Gary's new website

Showing posts with label aspirin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aspirin. Show all posts

Friday, December 10, 2010

Is Aspirin really the "cure-all" wonder drug that its being made out to be?

The best patient is the passive one who
accepts a drug or procedure without question. 
There has been a lot of publicity recently about the wonder drug benefits of aspirin.  It apparently prevents everything from heart attack to cancer.

Are we being duped? Is this is a further publicity precursor to sucking the public into accepting the concept of the universal "PolyPill"?  The Holy Grail of pharmaceutical medicine is to develop a pill that can be administered to every person on the planet to prevent a range of common diseases like heart attack and cancer.  This is the pill that wrongly presumes we are all going to be ill and which, thus delivers a preemptive First Strike.  Once in universal use, this pill will bring in billions of dollars to the patent holders, dwarfing the sales of all other drugs.

This pill will most likely include aspirin or aspirin-like compounds and other drugs like harmful statins which are also being promoted as wonder multi-purpose drugs.

However; before a drug of this kind has any chance of success there must first be a softening up of the public.  This can be seen in the regular flow of good news fronted by esteemed health professionals and glitzy presenters who rave glowingly about the health benefits of aspirin or whatever else.

There are statistics and then there are lies and then there are both

If a drug is reported to reduce the lifetime risk of developing a disease by, say, 50%, that sure sounds impressive.  Not really.  Let's say the rate of this disease is 4 per thousand and the study finds those on aspirin have only two cases per 1,000, that's a 50% reduction.  Wow! But that's not impressive and we need a lot more studies to confirm the result as being consistent.  A 50% reduction in this example means we have to hazardously medicate a thousand apparently people to possibly save just two cases of the disease and that's assuming the study is 100% right and not 100% wrong (It could be!).  The cost of medicating thousands of people year after year to theoretically prevent a few cases will never add up as a positive cost-benefit.  And this assumes people will consistently take their pills day after day, year after year.  Most will end up being flushed into our water ways. Dumb medicine, if you ask me.

Prevent one disease: Cause a whole lot more

Contrary to what we are led to believe, aspirin is no harmless drug.  It can be extremely harmful even at low doses:

  • Aspirin can cause ulcerations and profuse bleeding in the stomach and intestines.  
  • People who have problems with blood clotting should definitely not take it without medical advice.  
  • People who exercise strenuously risk bleeds into the brain and other organs.  This applies especially to the older person.  
  • People who do contact sports should not take aspirin.  
  • Aspirin should not be taken by people who bruise easily.  This last one applies to most women.
  • People with stomach ulcers or any other digestive disorders should not take aspirin without medical advice.
  • Aspirin alleviates joint inflammation, while accelerating joint degeneration behind the scenes.

Preventing cardiovascular disease and cancer is best done through lifestyle, diet and exercise.  Attempts to suck us into believing that health and longevity is best achieved by taking a pharmaceutical drug needs to be viewed with sceptism, especially when it is your hard-earned money (and your taxes) that they are looking to get their hands on.


_______________________________________
About this website
The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.  Please give me your support by subscribing to my free email updates. Please shop at my Online Store. Please encourage your family and friends to do the same. While we may not always be able to compete with the big operators on price, we aim to more than compensate through personal service!
Your email address:

Powered by FeedBlitz
Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).

Thursday, May 07, 2009

A marathon runner with a string of lower leg injuries

Gary,

I just came across your videos on YouTube, specifically How to Strengthen Tiabialis Posterior.... I will try this immediately.



I'm 57 years old and training for my tenth marathon. I ran a PR of 3:36 a year ago. The last two training cycles (dropped out of last Autumn) I've got into a pattern of lower leg injuries about 8-9 weeks into training (50+ miles/week avg.). I still feel good aerobically, but can't seem to get past these injuries. What I currently have is probably from the pos-tib tendon: inner ankle/shin pain in right leg. I had something similar last Autumn which then developed into a very painful arch which caused me to stop running for a month. The problems I'm having seem to be related to tendons and ligaments, possibly some muscle involvement, not bones.

I am on a mostly low-fat high carbohydrate diet due to high cholesterol that caused me a heart problem at age 46 (no further problems since reducing cholesterol), but I'm not currently on a cholesterol drug, just an aspirin daily. I supplement with 500 mg Ester-C, a multi-vitamin, 400 mg Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, Potassium, and Magnesium daily. I've tried Calcium, but have digestive problems iwth it. I do not purposely avoid protein, and have an average intake mostly at lunch and dinner.

I saw the post on your website about the London Marathoner. Is there anything you can suggest that could help me? My race is in 7 weeks...

Thanks,
__________________________________
Gary responds:
Please do the tibialis posterior exercises as described in the video.

Please read my articles about low cholesterol diets and the many dangers to health.  We now know that cholesterol is not the principal driver of cardiovascular disease but inflammation.  It may be merely coincidence that you feel your heart problems abated with the cholesterol reduction and may have more to do with related factors like lifestyle changes.  Much depends on the true nature of the heart problem at the time.

I have just published an article about stress fractures in a runner about your age.  Please read it here and take the action suggested, including the shock absorbing inner soles. You also need to deal with any underlying infections such as gum disease that may increase cardiovascular risk.  What is recommended in that article will be relevant to you.  The only other thing I would add is a couple of scoops of Loadup Fruitful Greens to a twice daily berry protein Smoothie to help quench any underlying inflammation.  

Aspirin??
I would not take any form of aspirin long term.  It can be a factor in speeding joint arthritis and does not bode well for a healthy digestive system.  You can replicate its action as a blood thinner with a capsule of vitamin E daily, plus other nutrients like vitamin C and garlic, Ginko and others all of which you can get off this website.

A diet that is high carbohydrate-low in fats will cause the weak connective tissue problems that you describe.  Have a closer look into this please.  I, for example, have been on full cream raw milk daily for over a year and my cholesterol levels have dropped - not risen.  And I am running faster - injury free.

Please read my E-Books on training for events like marathons.  Are you running too many marathons?  Have you thought of concentrating on shorter events of less than 15km and short off-road events and doing just one marathon a year?  Few people can run more than a dozen marathons in their lifetime without suffering lasting damage to their limbs.  How long do you want to keep running?  If you want to keep running well past 60 years of age, then think about how you are going to achieve that.
Your email address:


Powered by FeedBlitz

Do you have a question?
Email Gary: gary at myotec.co.nz (Replace the "at" with @ and remove spaces). Please include any relevant background information to your question.