Pure, white and deadly

Our Feb book group meeting was on health: physical health and the modern medical model. (Prev, we looked at mental health and read Lost Connections by Johann Hari.)
The contention is that we are over-medicated, due to the greed and quest for profit of the pharmaceutical companies. Not a surprise, you might say. Still, it is shocking how much money and "bribes" have infiltrated what should be neutral organisations looking out for our health, and making sure medicines are safe and effective. They don't. While pharmaceutical companies do their own research and suppress unfavourable findings, they also offer financial incentives to doctors and medicals institutions to promote their products.

GPs do not study nutrition, which is key when it comes to the new "Western" diseases, so generally they resort only to giving out pills, rather than suggesting life style changes. GPs are not always clear about how to communicate risk figures/percentages to patients, a factor compounded by how hard it is for most people to understand the difference between absolute and relative risk.

Here are links to videos by the cardiologist Aseem Malhotra: the first is shorter and easier and the second, also good, is longer.

• Dr Aseem Malhotra: 'Sugar is public enemy number one' at the Cape Times Sugar Free Breakfast  
• Big Food and Big Pharma: Killing for Profit?

According to these, diet is now the biggest contributor to poor health - greater than the effects of smoking, drinking and lack of exercise combined. According to Peter C Gøtzsche:

"Prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer." - Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime - How Big Pharma has corrupted healthcare

Some more links about health:

• Peter C. Gøtzsche on the dangers of the over prescription of drugs (7-8 minutes):

• The Ancel Keys / John Yudkin controversy - a Guardian long read about the origin of the "saturated fat/cholesterol" theory of heart disease and why John Yudkin, who wrote Pure, white and deadly in the 1970s, had a different view. 

• Robert Lustig on the dangers of refined sugar - 1h30 long

Another contention is that modern-day health problems are no longer the communicable diseases but, rather, the non-communicable ones, especially what's called metabolic syndrome (defined here by the NHS).

Thanks to TB