Monthly Archives: August 2007

Updated Title For The Mark Schauss Blog

I’ve decided to update my blog description and title to reflect what I want to discuss.  Health issues are so important and the media so distorts the truth that someone has to be out there telling you what the truth really is. The problem I see with a lot of other blogs out there is that they all seemingly have agendas to promote. Whether it is a point of view that all that is natural is good (it isn’t) or that supplements are bad or the blogger is trying to sell something and writes to strictly to promote whatever it is they are selling.

I hope to be as objective as possible and hope the information I continue to post here helps you achieve optimal health.  Remember optimal health is not just the lack of disease but a vibrancy that permeates your life.

Also, every once in a while, I will post an opinion about issues I feel passionate about. I hope that they don’t offend anyone but if they do, c’est la vie.

The Media Lies Continue – Antioxidant’s Do Help Reduce Cardiovascular Disease Risk

As I have pointed out in the past, the media seems to love to lie to the public about the benefits of nutritional supplements. Caleb Hellerman, a stalwart for media distortions with CNN wrote how there was no benefit to the use of supplements in the past, a clear distortion and lack of good reporting. Now the media jumped on one of the worst studies on antioxidants done to date. Their claim as I reported earlier, was that women gained no benefit from the supplementation of antioxidants like vitamin C and E. Turns out, that was a clear distortion of the findings of the study.

My original post showed that the researchers did not look at the lifestyles of the study subjects which distorts the data. Today, I found out more dishonesty about the study which sickened me. Mike Adams points out that they included the data on the benefits of antioxidants from women who DID NOT TAKE the supplements. They showed no benefits to supplementation of vitamins C and E. NO KIDDING!  How can any self-respecting journal publish a piece a garbage like that?  And unless the media purposely distorts the truth, how could they publicize this?  The only reason I can see is the incestuous relationship they have with the advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical industry.  This is just another reason why pharmaceutical advertising must be banned.

Back to the study. What was revealed yet not reported by the media is that those women who actually took the supplements showed a clear benefit and reduction of cardiovascular disease. What did the media report? That there was no benefit despite the evidence that there was one. How dishonest is this? Antioxidants ARE beneficial. The truth is out there, but when money from the pharmaceutical industry clouds minds, the truth is often hidden.

When Boosting Your Thyroid is the Wrong Thing to do.

In my mind, the concept I’m going to talk about here, is such a common sense theory, that I am amazed that every health care practitioner doesn’t know about it. In fact, very few know about the fact that stimulating the thyroid through the use of medications such as SynthroidTM or more natural thyroid stimulants like Westhyroid or Amour can be highly detrimental to a persons health if they are environmentally toxic. The reason is so basic that perhaps it is too simple so that many in the health care industry may simply be missing the obvious.

So why would increasing metabolism be a bad thing when so many people have low metabolisms which inherently can lead to fatigue and obesity? The answer comes from experiments done in animal research and duplicated in humans.  When a mammal is exposed to environmental toxins, it naturally slows down its metabolism in order to fend off the effects of the toxins be they petrochemical, heavy metal or other. The body temperature goes down, metabolism slows and the organism can handle the toxin better. By increasing metabolism we can negate the protective mechanism that is inate in our bodies and cause more damage to our health.

The proper method of dealing with a depressed metabolism is not to artificially boost it with either a pharmaceutical or natural product but to deal with the underlying cause, environmental toxicity. Get tested by doing a Whole Blood Elements test and an Environmental Pollutants Biomarker which will look at both the petrochemical exposure issue and the heavy metals. If you find issues with elevated toxins, then you and your health care practitioner can develop a detoxification protocol to improve the excretion of these detrimental chemicals.

Of course, not everyone has this issue of excessive toxicity, but I would venture a guess that at least 70% of you do. If in doubt, check it out. The health you save may be your own.

Pharmaceutical Companies are Ruining Our Health Care System

In a well thought out article, Robert Bazell, Chief science and health correspondent for NBC News, writes about the ridiculous and scandalous way drug companies are ripping us off. In this case he uses the example of the drug Nexium, that purple pill and how little of a difference there is between it and Prilosec a drug from the same company but costing 7 times more!

Remarkably, the FDA approved Nexium even though it was only proven to be 3% better than its predecessor which is virtually identical except for a minor difference which allowed it to be patentable. This was purely a money-making ploy and had nothing to do with helping patients. The cost to us?  Since seven million people use Nexium which costs $200 per month and Prilosec costs $30 that comes out to a waste of $1.19 billion a year. That is an out and out theft. Multiply this by 20 drugs and you can see the enormous amount of money being made with little benefit to any of us.

So how did they do it?  By spending up to $16 million a month on advertising. Don’t think advertising works?  In this case, there is clear evidence that pharmaceutical advertising drives physician’s prescription. How else can you explain the use of a far more expensive drug with limited benefits over a cheaper generic?  You can’t and it is an abomination. Congress needs to jump on this and stop pharmaceutical advertising to patients. It is a rip off of unprecedented magnitude. We need to reel in our health care costs and this is one way to do it. The other thing that needs fixing is the approval process in the FDA. Why approve this drug at all when no benefit to human health is seen?  Make them improve the drugs not just change something minor and rip people off again.

Better yet, look into nutritional and alternative means of controlling heartburn and you will save so much more than money. You will avoid all those side-effects from the drugs and needing treatment for them as well.

In another article written by the same author, he seems stunned that Lipitor’s maker Pfizer drags out Dr. Richard Jarvik who in Mr. Bazell’s words asks the question, “Would you buy a heart medication from someone whose own efforts to cure heart disease led to failure?”  Do people realize this man never practiced medicine and his claim to fame, the Jarvik Heart was actually based on work by the famous ventriloquist Paul Winchell. It was considered a barbaric medical device that caused pain and suffering to whomever it was tried on. This is who Pfizer hires to push its drug which by the way losses its patent protection in 2010. Wonder what crap they will roll out to replace it.

Antioxidants and Health – More Headline Nonsense

In the upcoming Archives of Internal Medicine a study was published that seemingly negates the benefits of antioxidant nutrients, especially when it comes to the prevention of cardiovascular disease.  It was a large scale study with over 8,000 women being looked at over a greater than 9 year period and the findings were likely very accurate, that antioxidant supplements do not prevent coronary heart disease.  Problem is, the study has a few fatal flaws that never make it to the headlines. All the headlines focus on is that antioxidants don’t help prevent heart

What the pharmaceutical company funded media fails to highlight is that they researchers did not look at the lifestyles of the individuals taking the supplements. If you have someone who has a very oxidative lifestyle filled with alcohol, poor diet, and no exercise there is no doubt that antioxidant supplements, especially in the low doses they used in the study, will have little effect on coronary heart disease. What the headlines should have said is that we found little benefit to supplements if you don’t give a damn about your health. You can’t use supplements to overcome a bad lifestyle.

The bottom line here is that the headline is deceiving. What it should have said is that supplements may are not helpful to people who don’t care about their health. There are numerous studies to show benefits of antioxidants in human health and this one does little to deny that fact, what it does suggest is that antioxidants alone are not the answer. Total focus on lifestyle issues is the answer. Sorry public, no pills to overcome bad decisions.

Urine Organic Acid Testing – A Gateway to Optimal Health

Urine organic acid testing is an easy way of finding out how to achieve optimal health and to help ascertain what nutrients your body needs. Being healthy is not simply being “free of disease”, it is feeling vibrant, full of energy and having optimal brain function. Today’s medical world is so focused on disease and treating symptoms, we forget about feeling good.

Drugs, which in some cases are life giving, are mainly focused on covering up symptoms caused by diseases. Optimal nutrition is where you go for real health and the prevention of disease. My past 23 years of research has been on the use of laboratory testing to biochemically individualize nutritional supplementation and take it out of the world of guesswork.

Urine organic acid testing is a great way to go for many people as the test can be done through the comfort of your home and the results with proper interpretation, can make a world of difference in how you and your family feels. Health Director is the home of the best interpretation of these and many other functional laboratory tests. Tomorrow, I will be posting some sample reports for you to look at and then you can decide if this type of testing is right for you.