I saw Helvella's post regarding the article in the Guardian on NHS checks; I did post this elsewhere, but I guess would only be visible to folk following the original post, so I thought it may be helpful to post separately.
Some on here may well be aware of this work:
The work of Malcolm Kendrick and others' is really interesting regarding Cholestrol and heart disease; if anyone is interested, please watch ; The Great Cholestrol Con (see link below)....At around 26 minutes of the video, there is a chart that shows that when we block cholestrol with Statins, the rest of the other essentials in our bodies are hindered at a mitrochondrial level.
On Dr Peter Longsjoen's webiste, (he is one of the Dr's on the video) he has done lots of research (although I haven't read them!) on Ubiquinol and it's role in the body and heart.
My Dad is on Statins; I am trying to get him to understand all of this. He was told by Dr after he had a heart by pass ( I think the issues with his heart were caused by an under active and undiagnosed thyroid.) That Statins were keeping him alive!
Of course, he is scared to come off them!
Also, if we raised any concerns regarding Statins with a medical practitioner, as it says in the video, they have been trained in medical school to think that cholesterol is bad!
All over the Internet and literature support the diet/ heart hypothesis!
Co-Q10 is recommended for younger people, the active form which is Ubiquinol is recommended for older people as Co -Q19 converts to Ubiquinol. However, in older people Ubiquinol active, just like T3, it doesn't have to convert.
I think Dr. Kendrick's views make a lot of sense and I hope he is successful in the Libel case he is pursuing against The Mail on Sunday. Regards the mitochondrial association I am reading The Thyroid Debacle by Dr Eric Bacalage who discusses his views on this
I haven't been reading much of MKs stuff in the last couple of years and wasn't aware of the libel trial involving him and Zoe Harcombe until you mentioned it.
Having looked up stuff about it, and being a pessimist, I think money is going to scupper MK even if he wins (which I sincerely hope he does). He will be fighting the Daily Mail which is majority owned by Viscount Rothermere who was estimated to be worth £1 billion in 2015. No doubt this has increased quite a bit since then.
Suppose MK wins his case. The Daily Mail will almost certainly appeal. They could lose multiple times and appeal multiple times. Each time they appeal will cost money for Kendrick and Harcombe, and they almost certainly don't have bottomless pockets.
But I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best. I don't envy MK and ZH at all.
This issue of going to court and then appealing multiple times if they lose is often how the NHS wins its cases because the little people run out of money, but the NHS effectively has bottomless pockets.
As a pessimist, the scenario you envisage could be the outcome. My optimistic hope is that the the logic of the scientific evidence put forward by MK will persuade the judge who has described this case as the “most significant piece of defamation litigation that I have seen in a very long time.” Hopefully it will generate a lot of publicity and get people thinking.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned by anyone discussing statins is that everyone will die sometime, and it can't be avoided. But doctors and researchers go on and on about how much the risk of death from heart disease is reduced by taking statins - but fail to mention that the risk of Cancer increases, the risk of Dementia increases, and the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes increases.
So, even if statins reduce the risk of death from heart disease, I can't ignore the risks of other killer diseases increasing. But doctors ignore lots of things when it comes to statins.
Yes, we have to ask as a culture: "What is our relationship to death and dying?"Everything in our culture is about saving lives! We need more conversations about death and mortality; we will all die!
I think we need honest conversations about quality vs quantity of life. Because they arent always the same thing. Yes treatments have advanced tremendously for chronic diseases that in the past would have meant a more premature death, but at what cost? The extra years we are gaining arent necessarily the ones we would want.
Living for an extra 10 or 20 years but with much reduced quality and enjoyment of life doesnt always seem like the win that medical science would have us believe.
Of course qol is very subjective and really only the person living that particular life can comment on it but I do think we need to be far less squeamish about something that is inevitable for all of us.
I’d like to think of death as just another transition, the same way birth was from living in a watery world for 9 months to being in the outside world was. Nothing to fear except getting rid of a shell that’s causing increasing problems and the spirit being set free.
I don’t believe in any god, but I do like the Lakota Native American idea that we came from the stars and when we die we return to the stars.
Which is why I've never bothered going for the over 40's health check and I won't be participating in the digital, get the patient to do the work, Poundland version. Even if I was told I had a cholesterol issue I wouldn't take statins so why waste my time and theirs?
Yes, I was told to take statins for high cholesterol about 10 or 12 years ago because I was diagnosed with angina. I refused. But it turned out that my supposed angina was caused by extremely low iron, which I had to fix. It was only when I realised that the better my iron the less "angina" I had that I found out the connection.
Another excellent read on this subject is The Great Cholesterol Myth by Jonny Bowden and Stephen Sinatra. One of the authors is a cardiologist. When I read it some years ago, I was reassured that my decision to decline statins was wise.
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Dr Kendrick on Statins. Stop press!
Dr Malcolm Kendrick – has anyone seen him re thyroid issues?
'Treating thyroid patients like children' by Dr Malcolm Kendrick
