Subjects lost a similar amount of weight in three months on low-calorie, high-calcium diet whether the calcium was from dairy or non-dairy—18.7 lbs vs 15.8 lbs according to a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

This represented 10.2 percent of the total fat that they ate.

“During a moderate energy restriction induced weight loss, a high-[calcium] diet causes an increase in fecal fat excretion independent of [calcium] source [that is, calcium from dairy or non-dairy]”, the authors concluded.

People who were unable to digest lactose (milk sugar) as determined by a breath test lost 5.7 lbs less during a three month study than subjects who were able to digest lactose—20.2 lbs vs 14.5 lbs— according to a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Subjects were prescribed a reduced-calorie diet containing 30 percent fewer calories than their needs.

“Approximately 70% of the world’s population loses the ability to digest large amounts of lactose after weaning,” the authors noted.

The inability to digest lactose had no effect on urinary calcium excretion or fecal fat loss associated with calcium.

People on a reduced-calorie diet containing 500 mg of calcium per day (low-calcium) for three months excreted an average of 3.8 grams of fat per day—34 calories of fat—according to a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

This represented 6.8 percent of the total fat that they ate. 

People on a reduced-calorie diet containing 1500 mg of calcium per day (high-calcium) for three months excreted an average of 5.8 grams of fat per day—52 calories of fat—according to a study by researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

This represented 10.2 percent of the total fat that they ate.

“During a moderate energy restriction induced weight loss, a high-[calcium] diet causes an increase in fecal fat excretion,” the authors of the study concluded. 

Finally, a sign that some ‘Opinion leaders’ may be finding themselves a trifle uncomfortable with the stench of corruption. Nose plugs only work for so long. Here is a clip from an article found in a newsletter sent out to pharmaceutical executives.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“[ The ] FDA is there to serve… [ the drug ] industry. It is NOT there to serve the public,” said Dr. David Graham, a senior official in the FDA’s Office Of Drug Safety, in an interview on the TV Program NOW on PBS, Oct 21, 2005.

It has long bothered me that there is a vast library of medical research out there that has become almost completely unreliable. Some time ago, I wrote that I had almost completely lost faith in the use of references, as you could always find as many references as you wanted to support almost any argument you cared to make.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

References are very much a double edged sword, or perhaps a bazooka. In the wrong hands they can do far more harm than good. And in the, essentially, unchecked system that we now have, one careless reference can end up taking on a life of its own. It gets stuck in the medical information ‘machine’ replicating itself like some malevolent computer virus, gradually infecting all data and turning it into useless mush.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

For those of us who enjoy the use of weasel words and non-scientific rubbish dressed up as fact, this is indeed a grand territory to explore…. 

I have written about hypertension a couple of times. So I thought that I should throw my hat into the ring about the controversy surrounding the ALLHAT trial. A trial which wins my official tortuous acronym award? ALLHAT stands for the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering treatment to prevent Heart Attack Trial.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

I write this before I have read all the details on the new Heart Lung and Blood Institute guidelines on raised blood pressure [as of 2003]. But there has been enough information flying around to know what they are saying. Frankly, I knew what these guidelines were going to say before the committee met for the first time. Before, in fact, the members of the committee even knew they were going to be on the committee.

Now we are all to be officially ill.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Let’s suppose that one day you went to the doctor and she decided to take your temperature, just to see what it was. To your surprise it was two degrees higher than normal. As we all know, a high temperature is associated with a higher than normal level of mortality, so the doctor decided to use a drug to get your temperature down, along with advice to wear less clothes and take cold baths.

Time passes and you have been on this drug for five years. The baths and chilly walks are getting to be a bit of a pain. On the bright side, at least the temperature is back to normal.

I think you would agree that such a scenario is, quite frankly, nuts.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

That’s because it’s merely a blood sugar measurement. A sign. An effect. Not a disease, or a cause. We have become mesmerized by blood sugar levels — we fight to get them down — we are happy when the level is lowered. Doctors claim when the blood sugar level falls below an arbitrary figure that the Type II Diabetes has been treated, even cured. But what exactly have we cured? 

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Sometimes you read something of such blinding obviousness (if that is actually a word), that you wonder why anyone even bothered writing it at all. You know the sort of thing - ‘constant criticism of children does not lead to a sense of self-worth.’ ‘A centralized command economy does not create wealth for citizens.’

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“Recent and soon to be published research reveals that soldiers who fought in theatres as diverse as Vietnam and Lebanon are not only more likely to die from an accident on their return, but are also twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer later in life.”

— New Scientist, Aug. 27, 2005

For some time now, I have been banging on about the fact that “stress” causes diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. Of course, my definition of stress, or a stressor, is any factor that can lead to a long-lasting dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis). This definition may seem — and probably is — a bit pedantic. But it does have the advantage of being reasonably accurate. That is more than can be said for the word “stress,” which can mean all things to all men.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today [ Oct 2005 ] decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2005 jointly to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of ‘the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease’.”

It was good to see these two winning the Nobel Prize, with the key piece of following text appended.

“This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas.”

“Who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas….” A few short words. As if the Second World War could be encapsulated thus, “In the Second World War, the Allies defeated Germany, Japan and a few other countries after a series of successful engagements.”

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

‘Pharmaceutical companies are being led by “dinosaurs who are committing financial suicide” by opposing US residents’ reimportation of lower-cost drugs from abroad, Peter Rost, a vice president of marketing at… Pfizer, said in a speech at the Minnesota Senior Federation Monday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

For some time now, I have been following the work of a UK parliamentary committee which has been looking into the activities of the pharmaceutical companies, and their influence over the healthcare system. Whilst this committee was sitting you could even watch the proceedings on television, although I wouldn’t recommend it - other than as a cure for insomnia.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“Many a man stumbles across the truth, then picks himself up and hurries on as though nothing had happened.”

-- Winston Churchill

There are those of us, poor misguided fools, who believe that the main point of taking drugs is to prevent an early death. We are clearly wrong. The important thing is that you must not die of heart disease. For dying of heart disease is clearly much worse than dying of something else.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

And what song do we expect the pharmaceutical company wishes to hear sung by international medical opinion leaders? In general it goes like this ‘Use more of the new expensive drugs. For they will make you well.’ To the tune of Amazing Grace.

How much money does it take to get an international opinion leader to sing for their supper? That depends. In the case of Dr Bryan Brewer, a leader at the National Institutes of Health, it took $57,000/year.

‘Brewer, as a leader at the NIH was part of a team that gave the nation new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more people to take the daily pill. He also has written favourably of a specific brand of cholesterol medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.

What doctors were not told for years is this. While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor (AstraZeneca)’

-- Los Angeles Times, Jan 11, 2005

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

The Zocor Debacle - I Told You So! But The Great Ship “Cholesterol-Lowering” Has Ripped Its Guts Out On The Harsh Rocks Of Evidence, But Still It Does Not Sink.

Oh, the joy. Just how annoying can I be now? After the PROVE-IT and REVERSE trials comes the A to Z trial, looking at aggressive high-dose Simvastatin treatment vs. low-dose. And I have just been proved right.

‘Munich, Germany - The Z phase of the Aggrastat to Zocor (A to Z) study has shown disappointing results...Treatment with high-dose simvastatin (Zocor®, Merck) failed to show a significant reduction in the primary composite end point of cardiovascular death, MI, readmission for ACS , or stroke. In addition, the high-dose statin regimen was associated with a higher rate of myopathy and rhabdomyolysis.’

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Some of you may observe the actions of the pharmaceutical industry and wonder why, from a PR perspective, it seems intent on taking dead aim somewhere between the second and third metacarpals (bones in the feet, in case you were wondering), then determinedly pulling the trigger. Not once, but time and time again. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie The Terminator, “I use an Uzi nine millimetre.”

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“No sensible personcan avoid the conclusion that the [ National Cholesterol Education Program ] is an expensive fraud perpetrated by [greedy] business enterprises and dishonest scientists,” wrote George Mann, ScD, MD in the book “Coronary Heart Disease : The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, An evaluation by scientists”.

“Pity the poor physicians trapped by the threat either of ‘not knowing’ or of litigation if they do not follow the ‘accepted clinical practice.’”

“[T]he Diet / Heart enterprise [ that is, drug companies selling cholesterol-lowering drugs and food companies selling ‘heart- wise’ foods ] is not science at all, but a business promotion based on dishonesty and avarice [ the extreme greed for riches ],” wrote George Mann, ScD, MD in the book “Coronary Heart Disease : The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, An evaluation by scientists”.

“[M]any… scientists disagree with the so-called Diet / Heart hypothesis, and yet when asked to participate in this meeting many declined because they felt that participation would jeopardize their grants and perks or because they believe their academic positions would be threatened,” wrote George Mann, ScD, MD in the book “Coronary Heart Disease : The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, An evaluation by scientists”.

“Now why does this dirty Diet / Heart business continue? It is because of pride, prejudice, and profit.”

“The scientists who continue to support the Diet / Heart hypothesis are loath to abandon their long-held hypothesis because it is their pet, their personal security blanket.”

“The American Heart Association is far out on a sagging lamb. When the limb goes down, the American Heart Association is doomed.”

“But the main force for continuation of the Diet / Heart hypothesis comes from the food and drug industries.”

“Physicians are co-opted by the media and the ‘detail men’ [ drug company salesmen ], to prescribe worthless diets and dangerous drugs.”

“[ The ] dietary treatment of coronary heart disease NOT effective,” wrote George Mann, ScD, MD in the book “Coronary Heart Disease : The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, An evaluation by scientists”.