Worried Sick: How Vulnerable Are You Really to Heart Attack, Stroke or Breast Cancer?

in her breast.

She died shortly afterward from a heart attack.

She had been removed from the nursing home where she had lived happily for many years. I suppose that the operators of the home might have wanted to avoid being sued.

Many cruel things are done in the name of medicine.

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They both fight cancer and the hidden cause of many heart problems: Inflammation! Most prescription drugs do not attack the problem in this fashion.

http://www.myheartbook.com

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Thanks Maggie Mahar- for this VERY IMPORTANT PIECE

I've know Nortin Hadler for decades.He is telling us what we need to hear.

He does impeccable and thorough research homework and writes scientifically on a values and common sense platform.

Crisis circumstances we are now in will lead to many more taking a carefull look at his writings.

I believe Hadler's time may have arrived.

Recently following a good review in JAMA of his latest book-"Worried Sick" I have declared myself a "Hadlerian"

I hope other providers, health care planners, health economists and patients join me in that declaration.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

PS “Give me a doctor-short and stout- who, with warm hands, rosy cheeks and a twinkle in his eye – tells me, with kindness, it is my time to die”

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They would have everyone wearing an adult diaper, penises fully erect from Viagra, gobbling stool softener, drinking Ensure liquid nutrition, taking Prozac, using a handle to get out of the shower, the Clapper to turn on the lights and TV, wearing extra-wide, elastic pants to cover for the fact your belly is getting bigger, pills for sleeping, anxiety, alertness, digestion, and wind.

It is why most are really frauds, despite all the degrees they have on the wall.

What you should do is this: eat fresh foods, have just three meals a day, exercise and walk every day, lift weights, deal with your problems, develop friends, don't be too greedy, be nice, party whenever you can, get laid whenever you can, don't eat too much meat and stay away from junk food.

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What is the point of TV ads by Big Pharma aimed at the public? I believe it is to instill fear. We should be more afraid of antibiotics and artificial fertilizers in food, genetically altered food, and food additives, especially corn syrup and sodium.
No sooner does a new prescription drug "catch on" than it is found to do more harm than good and is taken off the market, with the resultant lawsuits (e.g., Vioxx). Subliminal message: "If you take (insert name of drug), you can live happily; otherwise..." Not-so-subliminal message: "Ask your doctor if (whatever drug) is right for you. Side effects may include (sometimes the very condition you are being treated for)". And mammography can be harmful as well. The FDA is a recycling center for people who work in the food and drug industries.

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It's called PISD: Post Insurance Stress Disorder, and I think we all know how it's pronounced. It causes sleepless nights and a whole host of associated negative health consequences (increased levels of stress hormones, auto immune disorders, decreased resistance to communicable diseases, premature aging, stress on the heart, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain, etc.).

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In the last two weeks, I have learned that a close friend, 57, has non-Hodgkins lymphoma and another friend, 65, has had surgery for breast cancer. Two more friends have aggressive cancers, oral and esophageal, respectively, and one expects to die in months.He is 60.

Last year another woman I know, 43, died of breast cancer and left an 11 year-old daughter, and yet another friend, 45, endured radical treatment because she had failed to get regular exams and had Stage 4 breast cancer. A third friend, 64, discovered a huge malignant tumor while watching TV. Still another friend cannot work because of recurring breast cancer.

I don't know what age the writer is, but it often feels to me as cancer is much more menacing than she'd like to see it. Two years ago, I had a lumpectomy for a tiny breast tumor and I take tamoxofin daily. Perhaps she would say that I'm a victim of Big Medicine and Big Pharma, but, frankly, I'm very grateful for the treatment.

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This is a VERY important article. I am sorry for those who really are sick. Prayers and blessings. But we still can't ignore the fact that the hype itself, which is a result of pharma marketing has dangerous consequences:
1) Worrying itself can make one sick. The placebo effect in reverse.
2) It is causing people to take drugs that may do more harm than good. Such as cholesterol drugs.
3) It keeps the population totally self absorbed with their numbers. Such a distracted population has less time for activism. (Not to mention is boring. Ever have a conversation with someone who will trot out their vitals at every meeting!)
4) It encourages discrimination against certain groups. The public really doesn't know what a risk factor means. Using obesity as an example, a risk factor means that if you take a group of fat people vs thin people, more of the former will have certain diseases. But by no means ALL will get those diseases. Many will live long lives with no premature death. When I took a longevity predictor developed by some Harvard doc, my life expectancy at "ideal weight" was 83, currently at 220lb 81!!!! That is hardly something to panic over! But society uses ignorance of how these stats are compiled to discriminated and force people into dangerous weight loss programs that have side effects themselves. States like Alabama plan are charging workers more if their numbers (BMI, BP, cholesterol ect) don't fall in line with Pharma's. Ridiculous!
5)Finally it diminishes enjoyment of life and turns us into a nation of whining hypocnondriacs fearful of their own shadows. All any one of us has is the here and now! To think anything else is pure denial. How would our lives be different if we finally realized that?

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In my opinion, under-arm deodorants are one of the causes of breast cancer, and I notice those ads no longer appear on TV. Yet, I know of people who are so susceptible to TV advertising they buy various patent medicines and slowly destroy their kidneys and die. Also, when I stopped drinking coffee I stopped getting colds. So, now that the economic system is in a recession, perhaps more people will wake up and try a healthier and more cooperative lifestyle. For example, frozen vegetables are more nourishing than canned, and fresh-grown more nourishing yet. Smart people who shop at the Farmer's Market and mute TV ads to avoid junk food and patent medicines, generally manage to live longer and healthier lives.

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Wake up, people! This is the CONTROLLED society. Big Pharma/Big Medicine are run just like the worst "snake-oil" peddlers of the 18th and 19th century. They don't cure, they "prescribe"-yes, the object is to scare us all into compliance. And just remember this: We now have Federal Govenment Mandated digital t.v., which wouldn't be scary except that it allows for seamless imbedding of "secondary" (read subliminal) images. "1984" is here!!!

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That's where it ends. It starts with Big Food. You are what you eat. Dead food -- dead body. Most people in the socalled first world fill their bodies with dead stuff. What do you expect your body to do with it? It's true that our bodies have the ability to manufacture the enzymes required to digest the stuff that comes in deplete of them, but there is a limit and at the rate we eat dead food, our own enzymes run out early in life. From then on we have to eat more and more to get a minimum of nutrients. Inflammation sets in all over the body and shows itself as symptoms, which the medical industry gives cute names. It's all just inflammation. Get rid of the inflammation and you get rid of symptoms and "diseases". Eat nutrient dense fresh living food: fruits, large vegetable salads, make green smoothies, eat lightly steamed vegetables, eat meat or eggs only once you pretty much filled up on the living foods, and make it just a little and not very often. You don't have to call yourself a vegetarian. We must remember that we are part of the animal kingdom. As a whole. animals (the ones lucky enough not to have been domesticated by humans) live healthier lives than humans. They eat what nature provides for them and rely on their instinct. If you want to stay well, think very hard about what you would eat, if you didn't have grocery stores. Stick to eating that, as little prcessed as possible. I know that most people think that's too simplistic. That's what they want you to think.

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Insufficient potassium and vitamin B-1 (thiamin) can not damage the heart significantly when both are deficient. This has very important implications when supplementing each during heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Most of the heart disease in western societies is probably either caused by or is greatly enhanced by a potassium deficiency. Potassium has been used in heart disease therapy since 1930. Potassium enriched table salt almost halved the mortality from cardiovascular disease of retired men studied in China over a 31 month period. Permanent damage can be inflicted on the heart and kidneys of animals by potassium restriction.
However it is possible for a dangerous imbalance with respect to thiamine (vitamin B-1) can arise from potassium supplements if animal experiments are an indication. If potassium supplements are given during the wet heart disease of beri beri (thiamine deficiency), the heart disease is made much worse. Wet heart disease of beri-beri is impossible if potassium is also deficient. Instead a muscular atrophy similar to that from vitamin E deficiency appears. Hove and Herndon suspect that muscular dystrophy is a potassium deficiency since body potassium is low during muscular dystrophy. During a vitamin B-1 deficiency the heart loses potassium. This may be why heart damage in beriberi resembles that in a potassium deficiency. One symptom of a vitamin B-1 deficiency is lactic acid acidosis. Why the heart should be protected by a deficiency of both potassium and vitamin B-1 is strange, and I know no explanation for it.
It could be the sulfur dioxide in most wines might be part of the reason why wine statistically protects people from the more prevalent potassium deficient heart disease because sulfites in most wines destroy vitamin B-1 in the intestines. Wine also has a poison in it that interferes with potassium excretion, and this would intensify the problem with vitamin B-1 destruction for those who start to take potassium supplements.
It is obvious that if potassium supplements are given (see http://charles_w.tripod.com/arthritis11.html ), it is very important that the vitamin B-1 intake must be adequate at the same time. Potassium supplements are also called sodium free table salt, sodium free baking powder (potassium bicarbonate or tartrate), oral rehydration therapy (ORT) for diarrhea, glucose-insulin-kalium (GIK), and potassium softened water. Ammonium chloride is equivalent to a potassium supplement since ammonium interferes with excretion of potassium in the kidneys. Glucosamine is a biological reaction product of fructose-6-phosphate sugar and glutamic amino acid, sold as the sulfate. Glutamic acid breaks down forming ammonium ion in the body, so glucosamine acts to increase body potassium by ammonium interference with excretion. Some commercial glucosamine products are also a potassium supplement, since they contain large amounts of potassium chloride. Potassium was considered inert, or largely so in the past. In addition to potassium, ammonium and choline molecules were also used in salt substitutes. These molecules may not be useless. Choline is a biologically active material similar to vitamins but made by the body. Its long-term effects as a supplement are unknown to me. However choline supplements increase memory ability in baby rats when administered either before or after being born, probably from an increase in brain cell size. Ammonium, at least, may interfere with potassium excretion if it is absorbed in the intestines and has been used to protect the kidneys. So far as I know the substitutes above are reasonably harmless for healthy people who have normal blood pressure. Ammonium is even synthesized by the kidneys during a potassium deficiency from glutamine, and this is probably a strategy of the body, the purpose of which is to prevent potassium loss.

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the traditional medical establishment seems incapable of treating them. I have watched several friends and relatives go through the whole "cut, burn and poison" rigamarole of surgery, radiation and chemo, always dying after several totally miserable years. Horrible!

If I had cancer, I would think long and hard before bringing it to the attention of the medical establishment, and probably try alternative treatments first.

There are are only a few cancers, such as thyroid cancer, that modern medicine treats with great success. The most common cancers such as lung, breast and pancreatic are poorly responsive to traditional treatment.

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CANNABIS may not be the cure-all but it goes a hell of a long way and Big Pharma knows it.

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i lost my fiance 18 months ago from a silent heart attack - he died in his sleep (he was 54); a friend from high school also lost her husband similarly 5 years ago (he was 42); and my fiance's second cousin died of a heart attack in the middle of a conversation (he was 40)...

sometimes i blame myself for my fiance's death because the night he died i rationalized that statistically it was absurd for me to think he was really that sick when he went to bed (i won't get into all the details here, suffice it to say he kept insisting he was fine and just needed some sleep)...i guess what i am saying is that while it may be a 1:1,000,000 chance of something "bad" happening, someone is that ONE...if i had followed through on my intuition rather than rationalization he *might* still be here...oh, and the main reason he refused to go to the er that night - he did not have any insurance and could only think of the $$$.

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I've been reading these studies lately and been getting more and more concerned. I was diagnosed with a 7 CM tumor at age 38. That's right age 38 with no family history. I am sorry that screening may diagnose people with cancer that isn't going to kill them but who makes the decision as to screening? I was recently at a breast cancer conference and there were dozen's of women there who were diagnosed before age 40. I have a friend who is 36 years old on her third metastatic recurrence. So before we start throwing out screening because we're afraid someone may get treatment they don't need let's make damn sure that people can get the treatment they do need.

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You are entirely right--there are women in their 30s who are diagnosed with cancer that will kill them if it isn't treated (and may even kill them if it is treated because some cancers move very quickly, even if detected early.)

But after standing back and looking at the larger numbers, the Academy of Physicians has come to realize that the number of young women who are harmed by biopsies and lumpectomies plus radiation --and even mastectomies-- that they didn't need greatly exceeds the number of young women saved by a mammogram.

Obviously, if you are the 1 women out of 10,000 who dies of breast cancer between the age of 35 and 45, your family is going to feel that everyone your age should have a mammogram. But if you are one of the many women who is harmed by ovetreatment she didn't need (because of a false positive) you would feel differently--if you knew. Very often, women don't realize that the treatment was unnecessary.

Unfotunately, at this point we don't have a way to sort out the women who need treatment from those who don't. Mammograms are a very crude tool. Many false positives, wide range of ability among doctors reading the mammograms much that we don't know about breast cancer. (Some breast cancers move quickly; others don't. We realize that "breast cancer" is probably more than one disease, but we would need to know much more to differentiate.

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You sound like a very wise man. And you were
lucky to meet a doctor willing to tel lyou that, in your case, a knee replacement probably didn't make sense.

Many people are helped by knee replacments.
But it's not for everyone.

And sometimes, physical therapy can really help people with knee or hip problems.

Even if it can't solve the problem, physical therapy helps prepare you for the implant so that your recovery is much easier. And it's always worth trying the less invasive, less aggressive procedure first.

You might enjoy the dialogue on www.healthbeatblog.org. Your contributions would be appreciated.

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"Americans are bombarded with messages that death and danger are just around the corner. Reality is usually much different."

The whole smoking ban debate is an absolutely perfect example of this. Even if you accept the EPA figures on the "dangers" of a lifetime of smoke exposure, you're talking about a 19% increase in risk applied to a base risk of .4% after 40 years in poorly ventilated conditions.

That means that 40 years of daily exposure your absolute risk of getting lung cancer goes up by a bit less than one chance in a thousand. And yet people get frantic if they smell a wisp of smoke from a table ten feet away or occasionally catch a touch of an odor from someone next door or passing by a window. In terms of absolute statistical reality, it's like being afraid to run outside to get the morning paper because the sunlight might give you skin cancer (remember: sunscreen only provides partial protection, and there is "no safe level" of sun exposure in terms of carcinogenisis.

While I'm admittedly somewhat focused on the smoking issue in reading this article, you have to admit that a lot of this extreme health-scare hype and worry got started around the "no safe level of tobacco smoke" issue.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

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I found this a fascinating article and also the comments. My father was a NASA toxicologist and earlier a cancer researcher in academia and a half century ago he was often nearly apoplectic about how corporate finance was distorting science and medicine and he was not alone.

Today there is literally an "epidemic" of television ads promoting your hypochondria. Visit a doctor, demand the drug you saw on TV.

Could it be that your "depression" is actually a REALISTIC reaction to your surroundings? You betcha! Will taking an anti-depressive change your surroundings? Probably not. Is the Nature of "depression" ultimately politicized? You betcha. Billions are made marketing "depression." And it is just the tip of the acronym iceberg.

The question of exogenous versus endogenous origins of "depression" and other "mental illness" such as "bipolar disorder" goes to SEMANTICS and the neurotic use of language to literally reinforce the idea that we are SICK. It is more often than not the case that our semantic infrastructure reinforces the sickness, and this is the importance of the Placebo in medical studies.

Cancer is of a different order of illness. I consider myself an Empiricist, but I suspect that the human brain has become as big as it is and is so little used BECAUSE of language which goes to deeper levels than we can become conscious of which is why we have poetry and song. Most of the time, the cause of cancer is exogenous, while sometimes if there is a cure it can come from within. Aspirin and LOTS of vitamin C, a la Linus Pauling.

Our society and "culture" are poisoning us. Their cure is far worse than the "disease." Which is one reason why we feel SICK!

Happy Thanksgiving...

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I had a baseline mammogram at the age of 35 and a tumor was discovered in my left breast. Subsequent tests and a biopsy revealed that I had invasive ductal carcinoma...aka breast cancer that had traveled outside of the duct. At the time I was physically fit, had quit smoking, and was doing my best to live healthy. The treatment did cause weight gain which I still deal with five years later.

More recently my 69 year old father had to undergo triple bypass and, being a diabetic, he suffered a heart attack prior to surgery and didn't feel the symptoms. In his case it took a screening test to diagnose his heart troubles. His father was one of the working men who dropped dead from a heart attack.

I am now 41 and if I hadn't gotten the early screening then chances are I would not have been diagnosed until I reached a more advanced stage of the disease. There is even a grass roots effort amongst young women who are striving to educate people about the disease.

http://www.youngsurvival.org/

I don't have a strong history of breast cancer in my family and do not fit the profile of someone who is high risk.

While I certainly can understand the merits of what is being argued here I really have mixed feelings regarding the idea of delaying screenings for conditions like breast cancer. There are new technologies being developed to provide early diagnosis without engaging in invasive procedures like a biopsy.

I do acknowledge that my own experiences have left me with a particular bias on this subject matter. Perhaps what we can do is strive for a focus on preventive medicine based on a philosophy of wellness instead of the fear of injury or death.

I also believe we need to look at how the environment, industries, and the use of pesticides contribute to illness and disease. While lifestyle factors may be present it also encourages an unfortunate 'blame the victim' approach which can affect quality and type of care.

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My poor sister just discovered her cancer has returned 11 years after beating breast cancer. When she got breast cancer she had been on hormone replacement therapy for 10 years. Despite having several atypical lumps removed from her breast her doctor told her to keep on taking the hormones to "protect" her heart and bones. She wouldn't listen to me and stop taking it...of course the tumor was estrogen dependent. The steroids and many medications she takes and the chemo ravaged her immune system. So now the cancer is back and more medication and expense. But her heart and bones are great...

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They are useful only in a limited way. They have nothing to do with real life, except after the fact.

They can't tell you what *you* will die of, or when. If you are a 35 year old 3-pack-a-day smoker whose diet consists of bologna sandwiches and twinkies, you can still be run over by a bus. Traffic accidents, oddly enough, rarely make it into these scare fests. But hey, people gotta drive. And there is no reason to think that scared drivers are any safer than confident drivers. The reverse is likely, in fact. Nervous drivers are hazardous drivers.

Statistics can, perhaps, put you into a predicted slot after you die.

And .. sadly .. they are very easily manipulated.

We need to learn to take any bit of information which is supported by statistics with a grain of salt. Or a truckload. If you find a particular factoid worrying, do some research of your own. The first question you should ask is 'who benefits' ..? You will rarely discover that the beneficiary is you.

And so far as life, death and disease are concerned - when did we get so foolish as to believe that some particular lifestyle or diet or behaviour pattern will stave off death? How has the health industry bought into the idea that if we would ONLY stop eating appealing food and swap the couch for a treadmill we will never get sick or die? Are they so cynical that they understand that this is nonsense but are willing to push it anyway, or haven't they thought it through? Why has it been so easy for the general public to believe that 'living right', whatever that might mean in any particular week will protect us from all ills and accidents?

Before we buy into all this 'healthy living' hype, we need to remember that it took 20 years of intense research to prove that sugar caused tooth decay, and more frightening, nearly 30 years to show that hydrogenated fats are infinitely more dangerous to our health than mere butter or lard. For 30 years our *doctors* told us to exchange our butter for margarine, and shortening for lard in our pastries. To give them credit, they are in no way back peddling on these issues, now we are being told not to eat fat period. Our dietary recommendations are determined, for the most part by the major corporations having the most to gain by influencing our behaviour. That includes (but is hardly limited to) insurers of all kinds, Big Ag, and Big Pharma.

Consider this - when Big Ag was mostly growing grain, we were assured that grain was what we should be eating the most of. Now that Big Ag has expanded into produce, which they are growing thousands of miles away from their customer base for the most part, we are told that we have to eat 8 - or is it 12? - servings of vegetables every day. The meat and dairy industries are in disgrace at the moment, so their concerns are being overrided, and we are told to severely limit our intake of their products.

When the insurance companies, Big Pharma and Big Ag are deleted from the research processes which tell us how to live and what to eat, I will take them much more seriously. In the meantime, I'll eat what I like - which happens to be real, unrefined food almost entirely, though not confined to fruit and vegetables - do what I can in terms of exercise and try to tune the terror mongers out.

I turned off the TV 40 years ago. Maybe this downturn in the economy will mean that people will have to dump their cable subscriptions and take up reading.

Every cloud has a silver lining?

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Hormone replacement therapy was hyped to so many women, without making them aware of the risks. There was also an element of sexism involved--a number of male doctors wrote about
about the therapy as a way to guard against the "ravages" of aging in a way that suggested that older women are simply so unattractive, that of course, the would want to do anything possible to look younger.

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You should always look at the source of the numbers and ask "Will the source benefit in any way by persuading you of his argument?"

In this case, no one is going to benefit financially or otherwise by warning that for the average risk woman under 50 and over 69, the risks of mammograms outweigh the benefits. And even for most women 50 to 69, it's a close call.

The health care industry loses money by telling you this; no one is making money.

Of course, no one can tell you whether YOU might be the one 35-year-year old woman out of 10,000 who dies of breast cancer--and might have benefited if it was detected early. (Though breast cancer in young women tends to be a very aggressive type that moves quickly--it can turn up and make great progress in between annual mammograms.)

Obviously medical reserach is not designed to tell you, as an individual, exactly what will happen to you. We are all mortal. We all have to take our chances. All we can do is look at the odds of benefits and risks for people in our pool (same sex, age, etc.) and then make a reasoned decision about what to do.

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Yes, I'm happy with my decision. When I consider the miserable side effects of chemo and radiation that friends have endured, I was only too happy to have a lumpectomy and take a daily pill for five years. Your article seems to suggest that I should have let the tumor grow and spread and have it removed when it was life threatening. No thanks.

Actually, I don't think I'm extraordinary except perhaps that I have friends across a wider spectrum of age, race and social strata than many people. Since I wrote my first response, I thought of three more friends being treated for prostate cancer, one surgically, the other two with radiation, and another friend who is recouperating from aggressive chemo for breast cancer last year.

And this does not take into account three friends whose cancer has been traced to time spent in Vietnam. One just died, another is on yet another experimental drug, and the third is in remission.

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