Can it be true? 2012 marks our 30th year! A lot has happened in that time. For starters, I got married and had a son—the greatest accomplishments of my life. And 30 years ago, my idea to publish a newsletter containing the results of my research on natural cures (so people could actually help themselves and get cured—what a concept!) was universally ridiculed. But we founded the health-newsletter field anyway by launching Health Alert. Now the idea is popular, with over 50 imitators, among them medical centers, medical schools and universities, and teaching hospitals.

Over the same decades, we continued to research phytonutrients, cardiotonics, osteofactors, and a host of other therapies that treat the actual cause of diseases. Slowly but surely we became the experts in these fields. Today we have passed a major milestone in health care by successfully helping more patients than any other physician or doctor of any kind.

During this same period, the cost of health care and health insurance has skyrocketed, single-handedly causing Medicare’s bankruptcy, and sending the American auto industry—once the powerhouse and envy of the world— overseas or into bankruptcy. And the prices for medical insurance and medical-symptom care continue to soar.

In the last 30 years, the cancer industry stuck to its guns and primarily promoted drugs, surgery, and radiation treatments. New super-expensive drugs were heralded with all the fanfare of a second coming. Most were discredited and quietly discarded as useless—but only after billions of dollars were fleeced from the public and government. On the bright side, there was a major turning point with breast cancer. After 40 years of failing to decrease the rate of cancer or death—despite billions of research dollars and thousands of cancer curathons—the rates dramatically began to drop in 2002. The reason was that women rejected the advice of their physicians and simply decided to avoid menopausal hormone drugs (like estrogen) en masse.

The world of cardiology was catapulted into high-tech, band-aid treatments such as angioplasty, bypasses, stents, shock therapy, and ablation.

They continue to be the preferred treatments even though they do nothing to treat the cause of heart disease, and have not been proven to prolong life. Those not suitable for this high-tech world were treated with an ever-increasing number of highly touted heart, blood pressure, and cholesterol drugs. These treatments became popular even though many of the drugs had paralyzing side effects that caused heart disease and/or killed thousands of heart patients. And despite the fact that the real research shows that most of these drugs do not prevent heart attacks or prolong life, they remain the mainstay of medical therapy.

Some positive strides were taken in medicine—spurred mostly by entrepreneurial physicians and by companies that make medical equipment such as lasers. Laser therapy for men with benign prostate hypertrophy eliminated the medical “gold standard” of the bloody TURP (a “roto-rooter” of the prostate). And lasers are now being introduced for outpatient spinal surgery that is often highly effective as well as dramatically safer, easier, and less debilitating. These safer procedures can provide relief—even to patients who suffer long-term chronic and debilitating back and leg pain that no other therapy can help.

During the last 30 years, the medico-pharmaceutical industry transformed itself into a mega-business. It developed new marketing skills to ensure that every single American became a patient using drugs and other medical therapies for life. The industry employed or enlisted the services of politicians, lawyers, and even governments. And their latest, highly successful campaign of disease mongering involves free screenings, and full-body scans. This campaign encompasses several approaches, such as comparing the bone mass of older women to women in their thirties, ratcheting down the “normal” levels of blood pressure to 110/70 and the “normal” levels of cholesterol to below 150, and much more.

When your free health screening uncovers “abnormal” blood pressure, cholesterol, or bone mass, you are ushered off to your physician to start your very own prescription drug regimen for life. And just in case some people were still missed, this same industry has taken to dishing out blood

pressure and cholesterol drugs to children. The final insult has now come as powerful, addicting, psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin are handed out like candy to grammar school kids for diseases that do not exist! All with an assuring nod from the teachers, school administrators, health officials, community leaders, politicians, physicians, and even the parents. What could be a better scam for the medico-pharmaceutical industry?

"Natural” Health?

As if this was not enough, throughout the 1980s and 1990s a Gestapo-style campaign was initiated against any physician who strayed from the established “gold standard” of medical therapy. Doctors who broke with their profession to offer patients holistic therapies were persecuted, sued, lost their licenses, and, on some occasions, even had their clinics invaded by armed security agents.

Upon hearing about this from their constituents, Congress passed a law protecting “vitamin and mineral supplements.” And slowly but surely the tide turned. The persecutors were discredited, losing case after case in court, their real motives exposed. During this time the “supplement” industry exploded. Thousands of rip-off artists bought the raw ingredients for supplements for pennies, and then developed shrewd marketing techniques to sell their supplements for thousands of times their cost. Most of these supplements were useless. However, billions of dollars were made and continue to be made by unscrupulous supplement profiteers.

Professional athletes got in on performance-enhancing supplements, but quickly found that these products did not perform as advertised. So they turned to drugs—illicit, steroid hormone and growth hormone drugs. It was heartbreaking for me, an ex-athlete who loves athletics and sports. My heroes were discredited, their gold medals stripped. And Congress grapples today with how to handle the hundreds of professional athletes who are “juiced” on drugs.

Throughout all these events, Health Alert continued to publish our results in treating the cause of disease. Our sheer volume of experience with tens of thousands of patients has provided us with a “looking-glass” into every type of condition, disease, and treatment. For example, after seeing 10,000 patients treated with X drug for their heart disease, it is easy to know what is going to happen to the next 10,000. The side effects, problems, and ramifications of most medical treatments are the same in almost all patients. It becomes repetitive and predictable.

And after helping 50,000 to 60,000 more people with the same type of heart disease, or digestive disorder, or bone disorder, we have learned which plant and/or glandular extract will effect the result we want and help cure the patient. In most cases, this experience allows us to tell patients that in 6 to 18 months their condition will be a memory.

Yet there are times when a drug is needed and can be miraculous. Most of these times are in emergency situations, with infections, and when an organ system is worn out or destroyed. For most everything else, including most degenerative diseases, providing the body what it needs to resolve the underlying cause of disease is best. And this type of treatment is certainly better than toxic drugs, with their litany of side effects. After all, we’ve already had the benefit of the “looking glass”—into tens of thousands of case histories, all with similar or identical results of lifetime drug therapy.

In fact, most patients start on our protocols while they are under the care of their own physician. He or she is truly trying very hard to do everything they can to help the patient, with one prescription after another. It is when the positive results of our protocol begin to become obvious that most patients confront their physicians about their prescriptions. And in most cases, people cannot get completely well until they wean off their prescriptions or cut back to a bare minimum, with the help of the prescribing physician.

So Contrary, but So True

Almost 30 years ago, I began to tell patients that many of their concepts about health and disease, usually learned from the medical profession, were false. Throughout the past 30 years, I have published my own basic concepts about health and disease that fly in the face of medical “science.” Almost every single concept has now been proven true. But the medical profession remains paralyzed—unable to break the financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry—even as the average physician does everything possible to help patients with their health problems.

Some of the most shocking truths that I initiated and published are:

* Most people with indigestion, gas, bloating, heartburn, and reflux suffer from too little stomach acid, not too much. And if this is your situation, then taking antacids, by definition, will make you permanently ill. It will also further impair your digestion of valuable nutrients, and worsen your body’s ability to produce adequate amounts of digestive juices and acids. Anyone with indigestion problems can perform the Zypan Test to determine if they are low on stomach acid.

* Most forms of muscular heart disease, including congestive heart failure, are due to beriberi of the heart. This debilitating disease, induced by a lack of the whole B-vitamin phytonutrient complex, paralyzes the heart and causes it to enlarge and become “waterlogged.” When the heart muscle weakens, the heart and valves stretch, causing leaky heart valves. Most cases of mitral valve prolapse are not due to a disease at all. Rather these “disease” diagnoses are simply symptoms of a nutritional deficiency.

We have repeatedly stated (for more than 20 years) that “the heart is the most responsive organ in the body when the proper phytonutrient therapy is applied.” Almost all medical heart disease treatments completely ignore the underlying cause of this epidemic disease in America. Most traditional treatments cause too many and too serious side effects to utilize long-term. When the proper phytonutrient protocols are employed, most medical treatments are never needed.

* Prescription hormones are a Pandora’s box. They can prolong lives (as in the use of insulin with type 1 diabetes), but they can wreak havoc with haphazard use (such as estrogen for all women in menopause). My statement, “When you find you have developed uterine or breast cancer from estrogen, you will wish you could have your hot flashes back,” turned out truer than I could have even foreseen. After 50 years of rising breast cancer rates, they finally took a dramatic swing downward when millions of women began to reject menopausal estrogen.

* The antioxidant craze is a hoax. While your body needs certain antioxidant nutrients, the blanket marketing of chemical antioxidants to fight free radicals is a rip-off. And claiming that all diseases are caused by free radical damage—thus promoting useless antioxidant products, produced for pennies and sold for hundreds of dollars—makes the whole thing worse.

* The low-fat diet to fight heart disease is a sham. Thankfully no one can stay on this kind of diet for long because it will starve you of the very nutrition you need to heal a diseased heart. It will also rob you of the fats needed for proper hormone production, proper brain function, and it will damage your skin. Avoiding animal fats and cholesterol at all costs is a dreadful idea that could cost you your life. In addition, all the low-fat, low-calorie, zero-cholesterol, zero-trans-fat, and “heart-healthy” foods are junk. They are a form of liquid plastic and should not be consumed.

* Omega-3 fatty acids must be consumed on a regular basis to maintain good heart, brain, hormone, and skin health. Cod liver and flax oils are excellent supplements to provide these critical nutrients.

* Prescription Drug Withdrawal is an integral part of any protocol that treats the cause of disease. Though many people are brainwashed into thinking that the more drugs they take, the healthier they will be, the opposite is true. Specifically, most powerful drugs used for heart patients must be gradually reduced as the patients are cured by one of our protocols. If not, the drug that may have been temporarily helpful will become a toxic poison.

Almost 20 years ago I coined a critical phrase: “New drugs? Cheaper drugs? Free drugs? Who cares? What we need is fundamental change.”

Deep breathing is the first line of defense against chronic stress and resultant high blood pressure. Two decades before “effective breathing machines” like RESPeRATE® came onto the market, we offered one of our first free flyers on how to breath deeply to lower your blood pressure.

And more than two decades ago, we recommended exercise that also involves your mind as a key to controlling high blood pressure. Today Zona Plus™, an exercise technique using no drugs, involves exercise and the mind as a “proven first line of defense against high blood pressure that is natural, safe, and effective.”

* Type 2 diabetes is a deficiency disease that anyone can cure. Brought on by a sedentary lifestyle and a typical American diet laden with wheat, white flour, and sugar, the cure is to treat the nutritional deficiencies of B vitamin phytonutrient complexes and minerals, and to begin a weight resistance (weight lifting) exercise program. A person with diabetes who is willing to quit wheat and sugar, while lifting weights twice weekly, can get off diabetes drugs—with all their horrifying side effects—usually within 90 days.

* Diagnostic tests like x-rays, scans, and MRIs for joint problems and especially spinal problems, rarely pinpoint the real cause of the problem. Surgeries based on findings from these tests often backfire, leaving the patient in a worsened condition. Painkillers for joint disease and pain are killers indeed. They don’t really kill the pain, and they are highly toxic to the liver and heart. The real answer for people with joint problems, including arthritis and osteoporosis, is a diet of whole foods (with a third of them raw), weight lifting, raw bone supplements, cod liver oil, and therapies that treat the real cause of the problem. We have listed many of these therapies to be used in conjunction with a diet, supplement, and exercise protocol to end patients’ joint pain.

* Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. And the whole industry built around cholesterol screenings, zero-cholesterol foods, and lowering cholesterol at all costs (almost always with drugs) is a scam to make money. Lowering the “normal” cholesterol levels to below 150 is part of the same scam. Long-term (30-year) use of statin (cholesterol-lowering) drugs prolongs life by only a few months. 1

* Blood pressure screenings, lowering the “normal” blood pressure to below 110/70, and the mindset of “lowering blood pressure with drugs at all costs” are more examples of the same scam to make money. Long-term (30-year) use of blood pressure drugs prolongs life by only a few weeks (actually 9 days statistically). 2

* Cancer is a systemic (throughout the body) disease, no matter what your doctor tells you. Telling patients, based on post-operation scans, that “we got it all” is always a lie. Scans to predict if you are cancer-free are useless. Most cancers have been growing and spreading for 5 to 10 years before they are detected and diagnosed. Billions of cancer cells must be present to show up on any scan. Surgery, although often needed, can spread cancer. The word “cure” in oncology (cancer care) circles has up to fifty different definitions. The only real cure is the one where you live long enough to die from something other than cancer. These survivors are strong, and most utilize a protocol to treat cancer everywhere in their body, rather than relying solely on local surgery, local radiation, and/or chemotherapy.

* The diaphragm muscle is overlooked by almost everyone as a cause of very common and chronic problems. A weakness in the diaphragm can cause indigestion and reflux. The same weakness can cause the heart to feel like it is palpitating and “flip-flopping” in the chest, especially at night. And this same diaphragm problem can irritate the vagus nerve causing real excess acid production in the stomach. Unless you treat the diaphragm with a specific hands-on pressure technique (which is basically unknown to most physicians), all other

medical therapies— including drugs, medical therapies and surgery—are useless, band-aid treatments that are virtually unnecessary.

* Phytonutrient supplements made from plant, animal, and glandular extracts and concentrates perform thousands of times more effectively in the body than the isolated vitamins and minerals found in most supplements. In fact, most supplements tested over the past three decades, with thousands of patients, have proved useless in treating people who have come to us with serious diseases and health problems.

We Can Help You

These are just the highlights of the remarkable concepts we have brought forth. They were all initially ridiculed, and later proven true. If you find yourself in one or more of these categories, and you do not have the particular Health Alert issue or articles regarding your problem, we can help. Just drop us a brief note about your problem. Be sure to enclose a self-addressed, stamped (with 2 stamps) envelope, and I will make sure you get the information you need.

Has it really been 30 years? Yes. And the years have proven once again that truth is truly timeless. New drugs? Who cares? Fundamental change is what is needed in health care. Health Alert is the change, and these are just some of the fundamentals.

NOTES...

1. The MRC/BHF Heart Protection Study.

2. Journal of the American Medical Association, May, 2003.

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Health Alert, 30 Ryan Ct, #100, Monterey, CA 93940 (877) 429-4858
Reprint © Health Alert

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What is the biggest and strongest muscle in the body? The back? The legs or thighs? How about the big muscles of your arms? Well, the strongest muscle in the body is the diaphragm, the muscle that separates the chest from the abdomen. And strangely enough, it is a muscle you don’t have to think about—unless you run into trouble.

Diaphragm Strain (Hiatal Hernia)

One day, after playing volleyball, I felt a little odd. Soon, the oddness became downright uncomfortable. I was slightly dizzy, I had trouble concentrating, I was weak and trembly, and my heart was starting to palpitate. Heart attack? No, only a diaphragm strain! Unfortunately, not one physician in 1,000 would recognize this. If it were you, you’d end up in the hospital, undergo thousands of dollars in tests, and potentially be harmed by iatrogenic (doctor- or drug-induced) testing or treatments.

I was simply treated by my local chiropractor. He knew how to effectively stretch my diaphragm back to its normal position, freeing the stomach from its trap in the diaphragm and allowing normal breathing and diaphragm action to resume. The entire treatment took less than two minutes and was 100% effective immediately.

My case was relatively benign. I had the experience to recognize what was happening. But it can become very serious. The palpitations can become severe. Gastrointestinal problems like vomiting and reflux can ensue. You can faint or become extremely weak. You can suffer a severe backache or headache. In some cases, you feel that you are going to die. Remember, the diaphragm is the strongest muscle in the body. Without its proper action, you can’t breathe.

Worse yet, millions of people carry around the damage from a strained diaphragm for years or for life! It is estimated that up to half of all Americans over age 60 may suffer from a hiatal hernia (diaphragm strain). A huge percentage of these people have not only stomach and reflux problems, but heart and related circulatory problems as well, all caused by the weakness in the diaphragm.

The danger of an undiagnosed hiatal hernia is that folks are treated with dangerous drugs for a suspected stomach, heart, or circulatory problem that, when properly diagnosed, would be corrected in the same fashion I was treated. So, if this sounds like you, please take note. Even if a gastroenterologist puts a scope down into your stomach and pronounces you do not have a hiatal hernia, still have it checked out. This condition

is often impossible to diagnose via standard medical procedures.

Is It Gastroesophageal Reflux or Hiatal Hernia or Both?

A diaphragm strain or hiatal hernia can cause not only the problems described above, it can also produce severe, chronic heartburn, indigestion, and reflux. Billions of dollars are spent yearly on medical treatments for the symptoms of this condition.

The catchphrase diagnosis for heartburn these days is gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). In fact, most heartburn and reflux occur when acids from the stomach are allowed up through the muscular opening in the diaphragm into the esophagus. Although your stomach lining is designed to handle these acidic compounds, your esophagus is not. Constant acid reflux can eventually damage, ulcerate, or even cause a precancerous condition (Barrett’s Esophagus) in your lower throat.

No one knows for sure what causes GERD. However, we have found that many GERD sufferers have inadequate digestive enzymes (acids) or faulty digestive enzyme production and distribution in their stomach and intestines. For most sufferers, the cause of the problem falls into one or more of four general categories:

1) Poor diet, poor food combining, overeating, and a high refined-carbohydrate-sugar intake.
2) Poor or inadequate digestive enzyme function in the stomach, pancreas, and small intestine.
3) Prescription drugs that contribute to reflux problems.
4) Mechanical problems in the diaphragm like a hiatal hernia or diaphragm strain (as discussed previously).

For numbers one and two, relief is pretty easy. Number three can often be readily solved by working with your MD to get off the offending medication. And even if you have mechanical problems (as in number four), or a combination of problems, relief is most often possible. In most cases, it boils down to whether or not you can break bad habits to solve the problem and prevent serious throat disease.

What to Do for Diet and Digestion Problems

When it comes to numbers one and two, perform

this experiment: For one week, eat only protein and vegetables. Before each meal, drink half a glass of water. With each meal, take from one to three Zypan and one to three Okra Pepsin E3 tablets (both from Standard Process).

In fact, a good way to test if you have too much or too little stomach acid is to do the Zypan test. Simply take two Zypan tablets with your meal. If your digestion improves, you have too little stomach acid and should continue to use Zypan. If you get a tingling or light burning, you have too much stomach acid; in that case, use one to three Gastrex tablets (from Standard Process) instead of Zypan. The rest of the therapy will be the same.

While on your experimental week, eat until you are only three-quarters full. This is critical, because the stomach needs a little extra space to churn and swirl its contents with the digestive enzymes. If your stomach is stuffed completely full of food, the swirling and churning will force food into the esophagus simply because there’s not enough room in your stomach.

Food allergies can also cause heartburn and GERD. Some of those that most commonly cause GERD are wheat, sugar, chocolate, onions, tomatoes, and citrus. If you are not getting the expected results from other therapies, and if you suspect food allergies, send us a self-addressed, stamped (with two stamps) envelope and write FOOD ALLERGIES.

Prescription Drugs

As stated, drugs can also be a cause of GERD problems. The most common problems come from muscle relaxants, asthma drugs like theophylline, and beta antagonists. Since antacids are most often not necessary, if your doctor prescribes them, be sure to read the article, “Gas and Bloating After Eating: So Common—It’s ‘Normal’ ”.

Mechanical Problems (Hiatal Hernia)

Nowadays, thousands (perhaps millions) of people are being treated with drugs and even surgery to correct GERD, while no attention is paid to the mechanical or structural causes of the problem. Even those doctors who suggest a nutritional/dietary approach generally ignore mechanical/structural causes. That’s not surprising since probably not one in 1,000 physicians knows how to detect and correct the underlying and

mechanical causes of GERD.

Thanks to people like George Goodheart, DC, and in particular the now deceased Richard Van Rumpt, DC, the critical information needed to detect and correct hiatal hernia and mechanical causes of GERD is available. It is usually a chiropractor or kinesiologist who knows how to perform this service. But you can often detect and treat a GERD problem yourself with the right data.

Upwards of 50% of the general population over age 60 may have the structural weakness likened to a hiatal hernia, when a portion of the stomach or stomach contents are allowed up through the diaphragm into the chest cavity or esophagus (see schematic). The general complaints of this condition are indigestion, heartburn, angina, vomiting, ulcers, left-arm pain, palpitations, difficult breathing, or just plain chronic fullness and bloating.

Diagnosis and Treatment

If you wish to test someone else or yourself, try this treatment with the help of a partner. You will need a watch or clock with a second hand. For the sake of my instructions, your partner will be the patient.

top

(Reverse roles if you are the actual patient.) Have your partner hold his or her breath for as long as possible. Record the time in seconds. Now place your hand on the upper abdomen just under the “V” of the breastbone and ribs [see photo].

Use a steady, heavy, inward and downward pressure for ten to 15 seconds while the patient relaxes and breathes normally. Repeat this three or four times. Now test your partner’s breath-holding time again. Compare this time with the original. If the breath-holding time increases by 50% or more, this is diagnostic of hiatal hernia or a mechanical problem with the diaphragm and stomach.

The procedure used in diagnosing this problem is also the same procedure used to treat the condition. While it may have to be repeated several times until successful, it will usually provide some immediate relief from the first treatment

If you have problems with the standing treatment, you can also perform the treatment with the patient lying down with the head and shoulders supported by pillows [as shown in the next photo]. In this case, you will use the fleshy part of your hand and

wrist to apply the inward and downward pressure. Your hand makes contact under the ribs, slightly left of center. Apply pressure inward and downward toward the patient’s left foot. Hold the pressure the same as in the standing treatment.

In all cases, be sure you are free of the patient’s ribs and rib ends. Ribs can snap (especially if the ribs are brittle). If you are squeamish, or if the patient is old and has brittle bones, it is best to have a professional perform this therapy. Generally chiropractors, osteopaths, and kinesiologists know how to perform this treatment. To find a referral for one of these doctors near you, call the International College of Applied Kinesiology (1-913-384-5336) or e-mail ICAK@dci-kansascity.com.

Once you get a list of doctors near your home, call them up and tell them you are a Health Alert reader and you want to know if they are familiar with correcting a hiatal hernia with the technique described in this article. The one who tells you that he or she does this treatment all the time is most likely the one you want to visit.

How Many Treatments?

The general rule is to treat until successful. In some instances, the problem within the muscle of the diaphragm is so great, treatment may need to continue periodically throughout life. In most cases, relief comes quickly. With some people, during treatment, the stomach will actually be pulled back through the diaphragm out of the chest and into the abdomen with a feeling similar to pulling a cork out of a bottle. In general, treat daily, then three times per week, then weekly, then biweekly, then monthly, and so on.

While the dietary changes are absolutely necessary when it comes to indigestion, the reason so many doctors and patients fail to manage this problem is that the mechanics of the stomach are overlooked. So keep this in mind. And even if your doctor tells you that you do not have a hiatal hernia or any problem in your diaphragm, perform the test I’ve recommended anyway. It is diagnostic and no matter what your doctor’s tests say (including x-rays and scope tests of the GI tract), treatment is needed when your diagnosis is positive.

If you eliminate the mechanical problem and follow the dietary and nutritional supplement advice in this article, you will be performing a vital service for your entire body.

Instead of making yourself permanently sick with antacids, you will allow for proper digestion and assimilation of nutrients, thereby providing your body with its priceless source of energy and life. If you need more information about what to eat and what not to eat, as well as what to combine with what, send us a self-addressed, stamped (with two stamps) envelope and write FOOD COMBINING.

Return To Hands-On Healing

Health care professionals of all types have gotten away from hands-on healing. Every day, the body is inundated with all kinds of forces, some emotional and many physical. Occasionally something gets knocked out of place. For the most part, the body is capable of adjusting itself back to normal. But sometimes, something gets stuck.

This occurs all the time in the spine, and now you know it can also occur in the diaphragm and stomach. To think that all treatment should be shots, prescriptions, vitamins, or some other nonphysical therapy is absurd. There is a time when the doctor’s hands need to be placed on the patient and some form of force or adjustment needs to be delivered. If this is the situation with you (such as the hiatal hernia problem), all the pills, shots, potions, and lotions in the world will not suffice.

Remember, bodies get stuck and often need some physical help. In particular, the problem with the diaphragm and hiatal hernia is serious and extremely common. It is almost always treated improperly, and the wrong treatment causes untold cases of iatrogenic disease. The cost is astronomical and the suffering is unnecessary.

This problem can be treated at home with the help of a spouse or a friend. But if you feel frail and at risk from this or any other treatment, do not try it on your own. Go straight to a professional.

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Health Alert, 30 Ryan Ct, #100, Monterey, CA 93940 1-800-231-8063
Reprint © Health Alert

Except for those with heart disease or those at the highest risk for heart disease, all the standard medical risk factors added up to mostly nothing when it comes to predicting heart disease, heart attack, or stroke. And for healthy adults, even the "alternative" risk factors, like homocysteine and C-Reactive protein findings were next to useless.

This is a big one since so many multiple risk factor intervention programs are in full swing, with more planned, throughout the US and Europe. The typical risk factors include cholesterol, smoking, blood pressure and diabetes. And programs include prescription drugs as their centerpiece, with counseling and education as adjunct treatments.

These are led up by the American Heart Association, the AMA, local and state governments, and even the federal government.

Yet just as was found 10 years ago by the Cochrane Heart Group and Cochrane Collaboration www.cochrane.com treating risk factors was "ineffective in achieving reductions in total or cardiovascular disease mortality (death)."

Indeed the findings of these interventional programs showed that some people actually got worse. Overall deaths actually increased among the drug-treated group with high blood pressure. And some did benefit. Those were the folks at the very highest risk of heart disease.

But in the end, it showed once again that high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc. were poor predictors of heart disease, stroke or death in healthy people. And the same can be said for the biomarker risk factors like homocysteine, C-Reactive protein, B-type natriuretic peptide. The conclusions were that the costs of using these risk factors and treating for the same are very high, and these resources would be better spent in other areas, or simply on those at the highest risk levels.

If you are healthy, and when your health screening

finds your cholesterol at 250 (which is normal), or your blood pressure to be 140/90 (which is normal), do not be fooled into powerful, dangerous, usually life-long prescription drug treatments. This is "not particularly effective in terms of reducing the risk of clinical events (stroke, heart attack, angina, etc.)"

But What About CRP and Homocysteine?

Around about 2005 I began wondering about the relevance of homocysteine levels. After all, synthetic B vitamins would often lower homocysteine to safe levels, yet do nothing to help heal the heart. Was this finding not as important as I previously thought. That may indeed be the case. I now feel that the lowering of the homocysteine levels has little direct correlation to heart disease.

And while I still monitor the C-Reactive protein (CRP) levels in heart patients, I now feel that a high CRP level is just an ancillary finding. In some cases, it can help diagnose inflammation or infection in the coronary arteries. But it is probably not the major risk factor that many of us were convinced of.

So it is back to basics. Taking all the tests, getting all the counseling, following the low-fat diet, taking the drugs like Caduet (a cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure drug combined into one), doesn't amount to much, and can even hurt you. Instead, eat whole foods, exercise, drink pure water, keep a positive attitude, and use phytonutrients when needed. This is the formula for heart success.

This will be a hard pill for most in the medical profession to swallow. After all, screenings, interventions, and drugs are critical to their ongoing control over people and patients. There are thousands of well-meaning physicians right now that truly believe that a statin (cholesterol-lowering) drug should be prescribed for every American over age 50!

More Medical Myths

The risk factors for heart disease are taking their place among medical myths. While the list of myths is growing, some of the classics are:

1. Taking an aspirin a day forever will make you live longer.

2. Low-carbohydrate diets are unsafe and ineffective for losing weight.

3. Nearly everyone would benefit by using statin (cholesterol-lowering) drugs.

4. Nearly everyone over age 50 should take blood pressure drugs.

5. All radiation is dangerous unless administered by an oncologist.

6. Annual mammograms and follow-up treatment prolong life.

7. Cancer treatments are better than ever-with cure rates of over 60%.

8. Water fluoridation prevents tooth decay and is perfectly safe.

These are classic medical myths. They become malignant myths when they are prolonged for more than 15 years. Almost all of these fit that definition.

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Health Alert, 30 Ryan Ct, #100, Monterey, CA 93940 1-800-231-8063
Reprint © Health Alert