Drack, you wanted questions,
what is your take on very low triglycerides levels?
over the last couple of years my triglycerides have slowly gone down to virtually nothing
I have been to four different doctors and an edocrinologist that have told me low triglycerides are of no importance what so ever,I have been fobbed off by all of them,none would even want to investigate the cause.
and please dont search the internet for the answer..I have been there and done that

Hi Drake,

I would just like to say that I do not hate doctors, but there are some negative general assumptions I have about "you guys." First, doctors are very intelligent, but they also tend to be very arrogant and uninformed about how nutrition truly influences overall health. Medical school does not involve much education in nutrition. Here in the states our medical schools receive quite a bit of funding from the pharmaceutical industry, and that's bullshit.

I personally believe that most major diseases and cancers can be traced back to a metabolic deficiency or an exposure to a toxic environment. Most doctors will discount simple nutritional therapies without a second thought. Just like any industry, the medical industry has its good and bad doctors. Doctors and traditional medicine have their place and are definitely needed, but they are relied on too much. I believe traditional medicine is best suited for immediate and short term relief/treatment.

Our medical establish is a business. Profits are top priority. I do not view pharma and the healthcare system as one, but they are like brother and sister. The process for pharma companies get there drug FDA approved is a joke. Actually, the FDA is a joke. Drugs have so many negative side effects, but metabolic and vitamin therapies virtually have no serious negative side effects. Why is it that nutritional or vitamin therapy for cancer is illegal in the US? Because is threatens the cancer industry. All these NP cancer associations make me so angry. They rake is billions of dollars a year, and for what? To study some more chemo drugs or radiation techniques? The answers are already out there. The human body is the most complex organism in the universe, and it has the miraculous ability to heal itself...given the right tools.

Have you ever heard of the Gerson Therapy for cancer treatment? They are considered quackery by most US doctors. Their clinic operates out of Mexico (because it is illegal here). Their success rate is much higher than that of traditional cancer treatments. And according to our country, a cancer survivor is someone that lives 5 years after being diagnosed. This is a good documentary about the Gerson therapy:
https://www.truththeory.org/dying-to-have-known/

Here is another good film that shows the profit driven corruption of the FDA. Dr Burzynski is an MD out of Texas, and he has developed a very successful alternative treatment for some of the most aggressive cancers. He has an exclusive patent on his treatment, and the FDA has been harassing him for over 10 years.
https://www.truththeory.org/burzynski-the-movie/

But the corruption of healthcare and pharmaceuticals is just a symptom of our broken, profit driven society. We can't just sit here and fix the woes of the world by fixing symptoms, we have to get to the root cause. Just as we think about healing the human body, we have to think the same way about healing our society. Ask yourself, what is causing this corruption in our healthcare system?

Our use of a profit based, �growth� driven monetary system has become one of the greatest destroyers of the natural world and sustainable human values. The system requires problems/constant consumer interest in order to work. This generates an inherent disregard for human well being. It is erroneously assumed that the incentive to seek money is also the incentive to help society.

-TZM

Hello Drack, it's good to see you here.

Not many people trained in corporate medicine would even condescend to engage with 'alternative' medicine people. I find it a bit strange that people divide up the world's healing systems into corporate medicine ('orthodox', 'conventional', etc) and everything else ('alternative', 'complementary', etc). That's a bit like dividing all food into pizza and non-pizza.

I'll never have time to read all 8 pages of this thread (I'm too busy trying to scratch a minimal living from providing safe and effective help for people's pain and suffering, which is pretty difficult given the massive amount of corporate propaganda I have to fight against to get taken seriously).

The point I wished to take up was that in your second post you dismissed off-hand the traditional theory behind acupuncture. I am absolutely certain that this is because you do not understand it. It took me nearly a year of full-time study to start to click into what on earth the theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is talking about. For some people it takes 2 or 3 years. Some never get it. So there is no chance whatsoever that you have enough understanding of it to make a general judgement like that.

I have gone to great effort recently to write some articles that build a conceptual bridge between the conventional Western so-called rationalist approach to health (i.e. corporate Scientism) and the TCM view. I haven't posted enough times to link to my website yet, but if you message me I'll send you links to the most relevant articles. I'd be interested to know what you think - once you have read and understood the articles. Try it - you might find it interesting.

I find it amusing when corporate medicine people indulge in vague speculation about TCM theory. It reminds me of me and my friends in primary school speculating about sex. One person thought it was going to be like this, one person like that... we didn't realise that there was absolutely no way we could imagine or understand it at that age. It's the same with TCM theory. It opens up a new world of experience and understanding that you could never possibly have imagined beforehand.

Wrong. https://www.amjmed.com/medline/record...9598138_324_71

Also this in case you have decided that AJM is not trustworthy: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1....pub2/abstract

Sure it can cause hemolysis in some rare cases, in which of course the drug is stopped. But please tell me how it masks the disease.



So you see patients that are on treatment for cardiovascular disease die from cardiovascular disease. I've seen that too, no one is saying the treatment is any guarantee of eternal life. It's just about improving your risk.

I dunno how many times I have to say this, but I'll spell it out again. Yes, there are side effects to the drugs that can be dangerous. But the drug is given when the benefit outweighs the harm. Take a look at that review I linked above from the Cochrane library. In the case with blood thinners its protective effect in high risk patients outweigh the risk of hemorrhage.


You really think we don't know about how lifestyle causes cardiovascular disease? You think we don't adress that? Lifestyle modification is first line of treatment. But there are a lot of patients that do not have the willpower to make changes in their lives, to eat healthier, to stop smoking, to exercise and so on. Should we not treat these patients?

If this is true, then that's Nobel prize material, so please put forth reliable evidence. Not anecdotal stories, real studies.

All this could be said for using medications as well. But no one gets impressed by it, since it's not about producing the kind of sudden improvement that surgery does. Meds, in many cases, does not produce results that are clearly noticable, but still make a huge difference. Like controlling hypertension, for example. It's a dangerous disease, but people don't feel it and even though controlling it might improve their lifespan, it is no where near as flashy as suddenly getting a brand new hip, for example.

Since I mentioned hypertension, I know what you're going to say. But yes, I know that lifestyle changes can improve hypertension and yes, that is always what I try first.

I notice you write the prerequisites "an honest surgeon" and "if the surgery was done well and for the right reason". I agree. But the same things goes for any other doctor. An honest doctor won't give drugs that aren't indicated. He will try lifestyle modifications first. And medicines do work well when given for the right reason. Likewise a bad surgeon might operate you when it can be avoided. He can screw up and make you worse, or kill you. And he might load you up with way too much narcotic painkillers. What I don't get is when talking about other doctors, you assume they are the "bad" kind, whereas with surgeons you assume they are the "good" kind.

Btw, I'm curous, what are your views on vascular surgery?

Surgery should absolutely be done for a cancer where it's indicated. That's insane.

The question was whether I'd use any drugs, and I mentioned aspirin as an example. The question was not how I would treat a heart condition, you're twisting my words. You know nothing about my diet.

Furthermore, I do not care for the assumption that I'm just milking patients for money. I happen to live in Norway, and while being a doctor here is a well paying job, the salary is nothing spectacular. I do this because I want to help, so cut out that condescending tone.

How low is low? I must say I don't have a good answer as to what caused it. What i can say is that I can think of no serious illness that is characterized by dropping triglyerides, but I guess you've already heard that. Have you made any lifestyle changes, diet, exercise, lost weight?

tuina: You're right, I do not have an intimate knowledge of acupuncture. What I understand is that it operates with a form of energy, Qi, that has not been scientifically proven to exist. Of course, one cannot prove that it doesn't exist, but that makes this more of a "religious" thing, so to speak, rather than scientific.

As far as I'm concerned, conventional medicine is everything that has been proven to work through several repeated and peer reviewed studies, and alternative medicine is everything else. It doesn't matter much to me how something works, as long as it works.

I try not to sound arrogant, but I know there are doctors that are. In some cases I think it might be because they're terribly overworked (I know myself it can get difficult to be friendly after enough sleep deprivation , but in a lot of cases there are just arrogant people. But I've noticed there are some people on this board that has been just as arrogant as the most stuck up doctors, so it works both ways.

So conventional medicine would only include the 13% of corporate medical interventions that have been shown to be effective according to the theory of statistical evidence (BMJ)? And you would count the other 87% of what doctors do as alternative medicine?

When the evidence-based medicine movement started 15 years ago, there were 3 parts to it: statistical trials, doctors' clinical experience, and patients' experience. It has now been reduced to the first one. I wonder why.

I understand science to be a systematic investigation of reality. Traditional Chinese Medicine is precisely that - much more so than the sordid marketing scam that corporate medicine has become. Qi can be proved to exist beyond any doubt whatsoever, not just in terms of statistical probability, to anyone who is prepared to make the effort to undertake traditional training in qigong and meditation. That's a systematic investigation of reality. If I do these exercises daily for a couple of years, do I understand beyond any possible doubt what Qi is? Yes. QED. If you did the same with an open mind, you would get the same result. If you don't want to make the effort to find out the answer, don't prejudge the question. Don't try to impose the horribly stunted scope of mainstream modern Western cultural experience on the rest of the world and history. Remember my analogy of children trying to speculate about what sex will be like? The thunderers from the pulpit of the corporate medical religion are making a laughing-stock of themselves. Shame they're dragging so many people down with them.

I'm sure you are not so naive as to believe that the published results of statistical methods 'prove' anything. A drug can outperform a placebo by quite a small amount and still show a significant difference if the sample is large enough. What does that tell us about what will happen if you or I take it or don't take it? Almost nothing. It's a huge jump from showing a difference against placebo to saying that something is 'proved' to work. To believe otherwise is either naive or dishonest. And even that feeble amount of knowledge only applies to the glorious 13%.

The so-called facts are never as clear-cut as they're made out to be, and the more one looks at them, the more they fall apart into a constructed system of misleading jargon.

Look at the systematic review in the BMJ of the great Tamiflu scam. It was shown in trials to reduce the duration of illness by one day - a very modest achievement anyway - but only in cases of 'laboratory-confirmed influenza' - which has little to do with clinical reality as it only represents 10% of cases. But the publicised 'facts' are that Tamiflu works... Tamiflu treats the flu... so governments buy millions of doses. Compare the claims on Tamiflu's website to the very marginal effects actually found in the trials. Isn't that what you'd call outright lying?

So is Tamiflu 'alternative medicine'? What about surgery? No placebo, therefore no double-blind, therefore no evidence. What absolute nonsense.

And I won't start on the embarrassing phenomenon of consciousness.

I don't hate doctors, but I will avoid seeing them if possible. I find I'm better off by keeping myself healthy with natural supplements and whole foods. If I become sickly, which is not very often, I'd rather treat my symptoms with herbs, vit. C, etc. Better than going to the doc to be stuck with a (possibly infected) needle, and sent home with a bag of prescription drugs that usually just mask the problem or create health issues of their own. Also, they always try to sell you on getting your annual flu shot or mammogram, even when you clearly state that you do not want one.

Doctors do appear to be very stressed to stay within their guidelines, and I believe they're pressured by the drug companies to push certain prescription meds. I think their value as a doctor by their superiors is sometimes evaluated by the number of prescriptions they write.

When they agree to talk about supplements, the conversation is very brief. Maybe when they ban vitamins in stores and they're only available in small amounts at inflated prices by the big drug companies, then the physicians will be all for them.

I agree about the procedures sometimes causing illness. There are enough examples of women getting diseases/infections from speculums used in pap tests that are not sterile, sometimes not cleaned at all between patients. Same goes for the scopes used for colonoscopies. Their excuse for that is that those scopes are used in a part of the body that isn't sterile anyway.

__________________
"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanual Kant~

NatMedTalk and Beyond

Your posts are impressive, sounds like you went into medicine to actually help people. As for proven therapies, the pharmaceutical companies know the spice/herb Turmeric is very useful, especially for inflammatory conditions and some cancers, but since they cannot make money from it, they are working on synthetic analogs to the active components in Turmeric.

Use of aspirin and other NSAIDS is dicey. Recent studies have proven that long term use of aspirin or NSAIDS breaks down cartilage, which is part of the reason we now have a hip and knee replacement industry. (Obesity, of course, can also be a factor in wearing out one's joints and needing replacements.)

Kind2creatures: If someone is not cleaning instruments between patients, that's not medicine -that's malpractice.

As for feeling stressed, I've been stressed from lots of work, no sleep, no food and scarce to drink for long hours at a time, coupled with the knowledge that the patients life is my responsibility and fear of making wrong decisions. I have never, ever in my life felt even the slightest pressure from anyone to write out more prescriptions than necessary. I get no benefit whatsoever from writing prescriptions. If anything, I feel my role is more as a gatekeeper to the drugs than a dealer.

Tuina: Could you send me the BMJ link? I'd like to read it.

About Qi: So are you saying that Qi is proven to exist because given enough training/meditation, you understand what it is? That sounds a lot like Descartes proof of god's existence.

Regarding tamiflu: Well, it has been proven objectively to work, just not very well. I don't think I've ever prescribed Tamiflu. Even though it has been proven to have some effect the doctor who prescribes it should of course be aware of how well it works. Of course what is written on their website is not neutral, everyone knows this.

I don't know why you assume I don't take mine and the patients experience into consideration.

But sure, maybe my statement about what is and isn't alternative was a bit simplified, you made a good point about surgery and placebo.


Saved: Thanks, I do. And I know that so do all the interns I've been working with the past year. Didn't know about turmeric, I'll see if I can read up on it.

It's getting late, I suppose I'll write more tomorrow.

I don't think the arrogance doctors display comes from being overworked, etc. They believe if they didn't learn it in all of their training, than it must be non-sense.

As for the arrogance on this board, I agree. But there is a major difference between the arrogance on this board and in the doctors office. I believe, like many on here, that nature got it right. Meaning that whatever drugs (or synthetic nutrients) science creates will never match what has been given by nature. I am not anti-science at all, but I believe this is one area where it oversteps its boundaries.

And one more thing. What makes alternative medicine experts different (in most cases) is their lack of interest in profit. I'm going to have more trust in someone who tells me how I can heal my self by going to Whole Foods, rather than someone pushing drugs for corporations. Whether you believe most doctors don't "push" drugs, rather they prescribe them as needed, the facts remain the same.

Drack, my opinions are formed by my limited (thank goodness) personal experiences with doctors, along with news reports over the years and what I read online. My experience for over thirty years now is only with doctors in my HMO, who are always hurried and stressed.

When I mentioned that I was taking Red Clover for menopausal symptoms instead of HRT, the doctor said fine, to just keep doing what I've been doing. When I requested a vitamin D level blood test, he refused. Maybe he wasn't allowed to approve the test by the HMO, but he also sarcastically asked if I was taking vitamin D. When I told him yes, vitamin D3, he then became cocky and said, 'so what if you found out your level is low, take more?' I replied YES, and there were eyerolls from both of us. But...I wondered what's in HIS medicine chest, vitamins perhaps?

I'm glad to see that you're willing to look into the Turmeric that Saved 1986 mentioned, that's a good sign for me. Just had some on my steamed brussel sprouts with light olive oil, have also taken Turmeric/Curcumin as a supplement. Here's some info on Turmeric from one of our members...https://www.healthyfellow.com/303/curcumin-research/

I couldn't just let the "aspirin" topic slide by without commenting.

I wouldn't recommend aspirin to anyone for any reason, low dose or not.

81 mg is still 2.5 grams per month, or 30 grams per year, which is more than enough to cause ulcers, and/or burn holes in the intestines.

Lets see, what else does aspirin do? First, it neutralizes vitamin c (as well as some B vitamins)in the body, and that alone is reason to never use it. Older people take aspirin to prevent heart attack and stroke because the theory is aspirin thins the blood, and it does, however, it also increases homocysteine, which is a sure marker for increased risk of heart attack and stroke... so where is the benefit?

Drack, no matter how well educated doctors are, they will never heal anyone. The complete system (with the exception of emergency surgery) is broken, and no matter how much money is "thrown" at cancer or aids, there will never be a cure for anything because the answers aren't in the genes.

I predict that within the next 10 to 15 years, the general family doctor will disappear, and shortly thereafter vaccines, mammograms, and other useless treatments such as chemo and radiation.

If I was sick and needed advice from either Arrow or Drack, I would pick Arrow without hesitation.

__________________
Let Food Be Your Medicine And Medicine Be Your Food.(Hippocrates)

that is the answer I have had from all the doctors I have seen.
I hope you take this opportunity to educate yourself and treat your patients better than what I have had,my triglericide level is at 0.8mg/dL
doctors dont know and dont want to know that low triglycerides matters.

there was a study done on low triglycerides, you should be able to find it in medical journals or on the internet , that found.

"Low triglyceride levels can lead to an increased risk of stroke and heart attack. Levels that are very low are actually just as dangerous as triglycerides that are extremely high and should be taken just as seriously. The low levels can also be a sign of a more serious disease and therefore should be checked out"

the cause for low triglycerides could be certain drugs, hyperthyroidism, malnutrition, malabsorption syndrome, a low fat diet, Cholesterol lowering drugs, fish oil supplements, statins, nicotinic acid, ascorbic acid, asparaginase, gemfibrozil, fenofibate, or clofibrate,cancer, chronic liver disease, protein intolerance, chronic inflammation of the pancreas.