Health & Nutrition by Michael R. Eades, M.D.

Despite the fact that statin drugs are the best-selling medications in history, accounting for some $40 billion plus in sales world wide last year, they had a very bad week this past week. And it looks like their scrutiny is going to pick up a little.

The Vytorin trial that finally came to light late last week kicked off the cascade of bad news. It appears that the combination of a statin and Zetia, despite lowering cholesterol levels by 40 percent more than a statin, was no more effective than the statin alone in preventing problems. Which would lead anyone with critical thinking skills to wonder about the hypothesis that LDL-cholesterol is really a problem.

The next day the New York Times, in an article that wasn’t all that anti-statin, started thusly: Read more »

Hello! This is Dr. Mike - If you're new here and you've enjoyed my posts, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

All I can say is thank God I morphed out of my regular medical practice and into nutritional medicine before the legalization of drug advertising on television. I watch very little TV - mainly NFL games, and usually only those I have a bet on - but even with the minimal amount I do watch I’m exposed to a ton of pharmaceutical ads.

These ads play on the relationship between patients and their doctors to make the drug company cash registers go ching ching ching.

Here is the way the system works. A person watching TV sees an ad for, say, a ‘new’ sleep medication promising a restful night’s sleep. This usually doesn’t prompt a call to the physician for a prescription, but during the next visit to the doc this person says, Hey Dr. So and So, I saw an ad for that new sleep medicine Lunesta. I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping, so could I give that a try? Most physicians will go ahead and write a prescription for that drug. Problem is, the drugs advertised on TV are typically much more expensive than the older drugs that may have gone off patent already and can be had as generics. And the new drugs aren’t any more efficacious than the old drugs. It doesn’t cost the doctor any money to write these prescriptions, so he/she will usually do it. The patient gets a medicine that costs him/her (or the insurance company) a lot more money for a drug that works no better than a cheaper one. So who wins in all this? The drug company, of course.

Read more »

While we’re on the subject of television ads I’ve got to pass one along that’s one of the most pernicious I’ve seen in a long time. This one, sent to me by a reader, has to take the cake for being subtle, yet misleading and dangerous.

Television and print advertisers have long feed on the desire of young women to be thin, and have probably caused untold numbers to purge their way to anorexia. Now comes Proctor & Gamble encouraging them to purge from the other end.

Their new ad campaign for Metamucil is ostensibly aimed at women who want to lower their cholesterol levels, but I doubt that many women who are the ages of and look like the models in the ads give a flip about their cholesterol levels. I suspect that the brains behind the ads figure that women will buy into the hype to make their insides beautiful (read: empty and thin), which will somehow translate into outer thinness.

What will they think of next to prey on the gullible.

Read more »