A recent article in the New York Times, “Risks Seen in Cholesterol Drug Use in Healthy People,” rightfully called into question the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of new criteria for the use of Crestor (a cholesterol lowering medication). The new criteria were based on a study that looked at CRP, a marker of inflammation that has never been proven to directly correlate to heart disease, and concluded that men over 50 or women over 60 with an elevated CRP plus one other risk factor (smoking, high blood pressure, etc) qualify to take Crestor. This translates into an additional 6.5 million Americans, without elevated cholesterol or a history of heart disease, requiring medication.

Christina Applegate’s diagnosis of breast cancer at age 36, brings to our awareness the question, why now, after so many millions spent on cancer research, do so many women still get and die of breast cancer? This diagnosis in such a young celebrity will incite a new media frenzy for more donations for cancer research. Cancer research means more testing for new drugs. I doubt any significant reduction in cancer deaths will result as long as we ignore causation and still expect to discover new poisons to defeat cancer. Deaths from breast cancer have increased throughout the last century and modern medical care has done little to halt this trend.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Healthy Times Newsletter makes sense of the latest science for superior health and effective weight management. His articles on nutrition, health, weight loss, and critical medical issues provide life–saving information you need to know.  The following issues are available at discount prices through WayneShop.Com . . .

In the realms of political economy and personal finance, we all know the difference between "Borrowing and Spending" vs. "Saving and Investing." The former provides some short-term relief, but tends to impoverish us over the long term, while the latter tends to empower us, both today and tomorrow! The same principle applies to nutritional health and lifestyle medicine.  We can save and invest in health by acting today in a way that both enhances our current sense of well-being and optimizes our future prospects for good health and longevity, or we can mortgage our future health for the sake of present indulgences and then look to modern medicine to bail us out in the end--with pills and procedures, health screening(s) and surgeries, etc.

Since most of us were encouraged to drink milk as children, we probably associate dairy products with the nurturing, caring environment that is generally associated with childhood. That, together with the multiplied millions of dollars spent on advertising by the dairy industry, has left most of us with an impression of dairy products as wholesome, natural foods.  And it is understandable that we might be reluctant to question this long-held impression.  Nevertheless, while cow's milk is certainly wholesome and natural for calves, many questions have been raised over the years as to whether or not it is really good for human beings.