"Question: If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s nobody around to hear, does it make a sound?
This is a philosophical question that has been around for some time. I shall change it slightly to the following: “If a journal publishes a study, and it doesn’t make a noise, can it make a difference?”
A couple of weeks ago the Lancet published a ridiculous study with the snappy title:
‘Application of non-HDL cholesterol for population-based cardiovascular risk stratification: results from the Multinational Cardiovascular Risk Consortium.’
Which created headlines around the world – most of which failed to understand the difference between LDL (‘bad’ cholesterol) and non-HDL cholesterol. Which may, or may not, have been deliberately done.
This study was reported as saying that twenty-five-year olds should get their cholesterol checked, because raised cholesterol is far more damaging, at a young age, than previously thought. All based on, pretty much nothing at all. I critiqued it in my last blog. It was, to use a word I rather like … bilge!
Then another study came out last week to which I was pointed by a reader of this blog… thanks. It had the even snappier title.
You know that title really does not scream ‘READ ME!’ What is it about medical journals, and medical writing, which demands all enthusiasm and interest is sucked out, leaving only the driest, of dry, husks. I call it mummified prose.
What I first noticed was that it did not appear to make any headlines, anywhere, at all. Of course, making enough noise to be heard, in today’s jittery, overloaded information world, takes a lot of money and effort. Which is why the Lancet study got blanket coverage. Someone, somewhere, will have been paid a lot of money to ensure that it happened.
The money was paid because there are people who stand to make billions and billions from increased cholesterol testing, including younger people, and suggesting that “raised” cholesterol must be ‘treated’ from an ever-younger age. Perhaps you would like to guess who those people may be.
’s Can medicine be cured - The Corruption of a profession. Well worth reading re medical research. Don’t agree with his view that there are no modern day environmental issues to cause health problems. I think the environmental issues are just less obvious. Radio waves, microwaves, chemical poisoning etc. But other than that he does explain the grot of medicine and research quite well I thought. Basic deep inbred corruption.
Another doctor who isn't afraid of stating facts - the truth - or being ostracised by the medical profession and losing their licences. Those doctors are very rare these days and they were on the patients' sides like Dr Skinner and Dr Peatfield.
Dr Kendrick talks such sense. Even before I read Dr K. I refused statins as I considered that ‘high’ cholesterol was not a problem; whatever ‘high’ may be. I cannot understand why they are given out like sweets, well, I can - money. I have one female friend who was given them years ago, and is still taking them, as her parents both died of heart attacks in their 50s; she has no diagnosed medical condition! Just a perceived risk. Why isn’t Dr Kendrick front page news?
Doctors like Dr Kendrick, Dr Skinner (RIP) and Dr Peatfield, the latter two when training to be doctors knew all of the clinical symptoms and prescribed NDT to patients. Dr S did if patients weren't improving on levothyroxine. They were/are not liked because they tell the truth due to their first-hand experience on healing their patients, despite the guidelines. Dr Kendrick is against statins and I'm sure he would have researched deeply how they work (or don'twork). Also their training as students played a big part in their knowledge.
The following is 'for statins'. Do they do a follow-up of patients? If we're hypo and develop high cholesterol levels doctors also prescribe statins but thyroid hormone replacements also reduce the cholesterol levels.
"Taking the thyroid hormone replacement medicine levothyroxine (Levothroid, Synthroid) to treat an underactive thyroid can also help lower your cholesterol level)."
When your thyroid hormone level is just marginally low, you may not need thyroid hormone replacement. Instead, your doctor might put you on a statin or other cholesterol-lowering drug"
We know cholesterol reduces if on the correct dose of thyroid hormones.
Doctors who speak the truth are not believed and there are a number of doctors who've lost their licences if the speak out if they think something isn't right. Like Dr Peatfield - an expert in metabolism, Dr Skinner and others who did as they were trained as medical students but ran into the 'guidelines' just like T3 being withdrawn, NDT (the very original replacement for hypo in use since 1892) i.e. natural dessicated thyroid hormones and misinformation made about it in order to get it withdrawn from the NHS.
Before Dr Lowe's untimely death, he wrote a Rebuttal to the BTA et al and for three years asked for a response to his Rebuttal. They never did respond and . Imagine the horror and anguish of those patients who were prescribed it, suddenly had it withdrawn - then the big guns also went for T3. Leaving patients with levo alone and some people, no matter what the experts state, may or do not recover their health.
The conservative party has just won a landslide majority and the "people's government" plans to make big spending on the NHS its top priority. I am sure others would agree that there is no point in pumping in massive doses of money if it is going to be spent on the wrong things. Now that massive amounts of money have suddenly become available should someone knowledgeable not be putting a very strong case along those lines re thyroid disease and its inept management by the NHS [with further down the line consequences for NHS spending when the poorly treated /untreated patients develop other complications] so that the untreated get treated, with the best type of replacement hormone for them, whether it is NDT or T3 and so that the correct tests are carried out in the correct way etc etc, so that thyroid disease doesn't continue to languish as the Cinderella area of medicine leaving so many people leading miserable lives, just surviving, not thriving?
Thank you Shaws, and if you are doing that can you also make mention of the fact that doctors should be using symptoms as the corner stone of diagnosis and treatment, rather then simply going by blood tests which fail so many patients. The work and research of Dr John Lowe bears this out.
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