disease but risk

getting it in the future. Abramson and other critics argue that the rush to give

cholesterol drugs to just about everyone goes beyond the evidence and could pose

unknown future side effects. In healthy women the drugs don't appear to save

lives at all, and the evidence they prevent heart disease is weak: Statin takers

have only a slightly better chance of avoiding heart disease than women on a

placebo, according to a recent analysis. Pfizer's Palmer, a cardiologist,

counters: " If my mother had high cholesterol, I wouldn't want her to wait until

she had a heart attack to get treated. "

Lipitor will reduce your bad cholesterol by 40% to 50%--but what happens if you

don't want to take the drug for the rest of your life? Making some fairly

radical changes in your diet can reduce bad cholesterol by up to 30% in only

four weeks, a recent University of Toronto study found. The Toronto team

designed a vegetarian diet that augmented a standard low-fat regimen with foods

that in lab studies have shown an ability to lower cholesterol levels, including

soy protein (activates cholesterol receptors); oats and other soluble fibers

(helps the body process cholesterol-containing bile); almonds and so-called

plant sterols found in vegetables and plant oils (inhibit cholesterol absorption

from the gut). Patients on this vegetarian diet for four weeks reduced their bad

cholesterol levels just as much as a control group on Merck's Mevacor.

" People thought the most you could do with diet was 10% or 15%. We basically

doubled that, " says University of Toronto nutrition researcher Cyril Kendall.

The next test: whether patients are willing to stay on such a radical diet over

the long haul.

of the University of Kentucky is working with food companies to

put the Toronto study's ingredients into a twice-a-day cereal bar, so people

could reduce their cholesterol without having to completely give up meat. He

says up to one-half of the people told to take statins could avoid the drugs by

consuming such a product. " People are nervous about taking statins; they want to

get as much mileage as possible from diet and exercise, " says.

Meanwhile, eating a Mediterranean diet high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans

and omega-three fatty acids (found in fatty fish) may cut your risk of heart

attack at least as much as Lipitor does, even without lowering your cholesterol

much. A 2002 study in India compared the effects of a Mediterranean diet with a

standard low-fat diet in 1,000 heart patients, most of whom had untreated high

cholesterol. Two years later those who ate the Mediterranean diet had half the

risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death compared with those who stayed on

the regular low-fat diet, even though their cholesterol declined only a modest

14%. In general each additional serving of fruit or vegetables that's added to

your daily diet decreases the risk of heart disease by four percentage points.

Hypertension

Diet and exercise can lower blood pressure significantly. One trial of 412

people with slightly elevated blood pressure found that a diet high in

potassium, with just one-third the salt used in standard American fare, could

reduce blood pressure by up to 11.5 points (millimeters of mercury) in 30 days;

the diet was especially effective in African-Americans. The improvement is

equivalent to what can be achieved with a single drug.

Even some people on meds for years may be able to go off them and maintain

normal blood pressure with minimal lifestyle changes. In one study of 8,000

patients who took a holiday from their blood-pressure meds, 20% to 25% of them

had no return to elevated levels, say researchers at the Baker Medical Research

Institute in Melbourne, Australia. This may be because some people were

erroneously put on the drugs, or because years of drug therapy healed heart

damage, or simply because taking people off the pills motivates them to clean up

their behavior.

" We propose that a period of drug withdrawal should be considered as part of

ongoing management of hypertensive patients, " says cardiovascular epidemiologist

Reid. This may make particular sense around retirement age, he says,

when people are likely to have more free time to start an exercise program.

Thinning Bones

If you are one of the 8 million American women who have osteoporosis (brittle

bones), one option is taking Merck's Fosamax. It builds bone density by 5% to

10% in the spine and hip and cuts in half the risk of a debilitating hip

fracture. But the drug also is approved for treating a vastly larger swath of 34

million Americans with slightly thin bones (osteopenia). Even some experts who

have helped test Fosamax say this broader group is being overtreated.

" Osteopenia is not a disease. It is a term that was invented and arbitrarily

defined by a group of men ten years ago, " says San Francisco epidemiologist

Cummings, who has helped test Fosamax and other osteoporosis drugs. " It

creates the impression [among younger woman] that you need a drug, even when it

doesn't make any medical or biological sense. " In reality, the absolute risk of

a hip fracture for an average 60-year-old woman with mild osteopenia is very

small, one-tenth of one percent a year; for any nonspine fracture, the risk is

two percent a year. And there is no direct evidence that Fosamax prevents hip or

wrist fractures in this broader group. Dr. Bess Dawson-, president of the

National Osteoporosis Foundation, counters that it would be a mistake to exclude

all women with osteopenia from treatment, since most fractures occur in this

group. She says it's implausible that the drugs would have no fracture effect on

women with osteopenia.

Calcium and vitamin D, by contrast, are essential to maintaining the bones and

can be had by adjusting your diet. An exercise regimen also can keep up bone

density and let a person avoid getting on the drugs. In one recent study

researchers in Germany tested the effects of three hours a week of strength

training, jumping and high-impact aerobics on 50 postmenopausal women at risk

for osteoporosis. After three years, those in the exercise therapy group had

maintained their bone density, unlike the small control group that was inactive.

Patients in the exercise group reported lower cholesterol levels and less back

pain than those in the control group. The German researchers now hope to compare

exercise with drug therapy in a larger, longer-term trial; but so far no one is

willing to fund it.

Anxiety and Depression

The 1990s made pill-popping for happiness an acceptable therapeutic alternative

for millions of even mildly depressed patients. Now 80% of people who seek

treatment for depression try drugs, while only half have tried talk therapy,

according to a poll by Interactive. Prozac and its successors were an

ideal solution for employers wary of paying the bill for a lifetime of 45-minute

sessions for long-winded Woody s. " Psychotherapy just can't compete with

drug company advertising. We get crushed, " says Otto, a clinical

psychologist at Boston University.

But the drug lineup finally has a potent alternative: a newly emerging style of

therapy of shorter and intentionally finite duration, with less hand-wringing

about past hurts and more coaching on how to cope. Known as cognitive behavioral

therapy, this approach has been rigorously studied and has had startling success

in a variety of applications.

The new therapy replaces open-ended, classic psychoanalysis with a course of 12

to 20 sessions aimed at breaking distorted thinking patterns common in anxiety

and depression and teaching coping skills so patients can retake control of

their lives. Patient trials in panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder,

social anxiety disorder and adult depression have found that cognitive

behavioral therapy is as effective as drugs in the medium term and good at

preventing relapse once drugs are stopped, says Otto; combining drugs and

therapy may be even more effective. (Psychiatrists say drugs tend to be better

for severe cases and dispute that CBT helps prevent relapses of major

depression.)

Unlike Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, psychotherapy doesn't cause sexual dysfunction.

" Drugs just mask the problem; this teaches you to condition yourself to get over

your fears, " says MacNeill, a 62-year-old contractor. Until he tried

cognitive behavioral therapy, panic attacks made him unable to travel more than

an hour's drive from his home in Hingham, Mass.; now the attacks are much less

frequent and he flies all over the world. One big downside, besides the time

commitment: Few therapists have been trained in these newer techniques.

Chronic Pain

As estimated 26 million Americans have chronic pain in the lower back, and

roughly 15% end up on narcotics, with an increasing number taking potent

remedies such as Purdue Pharma's OxyContin. Their use in these patients is

controversial, as there are few studies documenting their effectiveness over the

long term; side effects include nausea, constipation and dependence. (A Purdue

Pharma official says the drugs " work extremely well " for some back patients.)

Moreover, chronic pain conditions are a far murkier beast compared with acute

pain from an injury. " Chronic pain is in many ways a central sensitization of

pain producing pathways in the brain, " says Rainville, a Harvard prof and

chief of physical rehabilitation at New England Baptist Hospital. This allows

pain signals to be created long after the original injury healed. Patients with

back pain used to be told to stay in bed. Today researchers preach the opposite:

exercise. Few studies have compared exercise to drug treatment, but two

randomized trials have shown that vigorous exercise combined with cognitive

treatment is just as good as spinal fusion surgery, with fewer complications.

Strength training, aerobic exercise and stretching can prevent muscles from

withering, reduce disability and even reduce pain intensity by 10% to 50%,

Rainville says. In a recent 84-patient study published in the Spine Journal,

Rainville found half of the patients in the study on narcotics were able to stop

taking them after six weeks of exercise therapy.

Surprisingly, psychological therapy can also help treat various sorts of chronic

pain, including back pain. At least six controlled studies show that cognitive

behavior therapy can improve symptoms and lessen disability somewhat.

Insomnia

Sleep-starved Americans shelled out $1.3 billion for Sanofi-Aventis' sleeping

pill Ambien last year. The short-acting pill is popular because it eliminates

the hangover associated with older medicines. Ambien and pills like it are

approved only for short-term use; few clinical studies have bothered to document

their safety beyond three months of usage. Yet " every week I see patients who

have been on them for years, " says Dr. Gregg s, sleep medicine expert at

Harvard MedicalSchool. " Be wary. We have no idea what the long-term side effects

are. " Known short-term effects include diarrhea and dizziness, which may

increase the risk of falls in the elderly.

Cognitive behavioral therapy could help here, too. Five sessions with a

psychologist may fix the problem by teaching relaxation techniques, using

behavior modification to boost the association between bedtime and sleep, and

counseling to get overwrought patients to realize that their insomnia has less

of an impact on the next day than they think. " People with insomnia

catastrophize and make matters worse, " says New York psychologist Arthur

Spielman. " They think, 'My immune system is going to fail, I won't be able to

function and I will lose my job.' "

Most drug trials compare the drug to a placebo. Harvard's s put Ambien to

the test in a rare head-to-head trial versus cognitive behavioral therapy in a

small number of patients with insomnia (63 in total). The result: the new

therapy worked as well as the drug in the short term and was clearly better than

Ambien in the long term. Both therapies helped people get to sleep 25 to 30

minutes faster in the short term, but Ambien's effects faded when patients

stopped taking it; the therapy patients still were sleeping better a full year

later. Sanofi-Aventis says the study was too small to offer any real conclusions

about the relative merits of the therapies. But will Sanofi conduct any studies

comparing Ambien to therapy? The company says that no decision has been made

yet.

One myth is that adults need eight or more hours of sleep each night. It turns

out that people who sleep nine hours or more have a slightly higher mortality

rate than those who sleep just six or seven, according to a giant study

conducted by the University of California, San Diego; it involved looking at the

records of 1.1 million Americans.

Heartburn

Treating stomach acid is big business in the U.S., where patients spend $13

billion a year on 92 million prescriptions for Nexium ( " the new purple pill " ),

Prilosec and other proton pump inhibitors. These drugs are amazingly effective

at suppressing acid. But stomach acid is a defense against bacteria, and a big

new study found that acid suppression may have a surprising downside: more

infections.

In one of the first studies to address this issue, Netherlands epidemiologist

Laheij culled medical records of 365,000 patients and found that people

taking proton pump inhibitors had a 90% higher risk of getting pneumonia than a

control group not taking the drugs. The higher the dose, the greater the

pneumonia risk, his team reported in the Oct. 27 Journal of the American Medical

Association. The absolute risk to any one person is minute, but it translates

into tens of thousands of excess cases of pneumonia in this country each year

because of the drugs. AstraZeneca says that it has not found any evidence of

pneumonia risk in studies it has conducted in more than 100,000 patients who

were taking its drugs, Prilosec and Nexium. It sees no reason to look further

into the matter.

Laheij says patients should stop gobbling Prilosec like candy, especially those

who are susceptible to pneumonia complications (the elderly and people with

asthma or weakened immune systems). Lifestyle changes, while no cure, may reduce

the severity of symptoms of acid reflux. Obese patients are up to six times as

likely as trim patients to report chronic heartburn, says a study in the Journal

of the American Medical Association. Smoking and heavy drinking also are thought

to play a role.

Lose weight, stop smoking and cut down on booze--it's always the same advice,

alas, and it's never very much fun. But for many of us, the pharmaceutical

alternative is no longer the clear-cut choice it once might have seemed; and for

some of us, drugs may be the wrong choice altogether. It's time to start

thinking harder about when to just say no.

[Guest guest]

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/1129/102_print.html

Just Say No

Langreth, 11.29.04

Do you really need all those prescriptions pills you are popping? Maybe not.

There's a backlash building against the cost, risk and side effects of

medication, and it's bad news for the pharmaceutical industry.

Wesley was a walking medicine cabinet after undergoing triple-bypass

surgery in 1994. By late 2001 he was on 16 drugs, including Lipitor for high

cholesterol, Glucotrol for diabetes and three pills to lower his blood pressure.

He couldn't walk from his front doorstep to the mailbox without doubling over in

chest pain. At one point tests showed the blockages were back and that his

arteries were too damaged to risk another operation. He thought he might die.

But , now 65, a former hospital food-service director in West Virginia,

discovered a lifesaver--not more drugs but a program of daily exercise, stress

reduction, group support and a diet very low in fat and high in vegetables and

whole grains. After seven weeks on this low-tech form of medicine, recommended

by his doctor and designed by California health guru Dr. Dean Ornish, Wes

started to get better. The angina attacks faded. In eight months he lost 40

pounds. His blood pressure eased off, his cholesterol level fell from 243 to

110, and his blood sugar normalized.

Today the only drugs he takes are a daily aspirin and one pill for hypertension.

He regrets that he didn't sign on sooner. " It has totally changed my life and

given me reason to live again, " he says.

Let the Un-Drugging of America begin. The pharmaceutical industry, despite a

golden age of biology that has unraveled mysteries of the genetic code and

yielded miracle drugs that save thousands of lives, may be on the brink of a

backlash. Millions of us are popping prescription pills for innocuous ills, when

simple lifestyle changes of diet and exercise--harped on by physicians for

decades--are more effective and a lot cheaper.

The results of pill dependence are insidious and devastating: billions of

dollars in ever-higher drug costs; millions of people enduring sometimes highly

toxic side effects; and close to 2 million cases each year of drug complications

that result in 180,000 deaths or life-threatening illnesses in the elderly, one

major study estimates. And every few years comes the ultimate medical

catastrophe: a miracle cure that turns out to be toxic.

The latest involves Merck & Co.'s Vioxx, withdrawn from the market in September

because the painkiller boosted heart attack risk. Estimates of the number of

injured patients range from 30,000 to 100,000. Merck dismisses the high numbers,

but it likely faces one of the biggest liabilities in drug history. This comes

on top of new evidence that Prozac, Paxil and other antidepressants cause

suicidal thoughts in children and recent findings that hormone replacement

therapy, touted for decades as a panacea for menopause, could increase the risk

of heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer and dementia.

In the wake of the Vioxx debacle, a broader backlash could scare some patients

into a wholesale retreat, hurting drug sales (and drug stock prices). Some

opponents of the drug business say it's high time America went through

withdrawal. " We have this idea that we can pop a pill and solve everything. It

is craziness, " says pharmacologist of the University of British

Columbia. " People are dying from taking too many drugs at too high doses for

mild conditions where they have little chance of benefit. "

Dr. Abramson, a Harvard Medical School instructor and author of Overdosed

America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, adds: " We have this

exaggerated belief in biomedicine, in the same way that primitive society

believed in folk cures. " He blames drugmakers for exaggerating the benefits and

minimizing the side effects of patented medicines, and he urges the medical

establishment to emphasize cleaner living.

But Big Pharma argues the opposite case: that the real problem is

undermedication. For great numbers of people, better diet and more exercise

simply aren't enough, this argument goes. A Rand Corp. study a year ago found

significant undertreatment of diabetes, heart disease, asthma and stroke.

Congress last year extended Medicare coverage to drugs in part because of such

concerns.

And yet America, which leads the world in developing new drugs, ranks a mediocre

29th in life expectancy. Demographics have something to do with this, but

another reason is that we are fatter and more out of shape than ever before. A

fourth of Americans are obese (i.e., at least 30 to 40 pounds over their

recommended weight). Thirteen million people live with heart disease. Another 18

million have diabetes, which could soar to 30 million in 25 years, despite new

designer drugs.

In a perverse kind of symbiosis, the cascade of disease and medical

complications growing out of America's excesses and lack of fitness triggers

more demand for more drugs. In the U.S. employers, government and consumers

spent $216 billion on prescription drugs last year (or 2% of the U.S. economy),

up 11.5% in a year, says IMS Health. That paid for 3.4 billion prescriptions, a

dozen for every man, woman and child in this country.

This penchant for chemicals, stoked in part by $3.2 billion a year that

drugmakers spend on ads to reach consumers (part of a $25 billion marketing

budget), distracts doctors and patients from the lifestyle changes that could

have far greater impact. Decades of nagging from doctors have failed to get

people off the sofa and into the gym. " Physicians are somewhat hardened, " says

Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Topol. " There is a sense that we have tried

[to preach better lifestyle], but patients don't do it. "

Epidemiological studies have found that bad living--smoking, drinking too much

alcohol, feasting on cheeseburgers--is responsible for 80% of one's risk of

heart disease and almost all of the risk of diabetes. Cleaning up your act would

do more to reduce that risk than popping a plethora of new pills. Quit smoking

by age 40 and you can add nine years of life; stop by 50 and you can buy six

years. Walking briskly three hours a week adds six years of life, if you start

at age 45.

Heart patients who go on a Mediterranean diet reduce their risk of future heart

attacks and cardiac death by up to 70%; cholesterol-lowering drugs cost us $13.9

billion a year and lower the risk only half as much. Shedding a few pounds and

exercising lowers the chances of developing diabetes by 58% in those at risk;

Bristol-Myers Squibb's Glucophage and similar drugs are taken by 6.5 million

patients. In a test of its power as a prophylactic it reduced the incidence of

the disease by only 31%.

This is the inherent bias in a system of medical benefits that reimburses

employees for drugs and hospital visits but (usually) doesn't subsidize their

trips to the gym. " People say diet and exercise have failed, but the system

never gave diet and exercise a chance. Doctors don't learn about it in medical

school, while every day pharmaceutical reps are pounding into their heads the

benefits of drugs, " says Church, a preventive medicine researcher at the

Institute in Dallas. " If corporations spent just a tiny fraction of what

they spend on drugs on lifestyle modification, we could save hundreds of

millions in health costs. "

" Eat your broccoli, dear. " That advice is a century old. What makes it more

relevant now?The very fact that the drug industry has come up with so many

genuine lifesavers like antibiotics or cancer drugs for which there is no

lifestyle substitute. Since drug interactions are always a risk, you would be

better off living a clean life, avoiding the drugs that can be avoided and

saving room in your bloodstream for the lifesavers.

Are Americans prepared to jump on the treadmill? " Human nature is working

against us, " says Palmer, a vice president at Pfizer, which makes Lipitor.

He's right. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Herewith are specifics on

drug avoidance, in seven categories.

High Cholesterol

Lipitor and other statins can be lifesaving for anyone with proven heart

disease--a market of 13 million patients. Federal guidelines now recommend the

drugs for up to 24 million more Americans who don't have heart disease but risk

getting it in the future. Abramson and other critics argue that the rush to give

cholesterol drugs to just about everyone goes beyond the evidence and could pose

unknown future side effects. In healthy women the drugs don't appear to save

lives at all, and the evidence they prevent heart disease is weak: Statin takers

have only a slightly better chance of avoiding heart disease than women on a

placebo, according to a recent analysis. Pfizer's Palmer, a cardiologist,

counters: " If my mother had high cholesterol, I wouldn't want her to wait until

she had a heart attack to get treated. "

Lipitor will reduce your bad cholesterol by 40% to 50%--but what happens if you

don't want to take the drug for the rest of your life? Making some fairly

radical changes in your diet can reduce bad cholesterol by up to 30% in only

four weeks, a recent University of Toronto study found. The Toronto team

designed a vegetarian diet that augmented a standard low-fat regimen with foods

that in lab studies have shown an ability to lower cholesterol levels, including

soy protein (activates cholesterol receptors); oats and other soluble fibers

(helps the body process cholesterol-containing bile); almonds and so-called

plant sterols found in vegetables and plant oils (inhibit cholesterol absorption

from the gut). Patients on this vegetarian diet for four weeks reduced their bad

cholesterol levels just as much as a control group on Merck's Mevacor.

" People thought the most you could do with diet was 10% or 15%. We basically

doubled that, " says University of Toronto nutrition researcher Cyril Kendall.

The next test: whether patients are willing to stay on such a radical diet over

the long haul.

of the University of Kentucky is working with food companies to

put the Toronto study's ingredients into a twice-a-day cereal bar, so people

could reduce their cholesterol without having to completely give up meat. He

says up to one-half of the people told to take statins could avoid the drugs by

consuming such a product. " People are nervous about taking statins; they want to

get as much mileage as possible from diet and exercise, " says.

Meanwhile, eating a Mediterranean diet high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans

and omega-three fatty acids (found in fatty fish) may cut your risk of heart

attack at least as much as Lipitor does, even without lowering your cholesterol

much. A 2002 study in India compared the effects of a Mediterranean diet with a

standard low-fat diet in 1,000 heart patients, most of whom had untreated high

cholesterol. Two years later those who ate the Mediterranean diet had half the

risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death compared with those who stayed on

the regular low-fat diet, even though their cholesterol declined only a modest

14%. In general each additional serving of fruit or vegetables that's added to

your daily diet decreases the risk of heart disease by four percentage points.

Hypertension

Diet and exercise can lower blood pressure significantly. One trial of 412

people with slightly elevated blood pressure found that a diet high in

potassium, with just one-third the salt used in standard American fare, could

reduce blood pressure by up to 11.5 points (millimeters of mercury) in 30 days;

the diet was especially effective in African-Americans. The improvement is

equivalent to what can be achieved with a single drug.

Even some people on meds for years may be able to go off them and maintain

normal blood pressure with minimal lifestyle changes. In one study of 8,000

patients who took a holiday from their blood-pressure meds, 20% to 25% of them

had no return to elevated levels, say researchers at the Baker Medical Research

Institute in Melbourne, Australia. This may be because some people were

erroneously put on the drugs, or because years of drug therapy healed heart

damage, or simply because taking people off the pills motivates them to clean up

their behavior.

" We propose that a period of drug withdrawal should be considered as part of

ongoing management of hypertensive patients, " says cardiovascular epidemiologist

Reid. This may make particular sense around retirement age, he says,

when people are likely to have more free time to start an exercise program.

Thinning Bones

If you are one of the 8 million American women who have osteoporosis (brittle

bones), one option is taking Merck's Fosamax. It builds bone density by 5% to

10% in the spine and hip and cuts in half the risk of a debilitating hip

fracture. But the drug also is approved for treating a vastly larger swath of 34

million Americans with slightly thin bones (osteopenia). Even some experts who

have helped test Fosamax say this broader group is being overtreated.

" Osteopenia is not a disease. It is a term that was invented and arbitrarily

defined by a group of men ten years ago, " says San Francisco epidemiologist

Cummings, who has helped test Fosamax and other osteoporosis drugs. " It

creates the impression [among younger woman] that you need a drug, even when it

doesn't make any medical or biological sense. " In reality, the absolute risk of

a hip fracture for an average 60-year-old woman with mild osteopenia is very

small, one-tenth of one percent a year; for any nonspine fracture, the risk is

two percent a year. And there is no direct evidence that Fosamax prevents hip or

wrist fractures in this broader group. Dr. Bess Dawson-, president of the

National Osteoporosis Foundation, counters that it would be a mistake to exclude

all women with osteopenia from treatment, since most fractures occur in this

group. She says it's implausible that the drugs would have no fracture effect on

women with osteopenia.

Calcium and vitamin D, by contrast, are essential to maintaining the bones and

can be had by adjusting your diet. An exercise regimen also can keep up bone

density and let a person avoid getting on the drugs. In one recent study

researchers in Germany tested the effects of three hours a week of strength

training, jumping and high-impact aerobics on 50 postmenopausal women at risk

for osteoporosis. After three years, those in the exercise therapy group had

maintained their bone density, unlike the small control group that was inactive.

Patients in the exercise group reported lower cholesterol levels and less back

pain than those in the control group. The German researchers now hope to compare

exercise with drug therapy in a larger, longer-term trial; but so far no one is

willing to fund it.

Anxiety and Depression

The 1990s made pill-popping for happiness an acceptable therapeutic alternative

for millions of even mildly depressed patients. Now 80% of people who seek

treatment for depression try drugs, while only half have tried talk therapy,

according to a poll by Interactive. Prozac and its successors were an

ideal solution for employers wary of paying the bill for a lifetime of 45-minute

sessions for long-winded Woody s. " Psychotherapy just can't compete with

drug company advertising. We get crushed, " says Otto, a clinical

psychologist at Boston University.

But the drug lineup finally has a potent alternative: a newly emerging style of

therapy of shorter and intentionally finite duration, with less hand-wringing

about past hurts and more coaching on how to cope. Known as cognitive behavioral

therapy, this approach has been rigorously studied and has had startling success

in a variety of applications.

The new therapy replaces open-ended, classic psychoanalysis with a course of 12

to 20 sessions aimed at breaking distorted thinking patterns common in anxiety

and depression and teaching coping skills so patients can retake control of

their lives. Patient trials in panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder,

social anxiety disorder and adult depression have found that cognitive

behavioral therapy is as effective as drugs in the medium term and good at

preventing relapse once drugs are stopped, says Otto; combining drugs and

therapy may be even more effective. (Psychiatrists say drugs tend to be better

for severe cases and dispute that CBT helps prevent relapses of major

depression.)

Unlike Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, psychotherapy doesn't cause sexual dysfunction.

" Drugs just mask the problem; this teaches you to condition yourself to get over

your fears, " says MacNeill, a 62-year-old contractor. Until he tried

cognitive behavioral therapy, panic attacks made him unable to travel more than

an hour's drive from his home in Hingham, Mass.; now the attacks are much less

frequent and he flies all over the world. One big downside, besides the time

commitment: Few therapists have been trained in these newer techniques.

Chronic Pain

As estimated 26 million Americans have chronic pain in the lower back, and

roughly 15% end up on narcotics, with an increasing number taking potent

remedies such as Purdue Pharma's OxyContin. Their use in these patients is

controversial, as there are few studies documenting their effectiveness over the

long term; side effects include nausea, constipation and dependence. (A Purdue

Pharma official says the drugs " work extremely well " for some back patients.)

Moreover, chronic pain conditions are a far murkier beast compared with acute

pain from an injury. " Chronic pain is in many ways a central sensitization of

pain producing pathways in the brain, " says Rainville, a Harvard prof and

chief of physical rehabilitation at New England Baptist Hospital. This allows

pain signals to be created long after the original injury healed. Patients with

back pain used to be told to stay in bed. Today researchers preach the opposite:

exercise. Few studies have compared exercise to drug treatment, but two

randomized trials have shown that vigorous exercise combined with cognitive

treatment is just as good as spinal fusion surgery, with fewer complications.

Strength training, aerobic exercise and stretching can prevent muscles from

withering, reduce disability and even reduce pain intensity by 10% to 50%,

Rainville says. In a recent 84-patient study published in the Spine Journal,

Rainville found half of the patients in the study on narcotics were able to stop

taking them after six weeks of exercise therapy.

Surprisingly, psychological therapy can also help treat various sorts of chronic

pain, including back pain. At least six controlled studies show that cognitive

behavior therapy can improve symptoms and lessen disability somewhat.

Insomnia

Sleep-starved Americans shelled out $1.3 billion for Sanofi-Aventis' sleeping

pill Ambien last year. The short-acting pill is popular because it eliminates

the hangover associated with older medicines. Ambien and pills like it are

approved only for short-term use; few clinical studies have bothered to document

their safety beyond three months of usage. Yet " every week I see patients who

have been on them for years, " says Dr. Gregg s, sleep medicine expert at

Harvard MedicalSchool. " Be wary. We have no idea what the long-term side effects

are. " Known short-term effects include diarrhea and dizziness, which may

increase the risk of falls in the elderly.

Cognitive behavioral therapy could help here, too. Five sessions with a

psychologist may fix the problem by teaching relaxation techniques, using

behavior modification to boost the association between bedtime and sleep, and

counseling to get overwrought patients to realize that their insomnia has less

of an impact on the next day than they think. " People with insomnia

catastrophize and make matters worse, " says New York psychologist Arthur

Spielman. " They think, 'My immune system is going to fail, I won't be able to

function and I will lose my job.' "

Most drug trials compare the drug to a placebo. Harvard's s put Ambien to

the test in a rare head-to-head trial versus cognitive behavioral therapy in a

small number of patients with insomnia (63 in total). The result: the new

therapy worked as well as the drug in the short term and was clearly better than

Ambien in the long term. Both therapies helped people get to sleep 25 to 30

minutes faster in the short term, but Ambien's effects faded when patients

stopped taking it; the therapy patients still were sleeping better a full year

later. Sanofi-Aventis says the study was too small to offer any real conclusions

about the relative merits of the therapies. But will Sanofi conduct any studies

comparing Ambien to therapy? The company says that no decision has been made

yet.

One myth is that adults need eight or more hours of sleep each night. It turns

out that people who sleep nine hours or more have a slightly higher mortality

rate than those who sleep just six or seven, according to a giant study

conducted by the University of California, San Diego; it involved looking at the

records of 1.1 million Americans.

Heartburn

Treating stomach acid is big business in the U.S., where patients spend $13

billion a year on 92 million prescriptions for Nexium ( " the new purple pill " ),

Prilosec and other proton pump inhibitors. These drugs are amazingly effective

at suppressing acid. But stomach acid is a defense against bacteria, and a big

new study found that acid suppression may have a surprising downside: more

infections.

In one of the first studies to address this issue, Netherlands epidemiologist

Laheij culled medical records of 365,000 patients and found that people

taking proton pump inhibitors had a 90% higher risk of getting pneumonia than a

control group not taking the drugs. The higher the dose, the greater the

pneumonia risk, his team reported in the Oct. 27 Journal of the American Medical

Association. The absolute risk to any one person is minute, but it translates

into tens of thousands of excess cases of pneumonia in this country each year

because of the drugs. AstraZeneca says that it has not found any evidence of

pneumonia risk in studies it has conducted in more than 100,000 patients who

were taking its drugs, Prilosec and Nexium. It sees no reason to look further

into the matter.

Laheij says patients should stop gobbling Prilosec like candy, especially those

who are susceptible to pneumonia complications (the elderly and people with

asthma or weakened immune systems). Lifestyle changes, while no cure, may reduce

the severity of symptoms of acid reflux. Obese patients are up to six times as

likely as trim patients to report chronic heartburn, says a study in the Journal

of the American Medical Association. Smoking and heavy drinking also are thought

to play a role.

Lose weight, stop smoking and cut down on booze--it's always the same advice,

alas, and it's never very much fun. But for many of us, the pharmaceutical

alternative is no longer the clear-cut choice it once might have seemed; and for

some of us, drugs may be the wrong choice altogether. It's time to start

thinking harder about when to just say no.

[Guest guest]

Amen, I second this one ED, we do the same thingwe listen, take the prescription home and check it out..JudyinMO Just say NOI keep seeing the same response shown in this group..and I imagine it is the response most people have to a doctor's "order";"What can I Do? The doctor wants me to...(fill in the blank)" People, we all know by now that Doctors are not Gods, nor are they law enforcement! You are permitted to refuse any drug or procedure offered for YOUR body! It is YOUR body! Don't give away your right to treat your body the way you know is best. Be informed, make the very best decision you can, and then stick to your guns!I am one of a handful of people in my circle who have continued to refuse Statins (and in some cases, any sort of prescription ) for cholesterol. In all these instances, our doctors have continued to monitor our health and make decisions; they have NOT kicked us out the door, or punished us for this decision. Yes, they all continue to address the subject when we go to our appointments, but we remain adamant, and all is well. If you feel you need more certainty and conviction about this decision, you can begin to educate your doctor with websites and articles about cholesterol, while you teach yourselfabout this subject. It's a very worthwhile way to use your intelligence and take back your power! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE FROM MODERATOR - Amen!!!! I second this motion!Ed

[Guest guest]

you have a two percent chance of being helped by a statin, period. And that is if you already have heart disease. There is no way its worth it given that it has such horrible side effects, especially the depletion of coenzymeQ10. Ask your doctors why right in the statin ads it says "____________ has not been shown to prevent heart attacks or heart disease". The doctors are under pressure to go with the flow but you are not. Bone up on antioxidants, take fish oil, exercise and eat right and you will be doing the best things to avoid heart disease. KipLARRY FOSTER <jaf11@...> wrote: Amen, I second this one ED, we do the same thing we listen, take the prescription home and check it out.. JudyinMO Just say NO I keep seeing the same response shown in this group..and I imagine it is the response most people have to a doctor's "order";"What can I Do? The doctor wants me to...(fill in the blank)" People, we all know by now that Doctors are not Gods, nor are they law enforcement! You are permitted to refuse any drug or procedure offered for YOUR body! It is YOUR body! Don't give away your right to treat your body the way you know is best. Be informed, make the very best decision you can, and then stick to your guns!I am one of a handful of people in my circle who have continued to refuse Statins (and in some cases, any sort of prescription ) for cholesterol. In all these instances, our doctors have continued to monitor our health and make decisions; they have NOT kicked us out the door, or punished us for this decision.

Yes, they all continue to address the subject when we go to our appointments, but we remain adamant, and all is well. If you feel you need more certainty and conviction about this decision, you can begin to educate your doctor with websites and articles about cholesterol, while you teach yourselfabout this subject. It's a very worthwhile way to use your intelligence and take back your power! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE FROM MODERATOR - Amen!!!! I second this motion!Ed

Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on TV.

[Guest guest]

Hello Kip,

Can you please point me to the study or studies that reveal the 2%

chance of being helped by statins if I already had heart disease?

That is definitely a low percentage and not one that would convince

me to take any drug. I sure would love to have the study or studies

that show this 2% chance to show it to my mom's doctor. Thanks.

phine.

>

> you have a two percent chance of being helped by a statin, period.

And that is if you already have heart disease. There is no way its

worth it given that it has such horrible side effects, especially the

depletion of coenzymeQ10.

>

> Ask your doctors why right in the statin ads it

says " ____________ has not been shown to prevent heart attacks or

heart disease " . The doctors are under pressure to go with the flow

but you are not.

>

> Bone up on antioxidants, take fish oil, exercise and eat right

and you will be doing the best things to avoid heart disease.

>

> Kip

>

[Guest guest]

And this is what bugs me. What in the world does " significant " mean?

What are the numbers? Everyone says that taking statins after a

cardiovascular event has a " very significant positive effect " but I

haven't seen the studies or the numbers except 2% which isn't very

significant to me.

So again, where are the studies?

Thanks.

phine

On a different note,

> taking statins for the first 30 days after a cardiovascular event has

a very

> significant positive effect.

>

> --

>

> Steve - dudescholar4@...

>

> Take World's Smallest Political Quiz at

> http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

>

> " If a thousand old beliefs were ruined on our march

> to truth we must still march on. " --Stopford

>

[Guest guest]

Yes but there we go again with relative vs absolute. If very few patients had another event in that 30 days then 1/3 less is a small number. The 2 percent study I think took place over many years. I also dont think these press releases should happen until the studies are replicated - we were taught that in 8th grade science? And why dont the people who come out and say you should get your LDL down to 100 vs 110 have to issue a withdrawal statement when they learn there were NO studies supporting that claim. (Its ironic though that taking my dose up in response to that, and having the cramps go supersonic is how I got off these poisons) KipSteve <dudescholar4@...> wrote: When I run into the study again, I'll post it here. As I recall, this first 30 days period was not an absolute risk reduction of 2%, but resulted in about 1/3 less deaths in that 30 day period.jlkinkona wrote:> > > And this is what bugs me. What in the world does "significant" mean?> What are the numbers? Everyone says that taking statins after a> cardiovascular event has a "very significant positive effect" but I> haven't seen the studies or the numbers except 2% which isn't very> significant to me.> So again, where are the studies?> Thanks.> phine> > On a different note,> > taking statins for the first 30 days after a cardiovascular event

has> a very> > significant positive effect.> >> > --> >> > Steve - dudescholar4@...-- Steve - dudescholar4basicmail (DOT) netTake World's Smallest Political Quiz athttp://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html"If a thousand old beliefs were ruined on our marchto truth we must still march on." --Stopford

Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Answers - Check it out.

[Guest guest]

phine:

Go back and look a the TI letters I mentioned in a previous post. TI

letter 49 discusses secondary prevention (persons who have had a

heart attack). Four statin trials are listed, the Actual Risk

Reduction (ARR) for mortality is shown for a couple of them.

http://www.ti.ubc.ca/PDF/49.pdf

Lescol Intervention Prevention Study (LIPS):

No significant reduction

---------

PROSPER:

Events reduced ARR 4.3%, NEED TO TREAT(NNT) 23 people for 3.2 years

to prevent one event.

----------

GREek Atorvastatin and Coronary-heart disease

Evaluation (GREACE)

Events reduced ARR 7.0%, NNT 14 for 3 years. Total mortality was also

reduced, ARR 2.1%, NNT 48 for 3 years. Total serious adverse events

were not reported.

---------

Heart Protection Study (HPS)

Events reduced ARR 4.4%, NNT 23 for 5 years. Total mortality was also

reduced ARR 1.8%, NNT 56 for 5 years.

Botton line is 2% reduction in mortality from CHD, something else

gets those people in the end.

Regards

Gayle

> > >

> > >

> > > And this is what bugs me. What in the world does " significant "

> mean?

> > > What are the numbers? Everyone says that taking statins after a

> > > cardiovascular event has a " very significant positive effect "

but

> I

> > > haven't seen the studies or the numbers except 2% which isn't

very

> > > significant to me.

> > > So again, where are the studies?

> > > Thanks.

> > > phine

> > >

> > > On a different note,

> > > > taking statins for the first 30 days after a cardiovascular

> event has

> > > a very

> > > > significant positive effect.

> > > >

> > > > --

> > > >

> > > > Steve - dudescholar4@

> >

> > --

> >

> > Steve - dudescholar4@

> >

> > Take World's Smallest Political Quiz at

> > http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

> >

> > " If a thousand old beliefs were ruined on our march

> > to truth we must still march on. " --Stopford

> >

>

[Guest guest]

thanks Gayle. I forgot all about this source. phine

>

> phine:

>

> Go back and look a the TI letters I mentioned in a previous post.

[Guest guest]

I am wondering how soon after stopping my LIPITOR, should I expect to see results from less muscle aching, joint aching and just plain feeling wiped-out all the time. I know if I approach my cardiologist about it, he will just switch me to something else. Sooooooooo.... "What's the usual timeline for results after getting off the stuff?????" Spring (Houston),Texas ==================================================================jlkinkona <josephine@...> wrote: thanks Gayle. I forgot all about this source. phine>> phine:> > Go back and look a the TI letters I mentioned in a previous post.

Shape in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today!

[Guest guest]

Try going to the SPACEDOC forum. You will see that some recover from

their pain and memory loss and some do not. I don't think there is a

time frame on statin damage. Hopefully you are on a good vitamin

supplement regimen that includes CoQ10? Supplementation might help.

phine

-- In Lipitor ,

<arcieriassociate@...> wrote:

>

> I am wondering how soon after stopping my LIPITOR, should I expect to

see results from less muscle aching, joint aching and just plain

feeling wiped-out all the time. I know if I approach my cardiologist

about it, he will just switch me to something else.

>

> Sooooooooo.... " What's the usual timeline for results after getting

off the stuff????? "

>

>

> Spring (Houston),Texas

>

[Guest guest]

I noticed a major improvement in 2 weeks, restoration of full range of

movement took a year.

Linden

Re: Re: Just say NO

I am wondering how soon after stopping my LIPITOR, should I expect to

see results from less muscle aching, joint aching and just plain

feeling wiped-out all the time.  I know if I approach my cardiologist

about it, he will just switch me to something else.

 

Sooooooooo.... " What's the usual timeline for results after getting off

the stuff????? "

 

Spring (Houston),Texas

==================================================================

jlkinkona <josephine@...> wrote:

thanks Gayle. I forgot all about this source. phine

>

> phine:

>

> Go back and look a the TI letters I mentioned in a previous post.

------------------------------------------------------------

Shape in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today!

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=0

[Guest guest]

Thanks!linmalki@... wrote: I noticed a major improvement in 2 weeks, restoration of full range of movement took a year.Linden Re: Re: Just say NOI am

wondering how soon after stopping my LIPITOR, should I expect to see results from less muscle aching, joint aching and just plain feeling wiped-out all the time. I know if I approach my cardiologist about it, he will just switch me to something else. Sooooooooo.... "What's the usual timeline for results after getting off the stuff?????" Spring (Houston),Texas==================================================================jlkinkona <josephinepoidogs> wrote:thanks Gayle. I forgot all about this source. phine>> phine:>> Go back and look a the TI letters I mentioned in a previous

post.----------------------------------------------------------Shape in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today!__________________________________________________________Check Out the new free AIM® Mail -- Unlimited storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection.=0

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