Weekly News

Not meaning to stay on the anti drug company train, I begin there regardless:

• Earn the $$$$: Some countries which have national health programs such as France and the UK as well as some health insurers (Cigna, Aetna) are requiring or considering requiring satisfaction guarantees from big drug companies. In other words, if a company tells us that X drug will lower cholesterol and people who take X drug will be less likely to have a heart attack but the people on the drug do have normal rates of heart attacks, the NHS or Cigna, get some amount of money back. I like this because what happens in a good random clinical trial doesn’t necessarily play out in the real world. I would hope that agencies and insurance companies would get 100% plus back if they agreed to use a drug for example which turned out to kill people instead of save them, you know, like Vioxx. What would be really cool is if we could also demand that companies not sell us stuff that kills us, I’m thinking cigarettes, for example. Hey what do you think kills more of us a year lead or cigarette smoke? Both are bad, both should be regulated.
• Hormone Treatment and Breast Cancer: I was surprised to read about a recent verdict, one out of seven, regarding Wyeth’s HRT and breast cancer incidence. This one found Wyeth guilty of negligence. This is not unlike what we are talking about in the above example, except that it is. This is not the company guaranteeing the safety of its product but the courts calling the company out for what they feel is a faulty product. I was surprised as much about the verdict as my own response to it, which is HUH? In this case it seemed to me, from the sidelines, that doc’s and women’s groups themselves exploded the market for this compound by their own demand. Even today HRT is sought and prescribed, though some caution has been applied.
• EIEO: Running with a new group these days (thanks Lee Ann) and one fellow mentioned his second career as a personal trainer and cardio instructor. He too said that his clients want the magic pill or even surgery and refuse to change the way they eat. Even when his clients were adding resistance training AND cardio (step aerobics, cycling, running etc) their weight didn’t change because they were eating all the wrong stuff and way too much of it. Let me remind you here, a health promoting way of eating does NOT involve hunger or deprivation. It doesn’t require cardboard tasting food. It is neither bland nor monotonous – heck, variety and bulk are the cornerstone of Volumetrics. If you want to eat and promote your disease fighting capacity don’t go on a diet for goodness sakes, READ Barbara Rolls and Walter Willett, these two are esteemed, degreed individuals at premier academic institutions…. They are NOT Susan Powter (remember her?)
• DID: DID stands for disassociative identity disorder, it’s a newer, but not new term for multiple personality disorder. As you may know, my previous employment was in clinical mental health. My opinion is that you are who you are. There is only one of you and as a clinician I am only going to work with that one person. That is where I stand and stood before I read about a review of studies noted in Scientific American. That publication discussed studies that found some evidence of false memories resulting from therapies used with DID patients. The idea is to get back to the traumatic event that triggered a defense response of creating different personalities. My issue was seeing this type of thing in patients who really had a different disorder, Border Line Personality. (think glen close in fatal attraction) Anyway, I digress. Some clinicians and others use things like hypnosis and drugs to get into the memories. I believe that if a true event was so devastating that it led to a buried memory, there is a reason for that. That is a self preservation mechanism. When I began my career many years ago, my brother told me that sometimes a person doesn’t want to relive their childhood but to live in the adult hood that they have. That to me is a normal healthy response. Many Borderline patients have no present and that is where the psychotherapy might be better used.
• DIETS: Several websites, okay, hundreds if not thousands, offer suggestions for losing weight. Some are crazy, some are dangerous, many are fad based and a few are legitimate and associated with valid nutrition organizations such as the USDA and the ADA. The Wall St Journal noted how some people benefit from the social networking aspect of sites like Calorie Count. What I did like about that one is that people are encouraged to be conscious of their calories. Anyone who supports the science of EIEO is on the right track. One person in the article mentioned being a professional dieter and that indeed has been my beef all along….. No No No.. Diets don’t work. Your body needs optimal fuel, the right kind, the right amount. every day all the time. Consistently.
• YEAH! Fat! I should research this more because I do not know what rendering fat from livestock (from processing livestock) really means, or I know and don’t want to think about it. It could be that I mean to say, BOO FAT BOO. Here is the point though, fat is used as fuel, as biodiesal instead of corn or soybean oil and this can be economically good on several levels. However, when I was thinking of reused fat I thought of fat used after something was cooked in it. I think that is the concept behind Willie Nelson’s biofuel. This article about the expansion of fat as fuel may be talking about extracting fat in the slaughtering process which is quite frankly, gross and well, we don’t have to talk about my vegetarianism right now. Here is the bigger question, if that is indeed what they are doing, can someone “render” fat from us? Yeah that’s it……. Can we use the fat from liposuction to fuel our Hummers!
• Soda and Calcium: Quick note from late story. The question really is, does something in soda keep calcium from being absorbed, or do people drink soda and not take in enough calcium from dairy and other food products? I think that is what it is, but that is because I love my diet soda!
• Overheard: This was priceless. A man was walking near my office building and eating an ice cream. This man was overweight. Another man who wasn’t so overweight came out and chided the ice cream eating man. I assume they were friends. He says, “ Hey so and so, what do you have there a no calorie ice cream. “ WELLLLLLLLLLLLLL (as my friend Angi says). The man being sarcastic was Smoking a cigarette…….. What would DEEDEE Do indeed, I would have said, “Hey, Mister, is that a no cancer cigarette you’re smoking!”
• Diabetes: Very quick story from today. A man went to the doctor a few years ago. Doctor told the man who then weight 350 pounds, you have diabetes and if you do not doing something you’re gonna be dead in a year. That man did what so FEW others do. He changed the way he ate, lost 100 pounds and then began running. I met him recently, I would guess 5’10 170 lb. He runs marathons and also has a cute girlfriend. Oh, no drugs either. Sweet.
  
  Off to Key West
  
  Wishing you Wellness