Forget Vioxx. What is now gradually emerging is a disaster several levels of magnitude more destructive. However, for a number of interconnected reasons, this disaster is unlikely to feature as even the tiniest blip on the radar screens of the mass media. Indeed, so far, it hasn’t registered at all.

There are few things that enrage us quite so much as a sense of injustice. There is nothing, for example, so anguished as the embittered cry of a five-year-old, “That’s not fair.” My usual reply to such a statement is that when you emerge from the womb, there isn’t a banner at the end of the bed stating, “Don’t worry, life will be fair.” Quite the opposite, in fact. So get used to it — and learn to play the game.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas.

“Recent and soon to be published research reveals that soldiers who fought in theatres as diverse as Vietnam and Lebanon are not only more likely to die from an accident on their return, but are also twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer later in life.”
— New Scientist, Aug. 27, 2005

For some time now, I have been banging on about the fact that “stress” causes diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. Of course, my definition of stress, or a stressor, is any factor that can lead to a long-lasting dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis). This definition may seem — and probably is — a bit pedantic. But it does have the advantage of being reasonably accurate. That is more than can be said for the word “stress,” which can mean all things to all men.

I have had it in mind to write this article for some time but, even for me, it seems a bit radical. However, I thought if I shared some information and my interpretation of that information, it might help to start you on a journey of reappraising an apparently cast-iron fact. Namely that heart attacks are caused by blood clots blocking arteries in the heart. To quote a game advertisement on television, “Challenge everything.”

It has long bothered me that there is a vast library of medical research out there that has become almost completely unreliable. Some time ago, I wrote that I had almost completely lost faith in the use of references, as you could always find as many references as you wanted to support almost any argument you cared to make.

It is also true that many references are based on bogus research that has since been disproven. Added to this, a whole range of papers directly contradict each other. Furthermore, very often the information in the abstract is in conflict with the data you can find in the paper…. I could go on.

‘Depression Appears To Increase The Risk Of Developing Diabetes By 23% In Younger Adults.’

I apologise in advance for re-visiting a topic in such a short space of time. But, hey, some things just fall into your lap. A few days ago research from Framingham suggested that loneliness caused heart disease. Today, Diabetes Care publishes a study demonstrating that depression increases the risk of developing diabetes.

And so, yet another study demonstrates that loneliness can cause heart disease.

"This was a statistically significant difference," said research leader Dr Eric Loucks, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. "It seems to be good for health to have close friends and family, to be connected to community groups or religious organisations, and to have a close partner."

A Major Shift In Heart Disease Risk Assessment Has Whipped By Right Under Our Noses In A New Global Study...Say Goodbye To Raised Cholesterol/LDL As A Risk Factor In Heart Disease

Inspector Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

It Inflates The Benefits Of Drug Treatment and Is Intellectually Dishonest

How is it that cardiologists save lives, when oncologists only manage to increase median survival? Okay, not the snappiest question ever. But you try engaging in a discussion on median survival rates without creating instant narcolepsy.

Here is another question for you. If I were to use a defibrillator on a man having a heart attack, and I get his heart beating normally again, have I saved his life?

Does An Ear Lobe Crease Really Indicate Artery Disease?

NEWS ITEM: “The presence of a prominent crease across the earlobe may be a marker of hidden artery disease (atherosclerosis), say researchers.”

I was sent this story a couple of days ago by a fellow cholesterol skeptic. To be perfectly honest, I have known about the connection between ear lobe creases and heart disease since 1981. But it has always seemed rather difficult to know what to do with the information.

‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’  Max Planck

I have few real heroes, but Karl Popper is one of them. An Austrian scientific philosopher, he had grown up with, and learned to fear, rigid thinking of the type that had spawned the various ‘isms’ that plagued humanity during the bulk of the twentieth century. Communism, socialism, fascism. He watched in horror as these forms of inflexible fundamentalism tore humanity apart to leave tens, if not hundreds of millions, dead.

An Example From Heart Disease Research And Yet Another Reason Why The Scientific Machine Is Close To Meltdown

References are very much a double edged sword, or perhaps a bazooka.

In the wrong hands they can do far more harm than good. And in the, essentially, unchecked system that we now have, one careless reference can end up taking on a life of its own. It gets stuck in the medical information ‘machine’ replicating itself like some malevolent computer virus, gradually infecting all data and turning it into useless mush.

When you have spent twenty years of your life studying something, you can become somewhat of a bore on the subject. But please bear with me, because I am going to reveal to you the true cause of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). A bold claim indeed, but I think I can sustain it.

The first thing to state, however, is that there is no single cause, no one factor. If there was, it would have been discovered by now. I sometimes think that the obsession with finding the cause of a disease has seriously hampered research into this, and many other areas. There is always a sense, within science, that the answer, when you find it, should be simple, and that therefore the simplest explanation is usually correct: E = MC² and all that. Occam’s razor, terribly seductive, but not always true.

I have only just recovered from the idea that everyone in the whole world over the age of fifty-five should spend the rest of their lives on six different medications, all stuck together in one great big pill. You may have seen the non-story about the non-existent polypill peddled in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). I was stimulated to look again at the concept of risk.

The authors of the madcap polypill article in the BMJ made the claim that taking their polypill would reduce the risk of dying of coronary heart disease (CHD) by 80%. Whether or not you believe their figures — and I don’t — I sense that this figure of 80% would be taken by most people to mean that eighty out of one hundred people would be saved from death.

Up to now I have resisted writing about this area, as blood clotting is a mind-boggling and complicated area of human physiology. In the end, however, if you want to understand coronary heart disease (CHD), you cannot ignore the role of the humble blood clot.

For it is now accepted by everyone involved in CHD research that the final event, the thing that kills you with CHD, is the formation of a blood clot on top of an atherosclerotic plaque. If the blood clot is big enough to completely block a critical artery, in a critical area, you will die.

C-REACTIVE PROTEIN

How The Medical Profession Will Turn A Symptom Into A Disease

You may have heard a bit about a substance in the blood called C-reactive protein (CRP). It is released in ‘inflammatory’ conditions in the body: infections, rheumatoid arthritis and also heart attacks. CRP has been around, and known about, for years. However, CRP is about to suffer the same fate of other innocent substances in the blood that have the misfortune to rise in people who have heart disease. It is going to be accused of causing heart disease.

It’s Not What You Think!

However you look at heart disease, those pesky French throw a huge spanner in the works. They should get heart disease, and they don’t, at least they don’t get very much; about one quarter the rate in the USA and UK, despite virtually identical ‘classical’ risk factors. This was first noticed by Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe in 1978. He called it the ‘French Paradox,’ a term that flits in and out of favour.

Linking It All Together

(The Conclusion Of A Six-Part Series) - (begin the series here)

For those who have come this far, it is time to link everything together. I have demonstrated that emigration/social dislocation leads to a damaged hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis). This, is turn, causes increased cortisol secretion, leading to insulin resistance/syndrome X and then CHD.

What Is Heart Disease Anyway?

(Part Five)

For those who have followed the argument in the last few issues, I hope that it is clear that emigration, or social dislocation, can cause heart disease. Actually, I think I’ve made it clear how emigration can cause syndrome X (a cluster of metabolic disorders that represent a major risk of coronary heart disease or CHD). But how does syndrome X cause heart disease?

Social Dislocation, Stress And Heart Disease

(Part Four)

So far, in the argument that social dislocation/emigration causes heart disease, I have shown that social dislocation creates a great deal of long-term, chronic stress. This is turn disrupts the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis), creating a high circulating level of cortisol. The high circulating level of cortisol, in turn, leads to insulin resistance. Chronic insulin resistance then leads to Syndrome X, the metabolic syndrome.

Social Dislocation - How It Causes Heart Disease

(Part II)

HOW EMIGRATION CAUSES HEART DISEASE

In the previous section, I pointed out the impact of emigration, or ‘social dislocation’ on heart disease. This can range from a potential fifteen-fold increase in risk (with emigrant Asian Indians) to zero risk (with the Italian Rosetan community in Pennsylvania).

KEEPING THE SOCIAL NETWORK INTACT OFFERS PROTECTION

Of all the risk factors for heart disease, there is one that barely gets a mention, yet it is probably the most deadly risk factor of all — emigration.

When the Japanese move from Japan to America, their rate of Heart Disease quadruples, and this is independent of any dietary change.

Asian Indians, moving from the Indian subcontinent to the USA, increase their rate of heart disease by up to fifteen times! Again, this is completely independent of dietary change, or a change in any of the other ‘classical’ risk factors.