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Chapter Ten

Life Flow One

The Solution For Heart Disease

by

Karl Loren

The Master Plan

The master plan is to tell you a lie, that cholesterol in your food causes heart attacks. Then, they tell you a deceptive truth -- if you would get on a healthy diet, you could avoid heart disease.

You see, that second claim IS true! But, connected to that truth is a lie -- that makes it, in my book, a deceptive truth or an incomplete truth!

It may even be true that a diet low in cholesterol IS a healthy diet. But, that good diet will not cause lower cholesterol in your body and any improvement in your health will not come from the lower cholesterol in your diet, except insofar as your diet is already too high in sugar and a reduction in sugar and chemically laden foods will probably make you healthier. But it’s the quantity of sugar itself, not the cholesterol in the diet, that makes you sick.

Consider: Animal fat (butter and steak) is high in cholesterol. It also happens to give your taste buds a wonderful sensation. The foods you most enjoy usually taste good because there is fat in them.

But, the problem with animal fat is not the cholesterol in the fat, but the false reports you’ve heard about the quantity of fat in your diet compared with proteins and carbohydrates. You’ve heard the data over and over again. The average American diet contains a very large percentage of its total calories from fat. "In order to have a more healthy life you should eat less fat and more carbohydrates. Your diet needs better balance."

But, it is a false claim that this large quantity of fat you are eating is bad for you because of the cholesterol in it. And, it is a doubly false claim that the cholesterol in your diet then causes heart disease.

It is even a false claim that too much fat is bad for you. There are groups of people on the planet whose diet is extremely high in fat -- the Eskimos for instance. It is not the fat, but the sugar and processed foods that cause the degenerative diseases in modern mankind.

Overweight IS a legitimate source of danger for heart disease. Whether your overweight is caused by too much fat in your diet, or more likely, the body’s lack of ability to handle all the sugar-containing foods you feed it -- that’s a question for another book. But, overweight is a problem.

The February, 1995, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association reports a study done at Harvard showing that women who gain 11 to 18 pounds, from their weight at age 18, have a 25% increased risk of suffering or dying of a heart attack compared with that faced by women who gained less than 11 pounds.

A woman who has gained over 25 pounds from the time she was 18 has, according to Harvard, a 200% to 300% greater risk of heart disease death.

I’ve referred to the Framingham Heart Study very critically, here and there in this Book, but the actual findings of that Study were usually altered by unethical people. The raw data seems to be honestly observed. That study is still alive. The current Director is Dr. William Castelli. According to him:

In fact I think excess weight is the worst coronary risk factor for men and women because it leads to unfavorable changes in blood fats, blood pressure and blood sugar, all of which increase the risk of heart attack.

I wouldn’t disagree with those findings, at all, but you see where that is leading? It’s the same old message, telling you that you must diet, avoid foods high in cholesterol, and the final message is that IF you can’t stick to the diet, then we, the doctors, have a drug ready to help you.

During the first few months of 1995 there were numerous full-page ads in popular magazines and newspapers, pushing Mevacor, one of the contenders for the most fraudulent medicine in America.

Overweight is a symptom of something which a real cause of heart disease. The right diet for you will greatly improve your health, and obviously reduce your risks of heart disease. What is that diet? I’ll write another day on that, but that diet does not restrict eggs and butter, nor does it include sugar and margarine.

Now, look at what the drug companies have accomplished. They have given you a terrible scare about your diet and your high cholesterol. Even when people are on a very healthy and natural diet, they can be exposed to free radicals they don’t know about, and lose their blood circulation. They become candidates for heart surgery or heart drugs at that point, despite the healthy diet.

I’ll never forget Nina Fern Dennison, a practicing Yoga who lived out in the desert where she grew almost all of the food she needed for her vegetarian life:

Dear Karl, I have been too long in answering your most welcome letters with regard to my problem. [Nina had written to tell me that she had been in wonderful health, but that her eyesight was failing, and wondered if the oral chelation formula would help. I suggested it would help, and she tried it.] It was my intention to answer right away, but we have had so many visitors that I had to put it off, so now, I have some real good news to report to you. We have studied to some extent Iridology and have an eye glass through which we can watch the progress of our health -- examining the eye. For several months I have not been able to see well enough to see what is happening to my eyes but yesterday morning for some reason I was prompted to take the glass and see what my eyes were doing -- not expecting to be able to see them, but Lo! and behold! I could see even better than before, so a miracle has happened to bring the blood to my eyes.

I have taken three bottles of XX the 10th of this month. Now I really intend to keep on taking it unless you advise that I have taken enough. I cannot see how it could hurt to take it, but I shall await your advice -- however, until I hear from you I will still be taking it regularly. My husband started to take it the same time that I did but it seemed to upset his stomach. He has a squeamish stomach anyway. I probably will not be a whiz bang distributor as I am on my way to being 86. I will continue to tell my friends about it and see what happens. I have a couple of people on it and just sold the second bottle to one of them. I also live in the Mojave Desert where there are not too many people but for certain I like the product.

I have taken niacin over the years, sometimes 400 mg, so I am acquainted with it but whether that would be too much or not I would need you to tell me. I do think one needs it. I haven’t had an M.D. for over 20 years. Lost faith in them long ago, so I use herbs and natural things -- a vegetarian diet for over 55 years. I think that helps. I do still like butter on my toast. We use mostly fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains and seed. We do have a garden where we have organic vegetables and fruit. We still have to patronize the market for some things.

My opthamologist will be amazed when I return to him in a year to see the improvement in my eyes. He couldn’t believe that I did not have cataracts. I did have many years ago, but I used Dr. Christopher’s Eyebrite solution to bathe them and took the capsules.

I am most grateful to you and other health minded persons who have helped me and others to stay away from drugs and the knife. God bless you.

In appreciation,

Nina Fern Dennison. The Master Planners allow a true story to be told -- improve your diet and reduce your risk of heart attack. Then, they sometimes even publicize the fact that study after study has shown that diets don’t work! Yes, it is sad but true. You know from your own experience, and the dozens of your friends who have tried to diet. Very few people will get on a healthy diet and stay on it. There are some, of course, and they are so unusual that they often write books about diet.

One of the hidden secrets about diets has to do with modern man’s intolerance to carbohydrates. He eats too much sugar and refined carbohydrates; his body ceases to handle this type of food well; then every carbohydrate he eats (even fruit and vegetables) turns to fat, whether he eats a little or a lot. For a diet guru to tell you to eat ONLY carbohydrates, at that point, is to lead you down the path of illness.

But, the drug companies KNOW that very few Americans will get on a good diet and stay there -- even when they are afraid of dying because of their poor diets! The drug companies are busy pushing dangerous diets!

So, you can see what is coming. The drug companies are there with a safety net! They can wait with the calm assurance that after you have failed on your diet quest, you will have to take the drug.

The false emphasis on diet drags hundreds of diet-enthusiasts into writing books and getting onto the drug bandwagon without even knowing it.

Here’s some vegetarian doctor who KNOWS that his vegetarian diet makes him more healthy than any of his patients. He also KNOWS that none of his patients has had the will power to get on the diet he recommends.

So, this doctor tries to figure out ways to get his patients onto a good (vegetarian) diet.

One way, very traditional, is to warn the patient -- give him predictions of doom and gloom unless he changes his diet.

Then the NATIONAL GOVERNMENT comes out with all sorts of data about how dangerous it is to NOT get on this diet of low cholesterol foods!

The doctor loves the conclusion -- and buys the false premise!

He falls into that very old trap:

Drug Company Motto: The Ends Justify The Means!

So you now have hundreds of doctors, many of whom are good people, trying to get you to change your diet. Behind the scenes, the drug companies are chuckling. They will lose a few customers -- people who never get onto their heart drugs --because those few actually get onto a healthy diet.

But, they know that the vast majority of people will NOT get onto that healthy diet, will feel that they lack will-power and will be willing to take the heart drugs to lower their cholesterol. I also think that many of the diets being recommended are terrible diets, but, as I said, that’s for another book!

The drugs WILL reduce cholesterol a small amount. But, what they won’t do is to prolong life!

This is the terrible lie that is at the bottom of all these lies.

The drugs you are going to be pushed into taking DO NOT increase your life, but they do greatly increase the profits of the drug companies. You may even live as long as the people who don’t take the drugs -- if you are lucky. That would happen when the drugs don’t cause bad "side effects." But, you can be sure that the drugs won’t give you a longer life, or a healthier life.

The side effects have a way of leaking out some years after a new drug is introduced -- just in time to scare people off the old drug onto the new one!

Consider this news report in March, 1995:

The common drugs used for reducing blood pressure include Adalat, Calan, Cardizem, Dilacor, Isoptin, Procardia and Verelan.

New research shows that people who use these drugs over a long period of time are 60% more likely to have heart attacks than others, with the same original high blood pressure, who don’t use these drugs.

The author of the research tried to downplay the seriousness by saying:

In the course of a year, heart attacks might strike about 10 of every 1,000 people being treated for hypertension with other drugs than the ones mentioned above.

His study found that the risk might rise to 16 of every 1,000 people being treated with calcium channel blockers. That’s a 60 percent increase, although it is still small.

Nevertheless, he estimated that 6 million Americans are taking these drugs, and many are likely to take them for many years.

There is one other factor which the drug companies wanted to put into their plan.

They knew that when you, the frightened dieter, tried to diet and failed, that you would feel guilty about that.

They also know that the most powerful drugs on the market are the psychiatric drugs. These are the drugs which are MOST profitable because they diminish the mental capacity of those who take them so that they turn into automated pill-takers.

So, the drug companies decided to put one more detour in their plan.

Get this! They tell you that you need to change your diet. They know you won’t! So, they then recommend psychiatric counseling. They know that they will pick up a few people who will get hooked on psychiatric drugs for the rest of their lives.

Because the American public has such a low opinion of psychiatry, they realized that they would have to call this psychiatric counseling by other names. They call it "stress reduction." They even recommend Yoga and other mental exercises.

Again, they know that the vast majority of people do not have the self-discipline to stick with any of these non-drug counseling approaches. Yes, they will lose a few people to Yoga. And since Yoga doesn’t involve drugs, but does involve exercise and other healthy habits, there could be a fair number of Americans who will find, in Yoga, an excellent path to improved health.

So, the drug companies will lose a few customers because they recommend some sort of mental treatment for those who do not have the will power to stay on the proper diet.

Finally, after you have failed on your diet, and have avoided counseling like the plague, you are ready to accept the drug.

You go to your doctor, frightened to death about your high cholesterol, ready to admit that you like pie and ice cream too much to cut back. You complain a bit that you HAVE been dieting, but the doctor looks you in the eye, with the cholesterol test in his hand, and tells you that you have not tried enough. Your cholesterol is still too high.

He looks you in the eye, tells you that you are at risk to die from a heart attack SOON unless you get onto Mevacor!

You feel very guilty about not eating right. You even feel guilty that you flunked out of your group therapy session.

You are not in a mental or emotional mood to object to a drug. You ARE ready, now, to pay $160 per month for a drug when you would think $100 per month for vitamins is preposterous!

Drug companies use their enormous profits to "educate doctors," while vitamin companies have no such margins to give you data.

The drug companies have planned this entire campaign this way.

They finance doctors, some of them innocent and ignorant, to write books telling you about these wonderful diets. These doctors often repeat the lies about cholesterol just so they can scare you into using the diets they recommend. The doctors sell a few of these books, but the drug companies find ways to flow money to the doctors, to the book stores, to anyone who helps put out these lies that lead you to drugs.

Well, all of this story wouldn’t make sense IF the drugs worked. If the drugs actually worked, then I suppose it wouldn’t make any difference that you were tricked into taking them.

So, we finally come back to the big question.

Do these drugs prolong your life? There is no evidence that they do!

Well, do they improve the quality of your life?

There is plenty of evidence that they do not! Why does the FDA and the Government push these drugs onto the unsuspecting American public?

That is the story of this Chapter.

I described the complete failure of the Mr. Fit Program earlier. What I did not report there, however, was that the Mr. Fit Program included a blood pressure drug which was part of the test.

Unfortunately for the researchers, this drug proved to increase cholesterol while not making much of a dent in blood pressure.

The blood pressure drug was also considered the cause of death in a number of men being tested. Similar reports on the dangers of current blood pressure drugs were described earlier.

Such results are carefully hidden.

One thing the failure of the Mr. Fit Program did, it convinced the drug companies that they could go ahead with the master plan to recommend diet as the primary treatment for heart disease. They knew, from the Mr. Fit Program, that diet wouldn’t change the cholesterol level, nor the death rate from heart disease. They could safely recommend diet as the first line of treatment because they knew it would fail. They knew that the psychiatric tricks also failed. So, they could include them as the second method of treatment.

THEN, they knew, the drugs would be there, as the last resort, but with no danger of losing any customers because of diet and psychiatric counseling.

The drug companies KNEW that there were various drugs which WOULD DEFINITELY lower the blood cholesterol. At least some of the drug companies knew that. However, ominously, the drug company that won out in the under-the-table bidding to see which drug would be used in the test turned out to be no good, even from the drug companies’ viewpoint.

The drug companies got their favorite puppet, the Heart Lung and Blood Institute, to start yet another research project, called the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial, or CPPT.

Since Mr. Fit had failed, and since Mr. Fit cost $115 million, it was obvious to our government that they would have to spend more money on this next test. This one cost $142 million!

They needed some drug to test and whichever drug was tested would probably make many billions in profits from being THE drug recommended by the official government research.

One of those drugs had the generic name of cholestyramine. Even when you read books which are critical of this fraudulent research, they often avoid giving the brand name, or the name of the drug company which got itself into this wonderful position of having ITS drug be the one tested by the government agency.

That brand name is Questran and the drug company was Bristol Myers.

If the full truth of FDA approval on Questran were revealed, this would be another example of corruption.

How Bristol Myers got its drug into the test, when there were other drug companies eager for the spot is unknown to me, but they made it. Their drug was not the best available at the time, even by the standards of drug companies!

This was the drug used in this research. The researchers knew, going into the trial, that they had one tremendous disadvantage with Questran. It tasted terrible and the method of taking it was to pour the Questran (powder) into a liquid and drink it. The drink tasted terrible.

The placebo for the group not getting the drug had to be made equally terrible in taste so that the test subjects wouldn’t know whether they were getting the Questran or the placebo.

The researchers even predicted in advance that as many as 35% of the people in the test would refuse to continue because of the taste. In the first year of the study 68% of those taking the drug had adverse side effects.

I could go on, but the truth of this whole mess is that at the end of seven years of expensive "research," the test group had a cholesterol level that was only 6.7% lower than the other group! Another failure! Another opportunity for the spin doctors to falsify the results and proclaim, loudly, that another government trial proves the value of this new heart drug!

So, Bristol Myers had egg on its face, for forcing the government to take its terrible product. Mevacor, of course, has taken the market away from Questran, because Mevacor can be taken in tablet form, and actually DOES lower the cholesterol level of the blood. Questran was a fraud, even within drug company standards. Mevacor is only a fraud when you look at the totality of the cholesterol myth.

While the CPPT trial used Questran, and failed, at the same time there was another research project sponsored by the World Health Organization, using a different drug.

This time the drug was clofibrate, more commonly known as Atromid-S, made by Wyeth-Ayers Laboratories.

Here is what the Physicians’ Desk Reference prints in a special box, with a large print warning label:

In a large study involving 5,000 patients in a clofibrate-treated group and 5,000 in a placebo-treated group followed for an average of five years on drug or placebo and one beyond (the WHO study), there was a statistically significant 44% higher age-adjusted total mortality in the clofibrate-treated group than in a comparable placebo group. The excess deaths were due to non-cardiovascular causes; half of this difference was due to malignancy; other causes of death included postcholecystectomy complications and pancreatis.

Here was a drug that was killing people! The trial was stopped after five years because the researchers knew they were killing people. When will this madness end!! Even when good authors report this result, they seldom reveal the brand name of the drug, or the name of the drug company. This drug is still for sale at your neighborhood pharmacy. Why? Because there was some small group, within the larger group that got tested -- some small group where there didn’t seem to be an increased chance of death. For that small group, said the master planners, THIS drug is a good one!

The history of foolish research with experimental drugs is well documented, but not well known.

There was a time, for instance, when the Heart Lung And Blood Institute thought that they could reduce heart attacks by giving men the female sex hormone estrogen After one year into that study the researchers found out that the drug was INCREASING the number of heart attacks. Besides these unfortunate side effects, what else happened? Well, the researchers decided that the increased deaths from heart attacks were caused by doses that were too large. So, they reduced the dose and continued the research. Well! Hurrah! They didn’t get that disturbing number of increased deaths. But what they did get were "atrophy of the testicles, reduced sex drive, breast enlargement and impotence!"

How would you like to have been in THAT test group.

This is the history of drugs for the heart. Where was the FDA then?

How could the researchers, later, claim that these tests were successful in proving that a drug would lower your cholesterol and prolong your life? Well they did that by changing the standards by which such tests are judged! I kid you not!

Normally the term "statistically significant" means that you can be 99% certain that the results are not obtained by chance. Sometimes, when the test is in an area not so important as heart disease, or a life-and-death matter, the criteria is set at 95%. Either of these two figures has reasonable acceptance in the scientific community.

Under either of these two tests the cholesterol-lowering drugs were failures.

But, since the master plan had already decreed that the drug companies would win, the master planners looked for a way to claim victory for these tests. They found a way!

When you read the apologists for the cholesterol myth, many of whose books I’ve mentioned in the Bibliography, you’ll find many glowing tributes to the effectiveness of these research trials.

What often passes for research among the popular writers is something like the following.

Dr. Julian Whitaker, trying to make a case for food cholesterol causing blood cholesterol, cites a "study" done by Dr. Kaare Norum, Professor of Nutrition at the University of Norway. That professor didn’t do any research on this subject, he just sent out a survey to 211 of the "world’s top scientists doing research in the area of fat and" heart disease. What did these experts report?

Ninety eight percent of them said that they thought there is a connection between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol.

There, we’ve taken a vote and the winners agree that cholesterol in your diet causes blood cholesterol. The same survey showed that 98% of these experts believe that "there is a connection between" blood cholesterol and heart disease!

How do the terrible failures of all these drug tests translate into the story you hear from your doctor?

The Journal of the American Medical Association devoted an entire issue to cholesterol, and the drug trial was featured in the two lead articles. The results, the heart institute authors said, "leave little doubt of the benefit of cholestyramine therapy."

Here is an example of an outright lie, authored by an agency of the United States government, reprinted in the AMA magazine.

Your doctor doesn’t read the actual reports of these exotic researchers. They are often written with mathematical symbols and chemical terms which the family physician has long forgotten.

But, the AMA magazine is written in language he can understand. He is already a subscriber -- it arrives on his desk. There are a few doctors in the US who have purchased quantities of the first edition of this Book, to give or sell to their patients. There IS hope!

Why would he doubt the integrity of the AMA, or the Heart Lung & Blood Institute? They are, after, all the most honest organizations in medicine!

That’s not saying very much, now is it!!!

I’ve tried to portray the drugs used to treat heart problems. By now you should have the full flavor of it all.

If you’ve read this far, and are still taking Mevacor, you must own stock in Merck or have a death wish!