Myths We Cherish & Trends We Follow

There’s a lot of misconceptions out there & there’s a lot of information being spoon fed to us.

Particularly when it has to do with our food & drug industries. 

My job? To share [unbiased] information. To give you tools. To give you resources. To empower YOU to take charge of your health & make educated, informed decisions about what you deem healthcare is & should be. 

SO LET’S GET AT IT. 

Myth #1 : FDA Approved Drugs are Always Safe.

Wah. Wah. Wahhhh. False.

In the early 2000’s, four authoritative books were published - each written by physicians who later became medical school academics. These four books pretty much demolished myths we hold near & dear about the pharmaceutical industry and the true nature of its symbiotic  relationship to modern Western medicine. 

Three of the physicians, Marcia Angell, Jerry Avorn, and John Abramson, are associated with Harvard Medical School. & the fourth, Jay S. Cohen, is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego.

What these 4 medical authorities agree upon is that modern medicine’s dependence on synthetic chemicals manufactured by pharmaceutical companies often ends in a failure to protect public health. That failure began over the past century with the relationship between the FDA and the drugmakers the FDA is supposed to regulate. 

That’s like getting your house tested for mold and using the same company to remediate. Of course they’re going to ‘find’ mold. Because, hey, it gives them somethin’ to fix. 

Part of this myth is understanding that the FDA doesn’t actually study drugs prior to approval. It’s up to the company that makes the drug to generate that information for them.

Let me reiterate.

Our government depends on safety data supplied by the drug manufacturers to make its approval decisions. Where’s the checks and balances here?

One more time.

To rely on drug companies for UNBIASED evaluations of their products pretty much makes as much sense as relying on cigarette companies to teach us to stop smoking. 

We may hope & pray that those studies of drug safety are done with the morals and ethics of someone not swayed by profit or pressure.. But this ain’t Utopia.

In their separate books, two of the physicians, Abramson & Angell, talk about the levels of deception that can occur in drug trials.

A good [possible] example is in late 2005 a new FDA approved diabetes drug hit the market. Two established cardiologists from Ohio decided to perform an independent study regarding the testing data for the drug. Published by The Journal of the American Medical Association, their goal was to stop a public health crisis. Because what their research discovered was that this treatment for type 2 diabetes [muraglitazar], caused many more instances of death from heart attacks and strokes than company test data portrayed to the FDA.

The two cardiologists uncovered a pattern of omissions in data presented to the FDA that created a false illusion of safety. 

YA’LL - THESE ARE THE HUMANS WE’RE ‘TRUSTING’ WITH OUR HEALTH. 

More drugs are being withdrawn then ever before due to toxic effects showing up after being prescribed. Take Redux, Rezulin, Propulsid, & Seldane. These were prescribed to nearly 20 MILLION people before being pulled for toxicity. 

At least 106,000 people die each year from drug side effects. Want to talk about a pandemic? And it’s not new information. In 1998, a study by The Journal of the American Medical Association showed that roughly 300 people die each and every day from legal toxic drugs.

At least 51% of all FDA-approved drugs have serious adverse effects not detected prior to approval. So, more than half of our drugs, after being labeled as ‘safe’ by the FDA & then prescribed to millions of people, are later detected to have previously unrecognized, medically serious side effects.

The former FDA commissioner, Herbert Lay, said it best in 1969: 

The thing that bugs me is that people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and day.

IF THIS DOESN’T MAKE YOU SWEAT….

Myth #2 :  One Dose Fits All

Merp. Again, false.

Most doctors [not I said the fly] will give you a prescription for a drug that’s super generalized. Sure there’s certain guidelines - weight, duration, frequency, route. But press the pause button. Have you stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, synthetic drugs targeting specific illnesses don’t work the same for everyone?

Most doctors tend to ignore our individuality - our genetics, metabolism, detoxing factors, & environments. If something isn’t working right, the answer is to increase the dose. If a patient experiences a side effect, the answer is to prescribe another drug to mask the side effects of the first medication. 

According to the American Medical Association, individual variation in how we absorb and metabolize any prescribed drug [or synthetic chemical] can range from a 400% - 4,000% difference in the dosage required between one person and another.

Carl Peck, the former director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, was quoted by The New York Times in 1999, saying “one dose fits all is a marketing myth, but it’s the holy grail that every drug company tries to achieve”.

Physicians want maximum effectiveness - which leads to higher doses & overprescription.

EXAMPLE A: PROZAC. 

The starting dose of Prozac is 20mg. In a study conducted by The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 85% of Prozac users suffered from diarrhea, 70% experienced profuse sweating, & 50% gained weight. All because their starting dose was too high. 

EXAMPLE B: ANTIBIOTICS.

About 90% of sore throats in America are viral in nature [per year]. Meaning, antibiotics won’t do shit. But, medical statistics indicate that 73% of the estimated 6.7 million visits by adults to physicians complaining of sore throats within a 10 year period results in a prescription for antibiotics. 

And I get it - some physicians say they’re responding to the patient’s demand. But, I’m sorry, is the patient the one prescribing or are you… 

Myth #3 : Fluoridated Water is Good For Us

About 66% of public municipal water systems in the United States serving 170 million people were fluoridated by the start of the 21st century. Yet, most countries in Western Europe - from France to Germany to Italy to Switzerland - continue to reject adding fluoride to their drinking water. But whyyy??

LET’S BACK UP.

A scientist working under a grant from the Aluminum Company of America made the initial public proposal in 1939 to add fluoride to public water supplies in order to prevent tooth decay. So, in 1945 the first barrels of sodium fluoride were added to the drinking water in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

Once, the United States Public Health Service endorsed fluoridation a few years later, other cities and states followed suit. 

Public relations campaigns were funded by aluminum and fertilizer industries further fueled the fluoridation frenzy. 

Opponents of fluoridation were shut down. 

In 1975, the chief chemist emeritus of the National Cancer Institute, Dean Burk, declared that fluoride in water “causes more human cancer, and causes it faster, than any other chemical.”

In 1977, some members of Congress inquired about whether federal health authorities, after a quarter-century of experience with fluoridation, had ever tested fluoridated water as a cause of cancer. Welp, the answer was a big fat NO. 

Another 10 years went by before tests were finally performed on rats. And, well, young male rats exposed to fluoridated water developed both bone cancer and liver cancer.

In 1992, three U.S. scientists found evidence of Alzheimer’s like symptoms in lab animals exposed to fluoridated water - which they found was actually caused by traces of aluminum being carried into the animals’ brains due to the cross contamination of fluoride & aluminum. 

Neurotoxicology and Teratology found evidence that fluoride accumulates in the human body and creates motor-like dysfunction and learning disabilities. 

Other connections have been made between fluoridated water and lower IQs, thyroid abnormalities, arthritis, and Down’s syndrome. And by 2004, about 500 peer-reviewed scientific studies had appeared indicating health problems associated with fluoride consumption.

OKAY, BUT DOES IT ACTUALLY PROTECT OUR TEETH?

Well in 1995, a study by the California Department of Health Services revealed that money spent on dental work actually increased in areas where water was fluoridated in that state, while dental costs decreased in communities without fluoridated water.

In 2000, John D. B. Featherstone published a study in The Journal of American Dental Association, which he concludes that ingesting fluoride from tap water does little to prevent tooth decay. Rather, it only works when directly applied to the teeth.

According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the average person absorbs seven parts per million of fluoride per day. To put that into perspective, the EPA states that the optimal level of exposure to fluoride is no more than ONE part per million per day. But public water supplies use standards of no more than four parts per million. & the World Health Organization says it’s safe to be exposed to 1.5 parts per million.

OH, THE HYPOCRISY.  

Knowledge is power, ya’ll.

Resources:

Fitzgerald, R. (2007). The Hundred-Year Lie.

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The Discovery Doc - Dr. CeCe Brooks - Atlanta Holistic NP