Category Archives: Opinion

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.

Avandia – Isolated Problem or a System Gone Bad

Despite research showing that the drug Avandia causes an increased risk of heart disease in patients with diabetes, the FDA yesterday voted to allow the drug to remain on the market. So how is this protecting the public? Isn’t part of the job of the FDA to protect us from drugs that can harm us? Apparently not. BTW a scientist from the FDA supposedly was taken off the case when he or she found information that suggested that the drug was not safe. Read the article here.

Is this an FDA problem or an issue that goes much deeper. My opinion is the latter. It is a system that no longer holds the pharmaceutical companies accountable in a real world manner. The FDA is shorthanded, under-budgeted and faced with billion dollar lobbyists pressuring them to “fast-track” their next blockbuster drug. This is a huge problem and will likely not get fixed any time soon. People I’ve talked to with an inside knowledge of the FDA tell me that there is a growing frustration level at the agency because they feel like they are being lied to and deceived by some of the pharmaceutical companies when it comes to adverse event reports and followup efficacy research.

What is needed is independent research into drug on the market. My proposal is to create a government agency under the FDA which would give out grants to universities to study the effects of drugs on patients, kind of a Phase IV research program. The research would be funded by the pharmaceutical industry in a pooled manner. You sell 1 billion dollars worth of a drug, you put in 3% into the pool. All the companies are mandated to put the money in depending on the sales figures for their drugs in the U.S. In the case of Avandia, since they sell 3 billion dollars a year of the drug, Glaxo would be forced to fork over 90 million to the project.

From this, we could have a top notch monitoring system to oversee the safety of the drugs being marketed to physicians. The other overhaul would be to severely curtail advertising of drugs to the consumer. The crap from the industry that they are just educating the public is just that, crap. The education, and I mean education not bribery, should be focused strictly on the physicians, with strict guidelines. No trips to the Bahamas to hear a sales pitch, just local lectures and information passed on in a professional manner. One other issue, no more marketing to physicians about off label uses of drugs. The sales rep should be banned from touting a drug for treatment of a disease that has not been approved by the FDA. This is dangerous and unscientific and needs to be prosecuted if found.

This issue is not going away anytime soon as long as the pharmaceutical industry is not run just for profit. Time for a change.

Unnecessary Operations – Alternatives to the Alternatives

In an article on CNN.com, Carl Pesmen from Health Magazine details 5 common surgical procedures that are overused in America. Some of the interesting information he presented includes the surprising fact that over 12,000 Americans die each year from unnecessary operations. Here are the 5 surgeries, Mr. Pesmen’s alternatives and mine.

  1. Hysterectomies – According to the article, of the 617,000, between 468,000 and 524,000 are unnecessary. It is necessary for ovarian cancer but it is mainly used to remove fibroids and stop persistent vaginal bleeding. According to the article, there are a number of alternative. Dr. Tori Hudson, ND has a nice article here, that has can help women before they need this unneeded surgery.
  2. Episiotomy – Cutting the vaginal opening before childbirth is considered by some to be a way of making for a more comfortable birth but with post surgery symptoms like pain, irritation, muscle tears, and incontinence doing the alternative, which is Kegels, I think women would be far better off avoiding this. The unfortunate part is that 73 percent of the women who had the surgery, didn’t have a choice. This means, before going into the hospital, tell your doctor not to do it unless absolutely necessary. Emphasize absolutely as they are typically men and they may not listen.
  3. Angioplasty – One million two hundred thousand operations using angioplasty are done annually and they have not been proven to help with non-emergency patients any better than standard drug treatment. It does make for a nice home and car for the surgeons, but if you want to avoid the knife, this article suggests making sure you stay on the drugs. Better yet, go to Dr. Jeffrey Dach’s website and learn how to naturally avoid heart disease. Take some responsibility and you’ll stay healthier, longer.
  4. Heartburn surgery – Amazingly enough, this surgery often times doesn’t even work. Lifestyle changes and acid reducing drugs are their alternatives. I agree with the first but vehemently oppose the second.  Natural remedies include, Alka Seltzer Gold (yeah it is pretty natural), proteolytic enzymes, probiotics and even hydrochloric acid.
  5. Back surgery – Many people who have the surgery only report a short term relief. Unless there is real damage done to the spine, exercise, weight loss and lifestyle changes are far better long-term solutions. Here I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Pesmen.

Bottom line on alternatives for all of these surgeries is changing your lifestyle. Get off your butt and get working. You’ll be happy you did.

Terrorist Dry Runs? Another Administration Attention Getter.

This is simply getting ridiculous. Every few weeks the Bush Administration calls out another scare to take our minds off of serious issues. Remember the bottles of liquid gang who were going to blow up planes?  Not so. Unfortunately we can’t take water on planes anymore even though the threat wasn’t real. Now the latest “dry runs” being done by potential terrorists may not be real either. In San Diego, they claim that there were no dry runs being done in their airport despite media claims otherwise. Click here for the story.

My mother told me the story of Peter Wolf and I feel that our government is crying wolf too often. Is there a terrorist threat?  Of course. Is there concern amongst travellers?  Yes again. Do we need to have “gut feelings” made public by the head of Homeland Security?  Why?  Our democracy is at a crossroads. Do we continue to become more and more paranoid and act like Chicken Little’s and start banning everything from being carried on airplanes for safety purposes?

I am saddened by the way this administration is handling our country and this is another example of the distance they have with reality. As a proud American, I hope we as a people have the guts to stand up and say enough is enough. We want the respect the rest of the world once had for us back.

Do Selenium Supplements Cause and Increase in the Risk of Developing Diabetes?

New research led by Dr. Saverio Stranges of Warwick Medical School in Britain, showed that people who took 200 mcgs of selenium daily, had a 50% increased risk for developing type-II diabetes over a 7 year period than those taking placebo. Published in the Journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the Dr. Stranges group said 58 of 600 people taking selenium and 39 of 602 taking placebos developed type-II diabetes over the 7.7 years. The study was well constructed although quite small in my opinion.

Here are my thoughts about the study. First off, if you take another 1202 people and tried it again, it may show up differently. Secondly, they measured the levels of blood selenium for their patients and the higher the level, the higher the risk of developing diabetes. Well, duh! My work over the years has clearly shown that excessive amounts of nutrients, especially trace minerals have a double-edged sword to them. If deficient, they need to be repleaded. If in excess, they need to be eliminated. It has to do with this quirky idea called biochemical individuality. If they were monitoring peoples selenium levels as has been indicated, did they stop the people from taking the selenium supplement?  If not, then a serious breech of ethics was committed. Excessive selenium is known to be toxic. This is a major problem and should cause serious review of the researchers protocols.

There are other problems with the study. They studied people with skin cancer. Could it be that having skin cancer and taking selenium together may increase the risk of developing the disease but not with healthy people? No healthy cohorts is a bad error in their study design.

Now get this, the researchers relied on participants’ reports that they developed diabetes and did not confirm those reports with measures of blood sugar. Huh?  You didn’t confirm the reports? Terrible research error again.

Next, did they measure other nutrient co-factors like vitamin C, E, amino acids, and dietary intake of foods? Of course not. They blindly rely on one-to-one analysis which is hideously poor. They also only looked at elderly white people yet they make the sweeping statement that selenium supplementation causes people to have an increased risk of developing diabetes.

Another example of poor research and equally poor reporting.

Antidepressant Use in America. A Depressing Situation.

Don’t like the way your husband is handling the family finances?  Take some antidepressants! Angry with the school about your child’s report card? Take some antidepressants.  According to a government funded study, more Americans take antidepressants than any other drug family. Over 118 million prescriptions were written last year which is up a staggering 48% over the past decade. Some of this increase is the fact that more physicians are becoming adept at diagnosing the disease but I feel that the majority of it is due to marketing done by the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Richard Dworkin even states, “Doctors are now medicating unhappiness. Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives.”

While depression is a serious disorder, there are way too many cases where physicians are prescribing drugs for issues that have nothing to do with the disease. These medications have serious side effects and should be used only when a clinical diagnosis of depression is clear. Still, an even better solution would be to try using amino acid therapy first. The book The Healing Nutrients Within recalls many stories of patients with depression improving using amino acid therapy.

It’s so much about profits, so little about really helping patients. Amino acids can help people far more than antidepressants can. They just won’t make the pharmaceutical industry any money. America, the land where we medicate unhappiness.

Is The Ban On Smoking Indoors Really Helping Non-Smokers? Should We Ban Outdoor Smoking As Well?

In a news feature article in the latest issue (June 28, 2007) of Nature, Kris Novak writes how effective the ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces has been worldwide. It seems that people smoke less in states and countries where smoking has been banned. In California, 23% of the citizens were smokers in 1988 and in 2006 the number dropped to 13%. That should be good news to the health care system due to smokings incredible cost to human health.

The other issue has to do with second-hand smoke and has a difference been seen here. The big reason indoor smoking was banned was the hubabaloo over the effect of second-hand smoke on health. From all the media hype you would think that it’s a slam dunk. Second-hand smoke kills, right?  Well the answer is yes and no.

When it comes to reducing lung cancer, the answer is a resounding yes. Since smokers have a 25 times greater risk of developing lung cancer and non-smokers who are around smokers inhale 1% of the amount of smoke you would expect a decrease in the incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers to be about 24% lower and that fits. As for cardiovascular disease drops, the data is not all that convincing. We really don’t have the kind of evidence that we do with lung cancer.

Still, banning indoor smoking is a good thing in my estimation. Here in Nevada, we have put a small venue ban on smoking in bars which has created an economic hit on them which according to the article is a short-term problem. But should we go further and ban outdoor smoking?  If you try to use the argument that this will protect non-smokers then you are barking up the wrong tree because that just doesn’t make sense. The amount of exposure you would get from outdoor smokers is extremely minimal. But if you do it with the thought that more people would quit smoking because it would be so difficult to find a place to smoke, then yes, you have a backer here.

Smoking kills, tobacco companies are purveyors of death and I would be much happier if there was no more smoking by anyone.