by John Hamer
"It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale explains. "Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health."
If cholesterol levels drop too low this can have a devastating effect on the body in so many ways. Remember, every single cell needs cholesterol to thrive including those in the brain. Perhaps this is why low cholesterol wreaks havoc on the psyche. One large study conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms. (Anyone feel a long intensive course of suicide-enhancing anti-depressants coming on?) Seriously though, this could well be because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a substance involved in the regulation of moods.
On a similar note, some Canadian researchers found that those in the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration had more than six times the risk of committing suicide as did those in the highest quarter. Dozens of studies also support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violent behaviour. Lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression. And one analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer, while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson's disease.
Probably any cholesterol level reading under 150 is too low - an optimum would be around 200. How strange then that doctors tell us that cholesterol needs to be under 200 to be healthy. Or not?
In 2004, the U.S. government's National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels. Before 2004, a 130 milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy but the updated guidelines however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. It is worth noting that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.
Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’ found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in itself and found that studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws. Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong. So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about? As if we cannot guess!
Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been taking money from the drug companies that manufacture statin-based cholesterol-lowering drugs – the same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States. Coincidence? Probably not, but I will allow the reader to decide.
Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely no evidence to show that lowering one’s LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for health, what do you think the American Heart Association still recommends to this day? Nothing less than keeping your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100. And even better for Big Pharma, the standard recommendation to get to that level always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drug.
If you are personally concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. The odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you do not need drugs to lower your cholesterol levels.
According to recent data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than 50% of health-insured Americans are using drugs for chronic health conditions and cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with almost 15% of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications - another vastly over-prescribed category, were first in the list). This is true as you would imagine for the rest of the Western world, its healthcare systems managed and controlled as it is by Big Pharma’s aggressive profit targets.
"Some researchers have even suggested that the [cholesterol-lowering] medications should be put in the water supply." Business Week magazine, 2008
Indeed, cholesterol-lowering drugs are some of the most insidious on the market and please believe me when I say that that is despite the fact they are up against some pretty stiff competition for that particular ‘honour’!
Statin drugs take effect by inhibiting an enzyme in the liver that is needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so worrying about this is that when we try to mess around with the extremely delicate workings of the human body, the major risk is putting the body’s natural cycles out of balance, causing a chain reaction of knock-on effects. Big Pharma’s answer to that scenario of course is to keep prescribing more and more drugs to counter the side effects of the previous one. Can you even imagine the internal disruption caused by this state of affairs with some patients taking in excess of twenty different medications, each to combat the side-effects of the others? My own father springs to mind. Additionally, do you think that ALL the different combinations of drugs it is possible to have prescribed by your local death-dealer have been tested, even cursorily? The answer has to be ‘no’ as the permutations would run into many millions if not billions.
"Statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right," Enig and Fallon
Statin drugs deplete the body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors do not as routine, inform people of this risk and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness and eventually heart failure.
Muscle pain and weakness is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the gene which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.
They have also been linked to:
An increased risk of nerve damage
Dizziness
Cognitive impairment, including memory loss
A potential increased risk of cancer
Decreased function of the immune system
Depression
Liver problems
Motor Neurone (Lou Gehrig's) disease
With all of these risks to consider, one would hope that statin drugs were effective. Well, unfortunately this is highly questionable.
Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower cholesterol numbers, but this does not necessarily make for a healthier individual and there is certainly no available evidence that says that they may help prevent heart disease.
Food and Nutrition
“Most of what sits in our stores is not really food as we have known it. It is a stew of sorts; chemicals, additives, flavourings, colourings, enhancers, preservatives, aspartame, neotame, and stuff we can’t even identify along with residual hormones, vaccines, antibiotics, herbicides and pesticides. It has been irradiated, sprayed with viruses and now covered in ammonia. Reading any label for content makes one think you would be just as well off if you drank floor cleaner and it most likely might be a lot tastier although just as empty of nutrition.” Marti Oakley, July 2011
“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” Thomas Jefferson, 1778
"There is no right to consume or feed children any particular food. There is no generalised right to bodily and physical health. There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract." US Dept. of Health & Human Services and FDA, 2010
And there in a neat little nutshell, is everything we need to know about how much these organisations actuall
y care about the welfare of the common herd.
It is an inescapable fact that our food (especially fruit and vegetables, but meat products too) now contains around 50-60% less nutrients and vitamins than was the case as recently as 40 or 50 years ago. What this means in effect is that we have to consume 50-60% more in quantity of the same foodstuffs to achieve the same nutritional benefits as in the past. The reason for this is that modern farming and cultivation methods and food production processes have become such that the only way to compete and survive in the cut-throat world of commercial food, is to foster and encourage faster growth of both animate and inanimate food and this has a knock-on, detrimental effect on its nutritional value as well as other downsides brought about by the widespread use of artificial growth hormones, non-organic fertilisers and pesticides.
The quantities we need to consume have therefore increased hugely and this is partly responsible for the obesity epidemic we see today. I say ‘partly’, because this does not quite tell the whole story. In addition to consuming ever greater quantities of foodstuffs, it is also the case that much of what we now eat can be classified as ‘processed food’, that is we no longer tend to buy the basic raw, unadulterated products to make meals as our forebears as recently as two generations ago, would have routinely done. Instead, we rely on the vast supermarket chains kindly provided for our convenience by Big Food where most of us now tend to do our weekly or monthly ‘buy-in’. And by far the majority of food products in supermarkets fall under the heading of ‘processed food’.
Processed food, whilst undeniably ‘convenient’ in that it is easily and quickly prepared and served in these days of the instant fix, unfortunately contains many nasty additives, preservatives and colourings which are known in some cases, to have a severe detrimental effect on human health and contribute hugely to the obesity epidemic. The quantity of processed food sold and served these days thus contributes to the overall malaise and generally poor health prevalent today in the Western world.
Aspartame
One of the worst culprits of all food additives is the substance, Aspartame. This is present in much of our processed foodstuff today including most carbonated drinks (fizzy pops and sodas) and especially in ‘diet’, ‘lite’, ‘zero’ and ‘low-sugar’ or ‘sugar-free’ products as a sweetener.
The story of how this abomination, Aspartame came to be present in our food and drink is a real eye-opener and I am sure you will agree, nothing less than criminal.
In the late 1970s the head of GD Searle, one of the pharmaceutical giants, was a certain Donald Rumsfeld, he of 9/11 infamy amongst many other dubious US government sponsored atrocities. It is well documented that he wanted to get Aspartame, discovered by accident in a laboratory in the 1960s, on to the world markets as a potentially huge money spinner. When I say huge I mean, bigger than you or I could ever imagine. The Aspartame market is worth billions and billions per annum if not trillions, so please do not think I am exaggerating too much.
The substance went through the normal channels of short-term testing by the FDA to determine its safety and efficacy as a sweetener before being accepted and was thus duly rejected due to the health dangers it was found to exhibit. All this took place towards the end of Jimmy Carter’s reign as president of the USA, so Rumsfeld as head of a large corporation, duly poured millions of company dollars into Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign coffers which no doubt ‘helped’ in seeing him elected as the next President. To cut a long story short, as soon as Reagan was installed as President, Aspartame was miraculously approved by the FDA without further tests and rushed on to the market as a sweetener in 1981, within days of Reagan taking office. Just a coincidence though, I’m sure.
“If Donald Rumsfeld had never been born think of how many millions of people the world over would not suffer headaches and dizziness. Thousands blind from the free methyl alcohol in Aspartame would have sight, and there would be much fewer cases of optic neuritis and macular degeneration. Millions suffering seizures would live normal lives and wouldn`t be taking anti-seizure medication that won`t work because Aspartame interacts with drugs and vaccines. Think of the runner, Flo Jo, who drank Diet Coke and died of a grand mal seizure. She, no doubt, would still be alive. Brain fog and memory loss, skyrocketing symptoms of Aspartame disease, would not be epidemic.
Millions suffer insomnia because of the depletion of serotonin. Think of Heath Ledger. He took that horrible drug, Ambian CR for sleep, which makes the optic nerve and face swell and gives you terrible headaches. Plus, he drank Diet Coke (which destroys serotonin) and took other drugs and died of polypharmacy.
Since Aspartame has been proven to be a multi-potential carcinogen, would Farrah Fawcett still be alive?” Hesh Goldstein, ‘The Rumsfeld Plague’ 2009.
Aspartame triggers an irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) and interacts with all cardiac medication. It damages the cardiac conduction system and causes sudden death. Thousands of athletes have fallen victim to it. Simply drink a can or bottle of diet drink, perform some vigorous exercise and you too could suddenly die, just as thousands of others provably have since 1981.
As the phenylalanine in Aspartame deletes serotonin, it triggers all kinds of psychiatric and behavioural problems. The mental hospitals are full of patients who are nothing but Aspartame victims. If the FDA had acted ethically, the revoked petition for the approval of Aspartame would have been signed by FDA commissioner Jere Goyan and the mental hospitals would house probably 50% less victims. Jere Goyan would never have been fired at 3.00 am by the Reagan transition team to over-rule the Board of Inquiry. Instead, FDA commissioner Goyan would have signed the revoked petition into law and the FDA today would still be Big Pharma`s adversary instead of being their whore.
For over a quarter of a century there has been mass poisoning of the public in over 100 countries of the world by Aspartame because Donald Rumsfeld, as he put it, "called in his markers." The Aspartame industry has bought-and-paid-for front groups and professional organisations to defend them and ‘push’ it to the very people upon whom it can inflict most harm. How surprising.
If Aspartame had not been approved, Motor Neurone (Lou Gehrig`s) Disease, Parkinson`s and other neuro-degenerative diseases would not be killing-off people in record numbers. Michael Fox, a Diet Pepsi spokesman for several years, would never have contracted Parkinson`s Disease at the age of 30, a ridiculously early age to do so. He would probably still be making films and enjoy robust health. Aspartame interacts with ‘L-dopa’ a Parkinson drug and another, ‘Parcopa’ actually contains Aspartame but the pharmaceutical company refuses to remove it despite strong, proven evidence linking it to Parkinson’s disease.
Is it not criminal that there is not even a warning for pregnant women? Aspartame triggers every kind of birth defect from autism and Tourettes` Syndrome to cleft palate and is an abortifacient (a drug that induces abortion).
It is of course perfectly normal for young girls to look forward to marriage and children, yet many drink diet drinks or consume Aspartame products not realising that Aspartame is an endocrine disrupting agent, stimulating prolactin, which is a pituitary hormone that stimulates milk production at childbirth, changes and inhibits the menstrual cycle and causes infertility. Many women go through life never knowing why they cannot have children and Aspartame could even be accused of destroying marriages because it causes male sexual dysfunction and prevents the female arousal response.
Clear evidence demonstrates that Aspartame can cause every type of blood disorder from a low blood platelet count to leukaemia. Because it can also precipitate diabetes type II, this disease is epidemic. To make matters worse, it can stimulate and aggravate diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, destroy the optic nerve, cause diabetics to go into convulsions and interact with insulin. Diabetics lose limbs from the free methyl alcohol; professional organisations such as the American Diabetes Association push and defend this poison because they take large sums of money from the manufacturers. How many millions wou
ld not now have diabetes if Rumsfeld had been stopped?
Aspartame (NutraSweet / Equal / Spoonful / E951 / Canderel / Benevia, etc), along with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), are responsible for the epidemic of obesity the world over. Why? This is because they instigate a craving for carbohydrates and cause great toxicity in the liver.
An FDA report lists 92 symptoms of Aspartame poisoning, from unconsciousness and coma to shortness of breath and shock. Medical texts list even more: "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic", H.J. Roberts, M.D. and "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills" by neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, M.D. There is simply no end to the horrors triggered by this literally addictive, excitoneurotoxic and genetically-engineered carcinogenic drug. This chemical poison is so deadly that Dr. Bill Deagle, a respected Virologist once said it was worse than depleted uranium because it is found everywhere in food. He is absolutely correct.
The formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol embalms living tissue and damages DNA according to the ‘Trocho’ Study done in Barcelona in 1998. Even though this devastating study shows how serious a chemical poison Aspartame is, the FDA has turned a blind eye to it and it continues to flourish everywhere. With Monsanto attorney Michael Taylor now appointed as Deputy Commissioner to the FDA by President Barack Obama, it has now become nothing more than Monsanto`s Washington Branch Office. Even before the Ramazzini studies showing Aspartame to be a multi-potential carcinogen were published, the FDA knew that this was the case. Their own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, even admitted that it violated the Delaney Amendment because of the brain tumours and brain cancer it causes. Therefore, no allowable daily intake ever should have been able to be established. Aspartame causes all types of tumours from mammary, uterine, ovarian, pancreatic and thyroid to testicular and pituitary. Dr. Maria Alemany, who undertook the Trocho Study, commented that Aspartame could possibly kill ‘200 million people’. Damaging DNA could destroy humanity itself.
