Statins are completely worthless... and On the Way to Wellness

An article which talks about how this whole cholesterol lowering drug business is a scam: The link: http://goo.gl/mR4R7r

"Statins are totally worthless" - this is not surprising, have known this all along - in fact have several earlier posts where I have mentioned this.

What is sad is that it needs another 'scientific' study to disprove all the studies that have shown statins to be good - this whole 'scientific' study business is a waste of time when it comes to health. You can be sure there will be a few more studies that prove these wrong, or tout some other bunch of medicines as the new panacea.

Other things that are worthless: going for a preventive medical checkup, aggressively treating various incipient 'diseases' based on these 'tests', taking antibiotics indiscriminately, or in general pill-popping...

I had a stye in the eye (actually what is termed as a 'chalazion') recently, and two doctors ( I went to one more since I didn't trust the diagnosis of the first) prescribed me antibiotics. A little reading convinced me that chalazions don't require any treatment, and I did not take the medicines. I got ok in two days - with the antibiotics, I would have taken another week to recover from the effect of the medicine! My point is not that antibiotics are never required, but that prescribing medicines indiscriminately has become the norm nowadays.

Modern western medicine proved effective in countering infectious diseases which were rampant at the turn of the last century. The 'germ theory' has its uses, but extending it to our entire lives is a problem. Germs exist everywhere, they are both good and bad. The only way to ensure the bad ones don't get you is to maintain your immunity at a high level through a proper lifestyle. Unfortunately for the pharma companies this does not involve any medicines.

Most illnesses we have nowadays are lifestyle related - diabetes, blood pressure, IBS, ulcers, kidney problems, backaches, mental sluggishness (yes, that is a disease though it is so common that it is accepted as normal), ... the list can go on. The pharma industry convinces us that aggressive intervention is necessary with medicines like 'cholesterol' lowering drugs, statins, sedatives, anti-depressants, pain-killers, aniti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, and the like. These things don't really help, and in most cases they cause more harm than good. What they do which is good for the companies is to have enough side effects which manifest as a continuous list of other diseases all the time, which keep the companies perpetually in business.

What we are asked to do as a consequence of the 'germ theory' is fundamentally flawed. Instead of being told to maintain our bodies in an optimum state of immunity, the 'modern' approach is to kill all germs. Take Hand Sanitisers for example. It will just kill all the good germs along with the bad germs, in effect making your hand dead. Environments are completely sanitised, children are kept away from 'unhygienic' environs, etc. - as a result the body loses the ability to adapt to the environment. Children playing in the mud is essential to a healthy growth, but nowadays there is no mud (it is all concrete), and where there is mud, you can be sure there are no children!

The other major flaw with 'modern' medical science is its reductionist approach - treating each condition as if it is a lab experiment in physics, and countering 'what is wrong' with the opposite, in the process ignoring the entire body-mind system and its interconnectedness. The term 'holistic' is much abused nowadays - I have seen ads from major hospitals offering 'holistic diabetes treatments' - today's doctors don't even understand what holistic means.

There are a thousand and one ways in which things can go wrong, and a thousand and one ailments that you can get. Our approach is to develop a thousand and one therapies to counter each of these ailments, with substances which are poisonous to the body, thus entering into a vicious cycle of ailments. We also in the process forget what good health means.

Health is not mere absence of disease. Health is complete and total well-being, a positive vibrancy, a joyous state where you feel light in mind and in body. It is not growing old at all ( in the conventional sense) but having a body (and mind) that acts as an instrument for joyful, fulfilled living.

There is only one way to achieve that health (as opposed to a thousand and one ways in which you can fight ailments), which makes things easy. Focus on this one way, the way of right living, of a proper lifestyle, of maintaining and enhancing your body, mind and spirit (for all three are interconnected). Focus only on rules that will keep you healthy and enhance that well-being of yours. In fact this sloka from the Gita, though Arjuna said it in a different context, fits perfectly here:

• In the debate about the path of knowledge and the path of action, and which of them is superior, (very similar to the various debates we have on health and disease), Arjuna asks: "With this apparently perplexing speech, thou confusest my understanding; therefore tell me that one way for certain by which I may attain bliss" (chapter 3, verse 2) - the implication being, that the ways of confusion are many, but the one true path is just that - One.

And that One Way of achieving health is to follow the prescriptions of the Gita, Yoga, Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Unani, traditional wisdom of all societies (not just Indian, not by a long shot) - it is to tap into the ancient knowledge that is a collective heritage of mankind, to follow a lifestyle that will not only keep us free from disease (which is a very limited objective), but which will help us achieve our full potential.