Thanks for all the replies, appreciate it. Good to see cancer and heart disease trending downwards, a few conferences and talks I have been to in the last few years have said otherwise (and they also provided references) so I guess it's hard to know what the exact situation is. The facts linking meat (especially processed meats) to various health issues have been around for many years but yet this type of strain on our healthcare systems are deemed 'normal' and acceptable? I do know that last year 200 million people in the US alone were treated for heart disease of some form; I would hazard a guess that only a tiny percentage of them would have been vegan/vegetarian.
Firstly, I am not against doctors and/or medications and I am all for science, studies, data etc. I had a heart attack about 3yrs ago, was put on statins and BP medications which I stayed on for a year before deciding to try and get off them and rectify things by a more natural approach. I tried 3 different statins and they all came with awful side effects including lethargy and severe muscle aches. Today I have perfect BP and cholesterol, despite have a condition called aortic stenosis which I was born with. I've had a couple of years ~ and great success from taking high doses of Omega 3's (I take an algal source of EPA/DHA), hawthorn, garlic and red yeast rice. Red yeast rice is probably the most interesting, better suited for lowering cholesterol rather than BP. It has the same actions in the body as regular statins so can actually be classed as a levostatin itself; it did temporarily get taken off the market I believe as it was too effective and comparable to regular statins so they tried to regulate it. This is due to the fact that it contains something called Monacolin K which is essentially the same as Lovastatin (prescription statin called Mevacor). Although it is recognised as an ancient and common Chinese herb it definately has merit as being one of the most potent natural means of cholesterol/BP reduction. It basically falls in the 'natural medications' category as it is essentially just fermented rice, and is an excellent option along with something like garlic and Hawthorne Berry.
For me the attraction was that I MIGHT be able to get the same end result from taking something natural and not have to suffer any side effects. Added to this my worries of using heart medication at my age (I was early 30's then), when I came across a study showing a new heart medication that initially showed great promise. Aparrently they were saying the next area of heart drugs the pharmaceutical industry wants to get into is ones that lower LDL and raise HDL. I was reading about a trial that had just been closed after 12 patients died during trials of one of these new type of drugs. Got me thinking how many people die in the development of a new drug, and what the risks are with taking prescribed medication(s) for long periods of time as I was about to.
FWIW this was a slide that I got from one of the talks I attended on heart disease and cancer last year:
Obesity & Diabetes in 2011 Ø In 1900 obesity, diabetes, heart disease & cancer were virtually non-existent
Ø Obesity is now the #1 cause of premature death
Ø In NZ, McDonalds has had 68 consecutive months of growth and profit. Obesity and diabetes have climbed at a similar rate
Ø Diabetes is New Zealand’s fastest growing disease
Ø There are 20 new diabetics every day in NZ
Ø What has radically changed is our diet/lifestyle, making our genetic expression radically change
Ø Heart disease now causes 40% of all deaths in the Western world
Ø NZ has the #2 stroke death rate in the world now (and tracking towards #1)
Ø Obesity directly causes fatty liver
Ø Fatty liver now occurs in 50% of those over 50
Ø Fatty liver increases diabetes risk by 400%
Ø Men now have 3 times the cancer rate of their Grandfathers
Ø Since 1980 the global OBESITY burden has DOUBLED
Ø Since 1980 the global CANCER burden has DOUBLED
We can expect to see cancer continue to grow as a leading cause of death unless changes start to be put into place and successfully implemented:Ø Cancer is NOT a natural event
Ø In 1900 cancer was a rare disease (less than 1% of deaths)
Ø Frederick L. Hoffman founded the American Cancer Society stating that “diet was the way to prevent and treat cancer”
Ø 1935-2005 cancer rates went up every single year for 70yrs
Ø Since 1980 the obesity AND cancer rates have DOUBLED
Ø Cancer kills 22 Kiwis EVERY DAY
Ø Bowel cancer kills 1,200 Kiwis annually – 1,164 preventable
Ø NZ women have the world’s highest bowel cancer rates
Ø Meat intake is up 500% in the last 100 years
Ø Cancer cells require 10-50 times more sugar (sugar kills liver cells)
Ø Over 30% of NZ teenagers are now at high risk of cancers
Ø Cancer now causes 25% of all deaths in the Western world.
NB: Stats for America are actually fairly similar, as New Zealand, Australia and America are nearly always in the top 3 for illness, diseases and death rates.I do realise that natural medicine is also a money making sector of the health industry, although personally I feel that
overall the intentions of the companies producing these products are probably more honest, ethical etc. I can't quite think of the right word to use there
I completely think there is a need for them, simply due to the products on the market being regulated; while I like the ideology of people growing their own herbs or collecting plants from a forest, obviously there are little to no safety measure in place with that. It's a shame that doctors and medical herbalists, dieticians etc can't work closer together as I believe serious ground could be covered if disease was looked at from a prevention perspective rather than waiting until we have to treat an actual problem.
) then I'll make a lavender green tea, fill it with ginger, lemon and buy a butternut squash soup and fill it to the brim with chopped garlic :p
