Q: it seems more and more people are being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Can this be prevented or reversed? A: Folks are living longer, but not necessarily better, with drugs and machines that can prop us up, and frankly, keep the medical machine going. Some estimates put 85% of healthcare dollar capture from patients in the last few years of their life. This is not to say that we shouldn’t aim to live longer — but not at the expense of living well. Brains are mostly made of fat
Topic: Statins
Epigenetics is the study of genetic variations that are caused within an individual, by external or environmental factors that can switch genes on and off, as opposed to changes in DNA sequence which happen as genes are passed down to the next generation. One of the most potent ways epigenetics can change is through nutrition. In fact, one of the main reasons good nutrition is so important is because healthy food choices will minimize the expression of disease-causing genes we may have inherited. Unlike behavior or stress, diet is one of the more easily studied, and therefore better understood, environmental factors in epigenetic change. The nutrients we extract from food enter metabolic pathways where they are broken down, modified, and assembled into molecules the body can use. One such pathway is responsible for making methyl groups (CH3), which interact with important epigenetic tags that silence genes. Familiar nutrients like folic acid, B vitamins, and SAM-e (S-Adenosyl methionine, a popular over-the-counter supplement) are key components of this methyl-making pathway. Diets high in these methyl-donating nutrients can rapidly alter gene expression, especially...
Ethan Rome Executive Director, Health Care for America Now Big Pharma Pockets $711 Billion in Profits by Robbing Seniors, Taxpayers Posted: 04/08/2013 8:24 am Here’s an outrage that must be changed: Big Pharma has been systematically price-gouging the Medicare program for seniors and people with disabilities — and raking in billions in excessive profits. The 11 largest global drug companies made an astonishing $711 billion in profits over the 10 years ending in 2012, and they got a turbo-charged boost when the Medicare Part D prescription drug program started in 2006, according to an analysis of corporate filings by Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
For years, physicians and scientists have been aware that statins, the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, can cause muscle aches and fatigue in some patients. What many people don’t know is that these side effects are especially pronounced in people who exercise. To learn more about the effect statins have on exercising muscles, scientists in Strasbourg, France, recently gave the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor to a group of rats for two weeks, while a separate control group was not medicated. Some of the rats from both groups ran on little treadmills until they were exhausted. It was immediately obvious that the medicated animals couldn’t run as far. They became exhausted much earlier than the rats that had not been given statins. The differences were even more striking at a cellular level. When the scientists studied muscle tissues, they found that oxidative stress, a measure of possible cell damage, was increased by 60 percent in sedentary animals receiving statins, compared with the unmedicated control group. The effect was magnified in the runners, whose cells showed 226 percent more oxidative stress...
I have posted previously about the myth that lowering cholesterol will prevent heart attacks and other cardiovascular disasters. I urge you to not “buy into” one of the biggest frauds perpetuated by Big Pharma. What is really sad is that most conventionally trained doctors feel forced to “cover their butts” and prescribe statins the minute total cholesterol levels go above the quite random number of 200.