My GP is all right. He plays a bit of golf. And sometimes he’s at the medical practice when I make an appointment. When I damaged a knee ligament trying to improve my golf swing he went to great lengths showing me how I should drive properly swinging from the waist. He actually stood up and showed me. And he also condoned last year’s Big Ride cycle participation on behalf of Palestine despite this ligament injury because of the direction in which the knee rotates when cycling. He was proved right on that too. All in all he may even have contributed to reducing my handicap.
To cut a long story short I should be on statins because of my high (5.8 total cholesterol level). I gave up on these (and all together about five items of medication) well over 12 months ago and God do I feel better for it.
Once a year I have to have a check up with the nurse who takes a drop of blood which is then sent off to the lab, weighs me and checks my blood pressure. The results are just back in and are virtually the same as last year. The cholesterol figure is higher than perceived medical wisdom suggests it should be. Therefore in just over a week I shall be having a telephone conversation, and my GP, because that is his job, will tell me again what best medical practice is on coronary heart disease. I again will explain how much better I feel without statins, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors and what have you.
But this year I have the medical profession on my side in the personage of Dr Malcolm Kendrick, a Scot who believes that lowering cholesterol in the treatment of heart disease is nonsense, and, though he does not quite put it like that, Big Pharma is behind the scam because there is a lot of money in prescribing these unnecessary medications. I think I would get on well with Dr Kendrick.
As to the generally accepted causal and preventative measures regarding heart disease Dr Kendrick agrees that smoking is causal and exercise is preventative. In a nutshell these are just about the only agreements with mainstream medical opinion regarding heart disease.
““In short, I believe that almost everything we are told is good for you, is bad for you, and vice-versa. With the exception of smoking (bad) and exercise (good).””
It suits me. I have not smoked for more than forty years. I play golf at least three times a week and I am back cycling on a regular basis (about 100 miles this week).
I am going to die of course. That is a fact whether I rely on medication or not. What is also true is I am enjoying the life I still have left. I did not enjoy it so much when every day I was popping in pills that disagreed with me. Just as important for me my extended life will have nothing to do with making Big Pharma even richer. My death may have nothing to do with heart disease though I guess my heart (which is very strong) will stop beating, whatever the cause.
The important thing to note here is backed up by a biblical quotation: the love of money is the root of all evil. Big Pharma (the huge pharmaceutical companies that thrive on consensus obedience to perceived medical knowledge) love money. They also attempt to destroy anybody who makes an impact on their sales. Take for example Dr Andrew Wakefield.
Dr Wakefield’s work in discovering a connection between vaccines and autism is to me sound. You may not agree with it. The medical profession may not agree with it in general, but it is the work of one of their own, and should be given due credit. In my opinion it is excellent research. Incidentally I don’t have the ‘flu jab either. Or the shingles jab. I got shingles again last year for the first time in 60 years. If everybody was like me they would collectively save the NHS billions that could be used for making nursing and the staffing of casualty departments attractive professions. Instead, as things stand, that money goes into financing research by Big Pharma aimed at promoting its own latest big earners in a never-ending cycle of greed.
Hat-tip to Drs Kendrick and Wakefield, and all the others who stand up against those who pay the medical pipers: that is the big pharmaceutical companies.
All the Goss 