* BlipsFit *

You know those commercials saying “Talk to your doctor” well he or she might not even do anything about your complaints and maybe not even listen. Be prepared before you go to see your doctor and write down facts and questions you have.

Researchers found that people who are using statins and have muscle pain are not taken serious by there doctor. The doctor just ignores complaints and does not report anything to the FDA. So maybe some day we will see a commercial saying “Talk to your patients” AND DO SOMETHING!

The researchers solicited survey respondents through advertisements and over the Internet, including on web sites where patients had complained about side effects from the drugs. Most of the respondents lived in the United States, and the average age was in the early 60s. The majority of respondents reported having complained to their doctors about problems that arose after they began the drugs, particularly memory and attention problems or tingling and numbness in the extremities. But few doctors made a connection between these complaints and the drugs, even when the symptoms were documented side effects.

The FDA relies primarily on doctors to fill out “adverse event reports” to help monitor drugs after they have hit the market. Patients can also file reports at www.FDA.gov/medwatch but few people are aware of this program. In contrast, other countries such as New Zealand rely heavily on data from patients to continue monitoring drugs.

Read more here; www.naturalnews.com/022687.html

and here: www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/how-to-talk-to-your-doctor-158229.html

“The entire obesity epidemic, according to all the long-term studies we’ve done, comes down to [consuming] 100 calories less in a day. That’s it,” he says. “Now a soft drink usually has about 160 calories. Plus, on average, you’ll eat an extra 125 calories at the meal you’re having with the soft drink. If you can just cut out that soft drink, then you’re going to be able to lose an estimated 15 pounds over the course of a year.”

On the Oprah show today, this was the message from Dr. Oz read more here

I did not have a clue what a FAD diet was so time to find out;

The word fad, according to The shorter Oxford English dictionary, is derived from fiddle-faddle, an adjective meaning ‘trifling’ or ‘fussy’. When used as an expletive, fiddle-faddle means ‘Nonsense!’ or ‘Bosh!’. This is an apt description of many of the fad diets on the market.

Fad diets are those which tend to promote only one type of food. They are usually heavily marketed by people with a vested interest in the food. Exorbitant claims are often linked to the diet about its life-enhancing powers, or its weight-reducing properties. Some fad diets do result in weight loss. This can usually be attributed to a reduced energy intake due to boredom with eating one type of food, rather than to any special properties of the diet. A classic example is the man who lost a great deal of weight on a ‘potato diet’. He could eat as much potato, jacketed, boiled, even roasted, as he liked. Unfortunately for him, he did not like potatoes, and his limited intake accounted for a large weight loss.

Source: www.answers.com/fad+diet?cat=health

1. Promises a large or fast weight loss (more than one to two pounds per week)
2. Does not include suggestions to consult with your doctor or a registered dietitian
3. Encourages you to eliminate food groups (such as grains) or eat from a limited selection of foods
4. Offers rigid menus that don’t consider your likes, dislikes and lifestyles
5. Neglects active living or lifestyle changes
6. Provides far fewer calories than what is needed for an energized, healthy lifestyle
7. Contradicts what most trusted health professionals say
8. Depends on special products, supplements or treatments
9. Has miraculous claims
10. Relies on testimonials and anecdotes rather than scientific evidence

An article in todays news caught my eye.;

Researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have demonstrated that in mice, the use of barbells may be as important to losing weight and improving health as the use of running shoes. The discovery builds upon the fact that skeletal muscle consists of two types of fibers. Endurance training such as running increases the amount of type I muscle fibers, while resistance training such as weightlifting increases type II muscle fibers.

To read more click the picture or the link.

source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205121740.htm

Yay again 1 pound lost despite last week struggle with a bad sub. The graph is updated and pictures are comming soon. In the meantime I found a hilarious video, click the picture to see it;

source: mercola.com

Not a lot of time to cook tonight so lets go to the healthy Subway for a tasty sandwich. We both like Italian so we settled on a foot long (we split that) meatball sandwich with cheese heated in the toaster. I must say it was hot and tasty. What I never did before is finding out how much I was eating. Unbelievable how bad this is, look for yourself;

Did you see how many carbs and very very high in sodium. Wow, on our way to the gym for a long workout and we skip that sandwich from now on.

This sandwich was a BAD BAD choice!

You know those websites? The ones that start with “Dear friend”? and offer an e-book, vitamines and other wonders of the world that is a must buy. They have a lot of reasoning and teasing text why you need to buy their products and use all the right terms that “Big Pharma” uses in their TV commercials. In case of e-books they always show a picture of a 400 page real book. Believe me when I tell you that is totally bogus. Most of the e-books sold on such websites are just a 100 pages long in a PDF form, large print and very general in content. I actually did read some of those e-books and would never buy one from them. They are offered on e-bay with resale rights for 1 dollar a piece. I know their are e-books that are really helpful and are well written and high in content but if you see a site that looks like a one page site teasing you with lots of reasons, offering you free aditional e-books, have a lot of “customer satisfaction” and end with a paypal link totally on the bottom. I would stay away, its just a money rip off.

Another common teaser now is revealing the secrets of <name of something> or cheating with <name of something>. No wonder people do not believe anything anymore.

What do you think?

From our Saturday newspaper;

The conclusion of the article below is (in my opinion) that you should use statins only if you;

• have a cardiovascular disease AND
• high cholesterol AND
• are a men AND
  
• are younger then 70

Otherwise it might be a waist of money or even worse, because the use of statins could effect your health in a negative way. But as always decide for yourself, I’m so convinced that statins are not for me. Its a big scam that so many people are prescribed statins when they do not need them, only ” big pharma ” has some gain, they get the money while making you sick. Talk to your doctor? He might tell you different, I did not “talk” to my doctor but “told” him I would not take statins. He said “That is ok with me but then you have to make some drastic life changes.” Well I’m in the middle of that as you can read on this blog. And now please read and understand how “big pharma” makes their money.

(women never should use a statin)

Source: TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press)

Do statins prolong life?
For healthy patients, impact may be minimal

BY TARA PARKER-POPE
New York Times
Article Last Updated: 02/02/2008 07:18:51 PM CST

Statins are among the most prescribed drugs in the world, and there is no doubt that they work as advertised - that they lower not only cholesterol but also the risk for heart attack.

But in the fallout from the headline-making trial of Vytorin, a combination drug that was found to be no more effective than a simple statin in reducing arterial plaque, many people are asking a more fundamental question about statins in general: Do they prolong your life?

And for many users, the surprising answer appears to be no.

Some patients do receive significant benefits from statins, like Lipitor (from Pfizer), Crestor (AstraZeneca) and Pravachol (Bristol-Myers Squibb). In studies of middle-aged men with cardiovascular disease, statin users were less likely to die than those who were given a placebo.

But many statin users don’t have established heart disease; they simply have high cholesterol. For healthy men, for women with or without heart disease and for people over 70, there is little evidence, if any, that taking a statin will make a meaningful difference in how long they live.

“High-risk groups have a lot to gain,” said Dr. Mark Ebell, a professor at the University of Georgia who is deputy editor of the journal American Family Physician. “But patients at low risk benefit very little if at all. We end up overtreating a lot of patients.” (Like the other doctors quoted in this story, Ebell has no ties to drug makers.)

How is this possible, if statins lower the risk of heart attack?
Because preventing a heart attack is not the same thing as saving a life. In many statin studies that show lower heart attack risk, the same number of patients end up dying, whether they are taking

“You may have helped the heart, but you haven’t helped the patient,” said Dr. Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of a 2004 editorial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology questioning the data on statins. “You still have to look at the impact on the patient overall.”

A 2006 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at seven trials of statin use in nearly 43,000 patients, mostly middle-aged men without heart disease. In that review, statins didn’t lower mortality.

Nor did they in a study called Prosper, published in the Lancet in 2002, which studied statin use in people 70 and older. Nor did they in a 2004 review in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which looked at 13 studies of nearly 20,000 women, both healthy and with established heart disease.

A Pfizer spokeswoman notes that a decline in heart disease death rates reported recently by the American Heart Association suggests that medications like statins are having an effect. But to consistently show a mortality benefit from statins in a research setting would take years of study. “We’ve concentrated on whether Lipitor reduces risk of heart attacks and strokes,” says Halit Bander, medical team leader for Lipitor. “We’ve proven that again and again.”

In January, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology published a report combining data from several studies of people 65 and older who had a prior heart attack or established heart disease. This “meta-analysis” showed that 18.7 percent of the placebo users died during the studies, compared with 15.6 percent of the statin users.

This translates into a 22 percent lower mortality risk for high-risk patients over 65. A co-author of the study, Dr. Jonathan Afilalo, a cardiology fellow at McGill University in Montreal, says that for every 28 patients over 65 with heart disease who take statins, one life will be saved.

“If a patient has had a heart attack,” Afilalo said, “they generally should be on a statin.”

Of course, prolonging life is not the only measure that matters. If preventing a heart attack improved the quality of life, that would be an argument for taking statins even if it didn’t reduce mortality. But critics say there’s no evidence that statin users have a better quality of life than other people.

“If you can show me one study that people who have a disability from their heart are worse off than people who have a disability from other causes, I would find that a compelling argument,” Golomb said. “There’s not a shred of evidence that you’ve mitigated suffering in the groups where there is not a mortality benefit.”

One big concern is that the side effects of statins haven’t been well studied. Reported side effects include muscle pain, cognitive problems and impotence.

“Statins have side effects that are underrated,” said Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, a retired Swedish physician and a vocal critic of statins. “It’s much more frequent and serious than has been reported.”

Ebell acknowledges that there are probably patients with heart disease who could benefit from a statin but who aren’t taking it.

But he added, “There are probably more of the opposite - patients who are taking a statin when they probably don’t need one.”

As you could read in a previous post I was in Bellevue near Seatle Washington. There is a mountain called Mount Rainier, breathtakingly beautiful. It was a rear occasion the mountain was so clear and visible when we were there. Now I got jealous of those people living there but the solution was to create my own mount Rainier in the weight stats. I know it was not on purpose but it happened like that. Well at least I managed to complete the mountain by building a down slope too. Yes I lost the 3 pounds gained before (and 1 extra), my Mount Rainier is completed. And I will always remember this hick up I think.

Thanks for the 4 pound lost Mount Rainier

Losing weight;

3500 calories=1 pound.
So that means for every 3500 calories that you burn off, your body loses 1 lb.

Gaining weight;

3500 calories=1 pound.
So that means for every 3500 calories that you consume and do not burn off, your body gains 1 lb.

You can find a calculator here; http://www.my-health-and-fitness.org/calorie-burning-calculator.php

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