Beta-blockers to be phased out for 1.5m patients
By Sam Lister, Health Correspondent
MORE than 1.5 million people using beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure are to be eased off the medication after the publication of guidance recommending newer treatments.

Guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), released today, advise the use of a combination of hypertensive treatments involving calcium channel blockers, ACE inhibitors and diuretics.

Family doctors are advised not to prescribe beta-blockers as the routine “first-line” therapy for high blood pressure in favour of other treatments because the medication “performs less well, particularly in the elderly . . . and carries an unacceptable risk of provoking type 2 diabetes”.

Of the two million patients taking beta-blockers, only the minority who control their blood pressure to a comparable standard as on the other drugs need not change medication.

Some people who take the drugs for conditions such as angina and anxiety will be unaffected, while beta-blockers are also still considered the best option for young women who may become pregnant.

The latest NICE review, described as one of the most significant since the organisation was founded, comes after research showed that taking newer drugs cuts the risk of heart attacks and strokes by half when compared with older treatments.

About half of the estimated 18 million Britons — 40 per cent of adults — with hypertension are on medication. The condition is a leading cause of preventable death and disability. The guidelines, published by NICE and the National Collaborating Centre for Chronic Conditions, in conjunction with the British Hypertension Society, recommend a combination of newer treatments, which act to regulate the hormonal system and open up blood vessels.

People over 55, and all Afro-Caribbean hypertensives who are more at risk, are recommended initial therapy of calcium channel blocker or thiazide diuretic. First choice for younger people is an ACE inhibitor or, if this is not tolerated, an Angiotensin receptor blocker. Bryan Williams, Professor of Medicine at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and a member of the guideline development group, said that the cost of implementing the changes would be about £58 million. Later cost savings are estimated at about £250 million.

“This is a hugely important step for people with hypertension and the healthcare professionals who treat them,” Professor Williams said. “This new guidance has benefited from a rigorous evaluation of the evidence and has resulted in a simple, pragmatic and practical approach to treating blood pressure, one of the most important causes of premature death in the UK.

“In addition, the recommendations have undergone a cost-effectiveness analysis which has reinforced the guidance.”

The Blood Pressure Association urged patients on beta-blockers not to panic: “What we are saying is that there are newer, more effective drugs available and patients should talk to their health professionals about that,” Last year the Anglo-Scandinavian cardiac outcomes trial, the largest study of high blood pressure conducted in Europe, revealed that a combination of new hypertension drugs and a common statin used to lower cholesterol cuts the chances of a heart attack or stroke by almost two thirds. The study, involving more than 19,000 patients, prompted NICE to take the rare step of forming an expert group immediately to advise on the impact of the new data, while the Data Safety Monitoring Board decided to end the trial early to allow all the patients the opportunity to take up the treatment strategy.

Peter Littlejohns, the clinical and public health director at NICE, said that “significant new data” had made the review necessary.

Source: Timesonline

Drugs? If drugs worked, you'd already be better.

Are you really trying to drive me crazy? I see you come into my office year after year, usually for other reasons, and I take your blood pressure and it's usually above 140/100. Sometimes above 180/100. You're overweight, sweating, dehydrated, can't breathe well, and have no energy. But you think everything's under control because your doctor, very well-respected, knows about your problem and has decided that you need to have your 'problem controlled' with drugs. Here they come - Lotensin, Mevacor, Cardizem, Procardia, on and on. And the months turn into years and your blood pressure problem turns into a degenerative heart condition, mainly because of the drugs. The drugs weaken the heart muscle.

DRUGS

There are two main types of heart medication: calcium channel blockers and beta adrenergic blockers. (Merck) Without going into a long winded harangue, let's just say that one slows down muscle activity - heart muscle, that is, and the other dims the nerve signals that must link the brain with the heart for normal operation. The brain sends thousands of signals every second to the heart to make minute little adjustments in heartbeat and blood flow in order to accommodate variation in demand coming from the organs and muscles. So. When blood pressure elevates due to plaque in the arteries, or because of stress tightening up the arteries, the heart has to work twice as hard to push all that blood through the system.

But instead of trying to do something to ease the burden on the heart, to unblock the flow, what do our doctors do? We drug the heart so that our blood pressure gauges will read normal, even though the heart is still struggling to keep up with the oxygen demands of the body, demands which have not changed. But now since the heart is shackled by the added pharmacological deadweight, the oxygen demands don't get met. Short-term effect: decreased circulation, oxygen deficit, fatigue. Long term effect: heart muscle degeneration, enlargement, degeneration of any other organ or tissue which is not getting the blood it keeps calling for, lung congestion, and death.

Heart muscle is different from skeletal muscle. When you work out and your biceps get bigger, it's getting stronger. The biceps is skeletal muscle. Heart muscle is different. When heart muscle enlarges, it's because it' s getting weaker - overstretched and thinner and flimsier. (Guyton, p 282) That's why an enlarged heart is a problem. Why does the heart enlarge? Increased resistance from blocked arteries makes it harder to push all the blood through the system.

In 1900 the term "heart attack" didn't even exist. In this century, for the first time in history more people are dying of heart problems than any other disease. This is insane. If no one has ever brought it to your attention, allow me this opportunity to point it out - this is insane. Heart drugs were supposed to be a temporary solution. Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution, right? Result of heart drugs and the "foods of commerce" both of which are new in this century: 1 out of 2 Americans dies of congestive heart failure. (CDC website) this statistic has gone unchanged since 1994. (Statistical Abstracts)

A partial list of side effects to the above-cited heart drugs:
Headache, Dizziness, Slowed heart, Edema, Abnormal EKG, Angina, Irregular heartbeat, Low blood pressure, Fast heart, Fainting, Amnesia, Depression, Hallucinations, Insomnia, Personality change, Tremors, Ringing in the ears, Anorexia, Constipation, Vomiting, Weight gain, Photosensitivity, Nosebleed, Muscle cramps, Joint pain, Sexual difficulties, Anemia... Source: Physician's Desk Reference

DEATH BY BYPASS

Angioplasty? Bypass? Think these are gonna save you? Know what the re-occlusion rate for angioplasty is after two years? Guess. It's about 57%. (Willix) Re-occlusion means the arteries close up again. In 1992, a study in Journal of the American Medical Association reported that at least half of angioplasties were unnecessary. Long term benefit of bypass? What do 90% of people with bypass surgeries eventually die of? Take a wild guess.

In a 1997 study, two groups of heart attack patients were followed for one year. The first group had either angioplasty or bypass. The second group had nothing. Guess what the difference in mortality was? Zero. After one year both groups were exactly the same! (New England Journal of Medicine May 22, 1997) That means that neither bypass nor angioplasty extends people's lifespan whatsoever statistically you'll live just as long without either, by doing nothing.

This is a common finding in many other studies. In a 22 year follow-up study of 682 heart patients, it was found that the bypass surgery had no effect on the survival rate or the day to day pain.( Am J Cardiol 1998 Jun)

Same thing in a 16 year follow up study showing bypass surgery makes no difference whatsoever in survival rate. (Caracciolo)

We could go on and on citing similar studies, but the conclusion is inescapable. After several years, every heart surgeon must eventually confront reality: bypass surgery doesn't save lives. 13% die on the table. The rest come back for more later on.

Most bypass surgeries these days are done before the patient is in acute distress. Often the patient is intimidated into surgery with mild chest pain as the only symptom, perhaps even with normal blood pressure. The diagnosis is made quickly before the prey gets better and flies away. We're talking sales and marketing here, and the surgeons are very good at closing the sale. Fear and panic are very persuasive motivators.

Even for those with verified arterial blockage, surgery is a temporary housecleaning procedure, and all the studies show the same thing: bypass does not increase overall survival rate. People die of heart disease just as soon.

Stands to reason - if the coronary arteries were crammed full of atherosclerotic plaque, enough to require surgery, what kind of condition do you think the rest of the arteries of the body are in? All those years of chips and fries and burgers - did all that residual sludge just select the big arteries near the heart as its final resting place? Not likely. Blood cholesterol level is everywhere the blood goes - that means all the arteries, throughout the body. So after the fanfare of the surgical rituals dies down, what happens? The arteries that have been roto-rootered immediately begin to take on the condition of the rest of the cardiovascular system, i.e., clogged. How could it possibly be otherwise? Nature abhors a vacuum.

The above statistics don't even take into account the actual risk of death from the bypass operation itself. In a bizarre advertisement in the 23 Nov 98 issue of Newsweek, we see a comparison of bypass surgery death rates on the operating table among the leading hospitals in the country. Here are the odds they advertise for bypass surgery


Texas Heart Center 87%
Johns Hopkins 90.2%
Mayo Clinic 93.3%

A 13% chance of dying from a surgery that isn't even going to prolong survival? That, my friend, is marketing.

LIFETIME PROGRAM?


Let me ask you something else. Remember when you were first diagnosed as having high blood pressure and were first put on medications to "control your blood pressure"? Remember that? OK now, when was the next time your doctor took your blood pressure? Two months later? Six months? One year? Never? The point is, if you're taking these powerful medications to 'control' blood pressure, how will you or your doctor know if they're working or not unless you monitor your blood pressure every few days? The body is not a car. Everyone responds differently to medication.

Heart medications are like most medications - fine for short-term, life-threatening situations. But long term, as with any drug, legal or illegal, eventually your body will pay the price. Looking in the Physicians' Desk Reference, we find that even the manufacturers of most heart medications don't recommend them for indefinite, open-ended use. This book is easy to get. Look up your medication and see the recommended duration of prescription. One reason is that the testing they did to put the drug on the market probably wasn't long-term. The other reason is that everybody knows that all side effects of drugs are cumulative.

So people say - look at my BP - 125/80. And I've been on medication for 4 years. I need it to keep my blood pressure down. Well how do you know that you still need the drug to do that? Perhaps the heart has accommodated after all this time, or else maybe you have learned to do less and to make less energy demands on the system. Is this health? Are you getting stronger or weaker, year by year? Others will say, yes I've been on medication for several years and my blood pressure is 160/105. Guess what? It's not that your medication is ineffective - it is definitely having a physiological impact. It's just that the effect is not the one your doctor predicted. He wanted to lower your blood pressure. This drug didn't work - it's still high. That doesn't mean the drug did nothing. It did plenty. See above list. Patients like this are at double the risk - high blood pressure plus drug toxicity and side effects.

Or they say - yeah I know it's high, but if I stop with the medication, it'll go through the roof. Long term or short term? How do you know? What if you were on vacation and your cruise ship marooned you on a desert island somewhere, without your drugs. Would you die? What would happen?

OPTIONS?


What's the alternative to this one-way downward spiral? Well, it's obvious that such a lifestyle isn't working too well and probably won't last too long. Do people you know on heart medications look healthy? Are they getting stronger or weaker, year by year? Look at all the people you used to know in this category who are no longer around. A universal principle for any life form is that either it's improving or it's dying. Day by day the inner systems are either becoming stronger and more refined, or else they're degenerating and breaking down. Can't be both. Unless they're in a serious accident, most people don't die all at once. No, most people die by stages, day by day, very often with no pain or symptoms. Just like heart attacks. Do these people get a warning? Sometimes, but for 33% of them, their very first symptom was death. (Willix)

These days it seems everybody and his dog is on the healthy heart bandwagon. No fat, low fat, fat free - often these labels are found on some very heart-unfriendly foods. How can you make any sense of all this? Well for starters, with very few exceptions if a food has any pasteurized dairy derivatives at all, it's either hard fat or chemicals. You can definitely live without it. This group includes pizza, yoghurt, clam chowder, ice cream, meringue, whipped cream, cottage cheese, linguini alfredo, tapioca, brie, creamed chicken - get the idea?

LOWFAT?

Next, if you want to calculate the true percentage of fat in any item, take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 10, and divide by the number of calories. Your answer may surprise you, especially if the product is supposedly low fat.


For example, let's say a bag of ˜low fat' snack food has 350 calories and 20 grams of fat. Add a zero to the fat grams - that's 200. Two hundred divided by 350 is 57%. That's 57% fat for this ‘low-fat' food. Don't read the advertising; read the numbers. We need fat. We need it in the form of essential fatty acids, which compose many important structures of the body, such as nerve linings and hormones, for example. But most fat we eat is manmade, chemical, rancid, oxidizing, harmful fat from chips, fries, and fast food. This fat is largely indigestible. Good fat comes in avocados, bananas, raw nuts, wild caught cold water fish, small amounts of clean lean meat, and raw butter.

WEIGHT LOSS PLATEAU


A small percentage of at-risk patients actually make a serious change in their day-to-day food intake. They make great progress and begin to feel much better. But then they may get to a point where even though they are eating very reasonably, they just don't seem to be able to lose any more weight. They've hit the plateau, the brick wall, the glass ceiling. This is a different stratum of problem from simple food intake. Here we are dealing with fundamental issues: digestion, metabolism, fat storage, colon blockage. Why can't a person of normal weight lose cellulite in the hips and legs no matter how good the diet becomes? Answer: digestion, enzyme metabolism, fat storage.

ENZYMES

The surprise here is: it doesn't matter what you eat; it only matters what you digest. That is why most discussions of calories and fat/protein/carbo ratios are meaningless. If the food isn't being digested, what does it matter what percentage protein you eat, or for what blood type or in what Zone?

Enzymes are proteins made by most life forms whose purpose is to control the chemical reactions necessary for the second-by-second maintenance of normal cell function. What's that mean? Well, think about it - how can your body take in fried chicken, Fritos, and Dr. Pepper and turn them into bone and blood, as well as a thousand other substances your body needs to stay alive another day? It's enzymes. Enzymes break down foods into their simplest components, the only usable forms. The body has its own enzymes for digestion - amylase, pepsin, lipase, chymotrypsin, (Guyton), to name a few. The problem is that there is a limited supply.

The other problem is that, because of food processing, most foods we eat contain no enzymes necessary for their own breakdown inside the body. So the body simply does the best job it possibly can with its own enzymes. The best foods humans can possibly eat are those which contain within them the enzymes necessary for complete breakdown and assimilation by the body. (Howell) That way the body's stores of enzymes are not taxed. Examples: raw fruits and vegetables. The more raw fruits and raw vegetables in the diet, the more digested the food becomes, resulting in a greater nutritive value by the time the blood nourishes the individual cells in all organs and tissues. It's a very simple idea, very simple indeed. Many modern processed foods contain some strange and brand new chemical configurations, stuff that didn't come from nature. Ever see a Hamburger Helper tree, or a Velveeta plant? How many meats in the deli case never had parents? The result is that the body simply cannot keep up with the enzymatic demands being made upon it week after week, month after month.

So what do you think happens to what doesn't get broken down, what doesn't get digested within your digestive tract every day? Right. It stays there. Comes in but never goes out. Does the word putrefy mean anything to you? It's a big word for rot. The undigested food rots and clumps up and blocks your stomach and intestines. Year by year we simply fill up, like a balloon. The body dehydrates, toxifies, and degenerates. No energy. Bad circulation.

DEBRIS IN THE BLOOD


Undigested food then makes its way from the intestines to where it doesn't belong - into the bloodstream. Leaky Gut Syndrome. (Garland) This makes the blood cells clump together, like bunches of grapes, or stacks of coins (rouleaux). Blood cells are supposed to circulate through the smallest vessels, single file. When they're all stuck together, blood flow slows way down. Increased resistance for the Main Pump - the heart. Harder to push all that blood through the system.

Once in the bloodstream, the undigested food can no longer be digested, because digestive enzymes only exist in the digestive tract, not in the blood. The only thing the undigested stuff can do is lodge somewhere - in muscles, joints, or any organ. As debris which doesn't belong in those locations, the undigested food triggers a response of inflammation. After awhile, that chronic inflammation can actually begin to destroy the cells of that organ.

The weakest organ, the one that goes first, will malfunction. Then you go to Emergency and have all efforts focused on this one organ, whatever it may be, and they'll even give you a name for your condition. And each condition has a certain protocol of tests, drugs, and surgery. None of which has anything to do with the original problem, which is still ongoing, especially if we factor hospital food into the equation. The original problem was simple: you're not digesting your food.

Long-term intake of enzymeless foods blocks the colon Toxification of this organ can cause practically any disease you can name.

FREE RADICALS


The second half of the artery story has to do with free radicals. Remember, those are the unstable little molecules we get from drugs, alcohol, stress, processed food, smoking, radiation from TV and computers, trauma - the usual culprits. A free radical is a molecule that is missing an electron. It tries to steal an electron from a normal cell or molecule in the body, making that molecule able to do the same thing to another one, in a chain reaction, like musical chairs. This is how DNA gets altered, and how cells change - how cancer starts. Doctors call it mutagenesis. In the arteries, free radicals are the guys who make the little cuts or nicks in the artery lining. Babies' arteries are as smooth as looking down the inside of the barrel of a shiny new shotgun. With these little cuts, the free-floating bits of undigested fat, called plaque, now have a place to stick onto.  

CEMENT LINING


After the bits of fat accumulate in the arteries for years, they eventually get dried out and hardened into a cement-like matrix called plaque.

And that's exactly how atherosclerosis starts. Now follow this, please: one of the biggest producers of free radicals in the body is rancid (rotting) indigestible hard fats, which just sit there in the tract for too long a time, because they're too weird to be broken down by the body's own enzymes. Fats like these are new to our species - only within the last 75 years - chips, fries, deep-fried foods. With 50% of the population now dying of heart disease; something has obviously changed for the worse.

That's right - of all the people who died this year in the U.S. 1 out of 2 of them died from heart disease. Not very good odds for the rest of us, would you say? People aren't born with a bad heart, most of the time. The genetic theory is pretty shaky - it really doesn't matter if your parents or grandparents died of heart attacks. People inherit eating habits. These habits determine the health of the heart far more than genetics can. What were the grandparents eating?

We dig our graves with our teeth - it's not just an epigram; more often, it's an epitaph.

CHELATION


Between two and three thousand MDs are now offering a medical alternative to bypass surgery. It is called chelation therapy. EDTA is an amino acid compound that is introduced into the blood for the purpose of dissolving the plaque out of the arteries. Practitioners claim high rates of success.

Chelation therapy can be either intravenous or else given orally, with tablets. Originally developed for cleaning heavy metals out of the blood, the application with arterial plaque soon became obvious. Because chelation therapy cuts into the $25 billion heart surgery turf, many insurance companies won't cover it unless the diagnosis is to resolve heavy metal poisoning. Although EDTA may place some temporary stress on the kidneys, at least it actually does what it advertises, which is to remove plaque from all the arteries. This is in contrast to bypass surgery and angioplasty, which only rearranges the plaque Temporarily.

NATURAL ALTERNATIVE TO HEART MEDICATION

If you're on medication now, there is a natural way to lower blood pressure and get off drugs. Many people have done it. Two natural supplements can actually do the trick:

1. Whole Food Enzymes

2. Oral Chelation -- http://www.extremehealth-autism.com

NOW WHAT?

So, the alternative to blocked arteries. The alternative is - digest everything you eat every day. A few hints:

1. Stop all dairy immediately

2. Cut way back on white sugar: soft drinks, donuts, cookies, ice cream, etc. White sugar destroys digestive enzymes, which prevents fats from being broken down

3. Eat as many raw foods as possible, because they contain their own enzymes and won't drain the body's own resources.

4. Take whole food enzyme supplements

5. Take a powerful antioxidant (free radical neutralizer) Like Active H-/New Vision. If you're still smoking cigarettes, throw this chapter away, disregard everything you've just read, and light up! Sayonara.

Enzymes taken at mealtime will not only ensure complete digestion at that meal. In addition, they will break down the toxic, residual, undigested fats and protein that have been lurking in the intestines and in the bloodstream. This is no theory. You can see it. You can feel it. It's not medication - it's nutrition.  

CANCER

Does your doctor ever tell you that heart medications cause cancer? A study in top British medical journal Lancet shows as much as a 65% increase in cancer risk for those who take calcium channel blockers. (Lancet 349:525,1996)

That stands to reason. Since the 1920s the relationship cancer and oxygen has been widely studied. In the chapter titled "To The Cancer Patient" we see in the work of Nobel laureate, Dr. Otto Warburg that cancer is closely associated with the presence of oxygen in the blood. Heart drugs artificially reduce blood flow, thus decreasing the amount of oxygen that is available to the tissues. Cancer does not like oxygen. The less oxygen, the more the cancer is promoted. How often does the cardiologist explain that risk to the patient who is to be taking heart drugs for the first time?

LIFETIME OF DRUGS

Don't think you can do it? Ask you doctor when he plans on taking you off drugs. Not in this lifetime? Several medical doctors are helping their patients get off heart drugs. Willix, MacDougall, Atkins, even Whittaker. Dr. Kavanaugh, a Canadian cardiologist, instead of bypass and angioplasty, takes his patients and puts them on a specialized exercise program , initially very light, and gradually increasing in duration. One of his bypass patients actually went on to run in the Boston Marathon!

But even easier than these programs are the simple enzymes and chelation supplements cited above.

Ever notice the pattern of how the cause of every disease seems to be a deficiency of drugs? Very curious. ***One of the most famous heart surgeons in the US, Robert Willix no longer recommends either drugs or surgery because of all the years of watching his own failures and realizing that angioplasty and bypass simply do not heal people. They just postpone the inevitable for a short time. Willix has come to the same conclusion: no matter how far gone the patient is, there's a greater chance of lasting improvement simply by diet and exercise. In fact, that's the only chance. It's really going against the grain, though isn't it? I mean Americans don't think like that. Responsible for my own health? I just trust my doctor. That way I don't actually have to do anything, except take my pills. I can continue my present course of my toxifying self destructive lifestyle. I'm sure Doctor knows what's best.

The death statistics however indicate otherwise - in 75 years, it's gone from less than 1% all the way up to 50% of all deaths being caused by heart failure. Today almost a million Americans die of heart disease every year. The doctor knows what's best? Best for whom? The surgeons, hospitals and drug companies? Some of us are coming into a new phase of mass consciousness - a quantum shift in which the old ideas of drugging the body into submission are losing credibility. Reason: it usually doesn't work. What's the main cause of death in the U.S. today? Side effects from prescription drugs.

The new idea is - work with the body, facilitate its own inner systems of regulation, minimize stress from food overload. Detox the blood, the milieu in which all cells are bathed. The holistic approach, in evidence since the days of Hippocrates.

Drugs? If drugs worked, you'd already be better.

Dr Tim O'Shea DC

REFERENCES Howell, Edward, MD Enzyme Nutrition Medical Economics Physicians Desk Reference 1998 MacDougall, John MD McDougall's Medicine: A Challenging Second Opinion Merck Manual Sixteenth Edition Tu JV, et al. Use of Cardiac Procedures and Outcomes in Elderly Patients With Myocardial Infarction in the United States and Canada. New England Journal of Medicine. 1997;336(May 22):1500-1505. Peduzzi P.et al. Twenty two-year follow-up in the VA cooperative study of coronary artery bypass surgery for stable angina. Am J Cardiol 1998 Jun 15;81(12):1393-1399. Garland, Leo, MD Leaky Gut Syndrome: Breaking the Vicious Cycle1995 Jensen, Bernard Empty Harvest Avery 1990. Willix, Robert, MD 3 Minutes a Day to a 120-Year Lifespan 1994. Caracciolo, E et al. Comparison of surfgical amnd medical group usrvival in patients with left main equivalent coronary artery disease. Circulation May 1, 1995 p2335 advertisement 23 Nov 98 Newsweek Statistical Abstracts of the U.S. Pahor, M Calcium channel blockers and incidence of cancer in aged population. Lancet 349:525,1996 Lazarou J, et al. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients JAMA 15 Apr 98, v279, p1200

I have to admit it, your post gives a lot of food for thought on the subject of drugs.

forwardone Wrote:I have to admit it, your post gives a lot of food for thought on the subject of drugs.

that's why they call you the Forward One

I may do a separate post on this one...I think it's that important

Mass persuasion is all around us...they speak we follow
no forward thought, no questions asked...

Most take NO responsibility for their health...

This is my new favorite quote " If Drugs worked you would already be better"