Science has finally caught up

[Vian]

It's something we in the paleo and ancestral health community already knew....but the rest of science has finally caught up and gotten a clue.

 

There is a paragraph about mid-way down that says Dr. James DiNicolantionio of Ithica College, New York is calling for a public health campaign to admit "we got it wrong" and claims that CARBOHYDRATES AND SUGAR ARE MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR HEART DISEASE THAN SATURATED FAT.

 

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/sarah-knapton/10703970/No-link-found-between-saturated-fat-and-heart-disease.html

[Tom Denham]

Prediction: This insight will be largely ignored. 

[Vian]

Probably, but it's a step in the right direction.

[AllyB]

Science might have a clue, but marketing and big businesses can't afford to acknowledge that

[dipitie]

We have so much invested into Monsanto and HFCS, we can't give up on those yet! Of course, there is an axis of evil - food manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies are all conspiring to make us sick so they make more money.

[Bet]

The recent article in the WSJ about elimination diets had comments that were full of 'placebo effect', 'where are the peer reviewed studies', 'it's just another fad', 'no one needs to eliminate foods'.

 

Sugar is where tobacco was years ago.

[jennor]

Diptie, I work as a scientist for a pharma company and I have to say that pharma companies are absolutely not conspiring to make people sick. Unfortunately there is enough sick people in the world already, most of whom can't even afford the medicines they need to control their disese. Just take a minute and try to imagine being diabetic in a thirld world country... Personally I have ulcerative colitis, and my kids would be without a mother if there was not a medicine to control that. Eating well is also part of the equation. But for most people it is not the entire equation.

 

That said, for a pharma company to research a disease area or a treatment there has to be a buisiness angle, a way to eventually get the money back from payers. And there is no business angle in paleo eating, so pharma companies don't do studies on it. This of course results in that almost all diet studies are small, under powered, not well controlled studies run by academic groups. That in turn leads to less emphasis being put on data from such studies than from big, well designed studies of new medications. There needs to be more and better research on life style factors, but that doesn't mean that there are "axes of evil" at work conspiring to give you heart disease!

[Bet]

Hi jennor, good post. I have benefitted greatly from modern medicine so I am not a doubter. However, I do think that at least here in the US, the doctors are too dependent on pharmaceuticals. They mostly treat symptoms, not underlying causes. Now, some of this is because telling people to change their diet, exercise and get more sleep will probably not get great results with many people.

 

My main issue is the antagonistic attitude some doctors have against programs like W30, new research that fat isn't bad for you, and that it's always better to take a pill than make some changes. Like you, I have IBD, Chrohn's. I've actually had it for a long time, but just got diagnosed. My GI wanted to put me on immunosuppressents. However, I had also had a lot of success treating myself with diet and have eliminated many of my symptoms.  I probably could have used some of those drugs 20 years ago, but back then I was told that my problems were 'all in my head .

 

The fact that doctors are now suggesting that twice the amount of people should take statins is very scary.

[Malgal]

Unfortunately, it is very difficult for doctors to recommend "treatments" that are not the "standard of care" in the US.  Where I grew up, doctors would happily recommend natural therapies to their patients before they turned to pharmaceuticals.  In the US, it is not worth the liability risk to do so.  I have been teaching in a US medical school for over 10 years now and the attitude towards alternative medicine is changing, but only very, very slowly.  We have some herbal medicine in our curriculum and most of the students think it is a waste of their time.  Interestingly, the guidelines for treating hypertension changed recently and although I don't recall the precise details, fewer people will need to be medicated as the target blood pressure has been changed - perhaps in the prehypertensive or stage I stage. I think this is a step in the right direction.

 

I think the insurance industry has a lot to do with where medical practice is at.  Many insurances will pay to fix you but not to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.  My insurance company dictates what drugs I take for migraine and pain.  It drives me nuts.

[dipitie]

I'm certainly not talking pharma research, but pharma that incentivizes doctors to prescribe their drugs, especially when many drugs can make the issue worse. Prime example - statins, which don't do a thing to reduce heart disease related deaths. My mother, who does NOT have high blood pressure, had her blood pressure taken multiple times in a doctors office in a single visit for a uti. They wouldn't tell her what her blood pressure was, the just kept taking it so naturally she started to get worried. Finally her blood pressure got high enough that the doctor could prescribe high blood pressure medication.Then when she refused the medication, he said she would be dead in a matter of months and walked out of the examination room. that was 12 years ago.

I also don't understand why US drug users pay more than any other country (including 1st world) for the same drugs. Why are GMO's and other food like products allowed here but not in most other countries? Something doesn't add up.

I do believe in medicine, but I believe more in diet and healthy, and most medical research just perpetuates the myths that got us to this health crisis in the first place.

[Bet]

The US pays more because we subsidize the cost of developing the new drugs. The reality of medicine today is that doctors are giving performance scales as to how many patients lower blood pressure, or cholesterol, etc. So the doctors do have a financial incentive to get people on meds to do this. Also, in many of the respected journals, articles about new drugs are actually written by the pharmaceutical  companies and have names of academics as the authors. So these journals are little more than ads for new drugs. And this is why most are so against alternative treatments or lifestyle changes. It's literally a threat to their livelihood.

[Beets]

Hear hear. It's astounding to me that so many otherwise well informed people I know keep parroting the ideas about saturated fat. Or there is the woman who proudly announces she doesn't eat meat and that her family eats a lot of salad, drowned in low fat high corn syrup and chemicals salad dressing.

Bad old ideas persist because of $. No one is making money off whole organic foods. Or diet answers to diseases. I've heard and read so many stories of doctors (and experienced it first hand) dismissing diet as a factor in disease and sickness when it so clearly is.

Why? I don't think scientists at big pharma conspire to make people sick. But I do think the head honchos and head honchos of the multinationals that own these companies answer to stockholders and big financial companies etc. I don't think making people sick is the goal, but selling drugs is. Just like the food manufacturers want to sell garbage salad dressing and 100 cal snack packs and whatever trendy snack bar. This isn't conspiratorial thinking.

Also doctors know that people are lazy and want to leave the office with a prescription. Why do we still keep taking antibiotics for viral infections?

As to the "placebo effect" I can only call on the thousands of people who aren't sneezing and snotting and running from the eyes this spring after quitting dairy and other offenders. Not to mention people who have blood tests and other real markers to confirm health benefits.

I'm also glad for modern medicine. Drugs and medical intervention keep my parents alive. They probably wouldn't have the diseases they have (diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease) if they had eaten better, but there are many diseases that can't be prevented or treated with diet. These two ideas--that pharma solutions help and harm--aren't mutually exclusive.