Death By Supermarket (29 page)

Still there are companies that choose to do their own research, and these companies are supplying top-grade supplements to the market. Since the FDA has done such a poor job in monitoring drugs and food additives, it would not serve consumers for the FDA to regulate supplement manufacturers. If this were to happen, multinational drug corporations—and con artists who have gotten rich off of bogus products—would likely inundate the market with inferior products, while the small top-quality supplement manufacturers would get bogged down in fees and regulatory expenses so that their quality supplements would become economically unobtainable by the average person. The best way to force inferior products and snake oil out of the marketplace is to not buy them.

Nutraceuticals and dietary supplements are important today as we have more toxins and stress and less nutritive soil than in times past. But contrary to the claims of the snake-oil salesmen, nutraceuticals and supplements can’t perform alone to make you healthy and thin, sleep better, and improve your sex life. Nutraceuticals and supplements can only help you go the last fraction of the distance after you have addressed the most important factors of good health. We should get the bulk of our nutrition from real, living food. Supplements are supplemental. Too many people gobble handfuls of supplements arbitrarily without having a clue what they are taking. Worse, they are taking synthetic supplements. Ever notice how teeny tiny those vitamin pills are? The synthetic nutrients are compacted into hard little bullets that are cheap for manufacturers to make and easy for lazy consumers to swallow. The nutrients in those hard little pebbles are virtually inaccessible to the absorptive surfaces of your digestive system. Quality supplements are loosely packed, bio-available tablets and capsules.

Cheap supplements are made with synthetic versions of nutrients and are bulked up with toxic fillers and additives. Quality supplements are made with pure nutrients without fillers and additives. Dietary supplement makers that produce hypoallergenic, high-quality supplements are more expensive than health-food-store brands and considerably more expensive than supermarket, drugstore, and Big Box brands. However, you get a bigger bang for your buck if you take fewer supplements made by a company that is dedicated to improving the quality of Americans’ health than you do by popping pills made by corporations that are interested solely in shareholder profits.

By consulting a qualified health practitioner to determine what is right for you, you maximize the effectiveness of your protocol (you see and feel results), do not end up wasting money on junk supplements, and do not put money into the coffers of junk-supplement businesses.

Miracles in a bottle and useless supplements are not the only pills that Americans are reaching for today. Since the time of Louis Pasteur, when medicine turned away from nutrition as standard care and embraced
drugs as the primary modality in the practice of medicine, Americans have become convinced that drugs are the answer to
curing
illness. However, more recently, a new trend in medicine has arisen: using drugs to prevent disease.

IN THE LAST TWO
decades pharmaceutical companies have begun advertising on TV. The phenomenon started slowly but has grown to a truly alarming frequency as more and more people in America have become ill or are at risk for disease, and as drug companies recognize an opportunity to compete for our business. Drug ads typically focus our attention on our
hopes
, for which they sell us
quality of life
, and our
terror
, for which they sell us
hope
. We know what cancer centers to go to should we be diagnosed with cancer and what drugs to take to prepare for chemotherapy. We’ve learned that our cholesterol comes from food and from Grandma Rose and all about the cholesterol-lowering drugs, which pharmaceutical companies are making $492 billion per year selling and will soon have doctors prescribing to children. To treat our type 2 diabetes we are reassured by ads, like the ones with B.B. King and Patty Labelle grinning happily even though they have a life-threatening illness. It’s comforting to know that our insulin and/or glucose-modulating medications can be delivered right to our doors by that nice man, Wilfred Brimley.

My stance is not anti-drug. It’s anti too many drugs. Some drugs have their place and can be beneficial when used judiciously. The purpose of this book, and in particular this chapter, is to point out that the food industry has ruined our health, and that the medical community has embraced drugs to treat (and now prevent) disease. There are many drugs that don’t need to be taken and, in fact, are either exacerbating our health problems
or creating new ones, or the condition they are supposedly addressing could be easily corrected by eliminating all factory foods from our diets and eating real, living food and by using alternative or natural healing or preventative approaches. Unlike real, living food as a therapy for healing, when it comes to taking drugs, you always get a two-fer. First you get the benefit of the drug, though not always. Allen Roses, M.D., geneticist for the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, said that 90 percent of drugs work for only 30 to 50 percent of people.
²⁷⁷
A new study confirms that not only are 85 percent of drugs useless, but the toxic side effects and/or misuse of prescription drugs make these drugs a significant cause of death in the United States.
²⁷⁸

Even if you do get the purported benefit, all drugs have side effects, sometimes multiple and potentially life-threatening. Unfortunately, many Americans are bewildered about so called alternative approaches outside of conventional medicine. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (which we talked about briefly in
chapter 8
and which is explained in greater detail in
Healthy, Sexy, Happy
) is an example of a controversial “natural” therapy that is confounding many women today. If you recall, drug companies don’t study natural substances because they can’t be patented and therefore can’t produce the same returns on research investment that patented drugs do. Suzanne Somers is an outspoken advocate of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). However, in the winter of 2006, Somers was taken to task on
Larry King Live
by a panel of doctors for including a bioidentical hormone protocol from an unaccredited “independent researcher” in her book
Ageless
. The protocol in question is designed to cycle women through estrogen and progesterone levels that match the hormone levels of a twenty-five-year-old woman—in other words, high estrogen and high progesterone. Although I don’t personally endorse this approach, rather than having a reasoned discussion about the pros and cons of the various approaches of BHRT, the panel was reduced to a catfight, leaving Somers unable to get a word in edgewise and making room for a consultant to pharmaceutical companies to step in and discredit
bioidentical hormones. He referred to the panel as “a cult” and went on to claim that “the physicians [who prescribe BHRT] are selling promises, silver bullets, against aging with barely a nanoshred of evidence.”
²⁷⁹

David R. Allen, M.D. of the Longevity Medical Center in Los Angeles has spent thirty-five years researching holistic methods of treating his patients and is an advocate of bioidentical hormone replacement. He said of this
Larry King Live
show, “A hundred and thirty years ago when homeopathic medicine was introduced there were high dose advocates and low dose advocates. Rather than have a reasoned discussion of the benefits of homeopathic medicine, both camps were at each other’s throats. Ultimately homeopathic medicine was dismissed by the conventional medical community.”

Although the food, diet, and drug industries have fought hard to convince us that synthetic is as good—or better—than nature, when it comes to bioidentical hormone replacement millions of women disagree and millions more continue to be confused. Advocates run headfirst into the financial interests of mega pharmaceutical corporations. For now we still have the ability to make choices, although Wyeth (the maker of the equine-drug hormone called Premarin) has launched a legal, lobbying, and PR campaign to malign BHRT and influence Congress to ban BHRT (i.e., eliminate their competition).

Just as Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures was targeted to eliminate raw, living milk from our food supply, corporations can use their legal, financial, and political clout to eliminate competition in other types of foods, supplements, and hormones. Still, a growing population of real food eaters, like me, are looking at ways to heal using natural alternatives, like food, supplements, and hormones.

Brain-neurotransmitter imbalance is a prime example of a condition that could be corrected by stopping eating all factory food and eating real, living food, and by using alternative or natural healing or preventative approaches. As it stands, millions of American children suffering from ADD and ADHD are medicated to enable them to function in school and
in society. Family schedules are disrupted by stressful, expensive shrink appointments.

If drug companies have learned one thing from the sale of ADD and ADHD drugs, it is that medicating children is extremely lucrative. Incredibly, the largest growing market for antidepressant drugs is the age group between infants and children five years old.
²⁸⁰
This is truly the most illustrative example of what I’m talking about in this book: As a baby gestates, instead of eating real food that provides the crucial amino acids, essential fatty acids, cholesterol, and other nutrients humans need for healthy brain development and neurotransmitter production, his/her mother eats sugar and chemicalized factory-food products. As a result, the baby enters the world with a lesser brain than he/she could have had, is then deprived of mother’s milk, and instead, is fed antinutritious soy juice and is weaned on sugar and industrialized junk.

When the neurotransmitter-imbalanced baby starts showing understandable signs of going haywire, he’s given antidepressant drugs. And the baby could possibly be among the 2 to 3 percent of children taking anti-depressants who suffer from suicidal thoughts or behavior as a result of taking theses drugs. Tarek A. Hammad, an FDA analyst who conducted a review of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs—drugs that inhibit the disposal of serotonin in the brain) and other antidepressants, said that this outcome “is beyond the suicidality as a result of the disease being treated.”
²⁸¹
In other words, it wasn’t the depression that caused suicidal thoughts or behavoirs.

FDA employee and Vioxx whistleblower Dr. David Graham, introduced in
chapter 7
, said, “In early 2004, SSRI antidepressants and suicidal behavior was a big safety issue. The FDA suppressed a report written by a colleague of mine in drug safety and had prevented him from presenting this information in an advisory committee meeting. That information leaked to the media, embarrassing the FDA because it had been caught suppressing very important information—that most antidepressants don’t work for treating children.”
²⁸²

It’s merely a continued revenue stream when neurotransmitter-imbalanced children grow up to be neurotransmitter-imbalanced adults. Lonely men and women who self-medicate with binges on FDA-approved, caffeinated, high-fructose corn syrup sodas, baked goods, ice cream, and other factory products, then take FDA-approved SSRIs and other antide-pressant medications in an attempt to dredge up a modicum of interest in life as well as a shred of self-control and self-esteem. (More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales.)

The dopamine reuptake inhibitor Wellbutrin XL’s big pitch is that it has a “low risk of sexual side effects.” Ads feature hysterically happy people with the caveat: “There is a risk of seizure with Wellbutrin XL which increases with higher doses. Taking more than 450 mg/day increases the chance of serious side effects. Don’t use it if you’ve had a seizure or eating disorder, or if you abruptly stop using alcohol or sedatives. Don’t take with MAOIs, or medicines that contain bupropion. When used with a nicotine patch or alone, there is a risk of increased blood pressure, sometimes severe. To reduce risk of serious side effects, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. Other side effects may include weight loss, dry mouth, nausea, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, sore throat, constipation, or flatulence.”

Yet the ads are convincing. A recent Cymbalta commercial asked, “Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone!” and featured a piece of music that was so beautiful and compelling, it drove people online to try to find it.
²⁸³

On June 24, 2005, Tom Cruise appeared on NBC’s
Today Show
to promote his film
War of the Worlds
, but quickly segued into a passionate discourse against antidepressant drugs. It began when host Matt Lauer mentioned the fact that Cruise had criticized Brooke Shields on a TV interview with
Access Hollywood
for taking antidepressants to treat her suicidal postpartum depression. Cruise, a member of the Church of Scientology, described psychiatry as a pseudoscience and said that people should turn
to exercise and supplements rather than taking drugs to treat psychiatric problems such as postpartum depression. “I’m saying that drugs aren’t the answer,” Cruise argued. “These drugs are very dangerous. They’re mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don’t end up in a brave new world.”
²⁸⁴

A week later, on July 1, 2005, the FDA issued a public health advisory regarding the link between increased risk of suicidal tendencies in adults taking antidepressants, but this got virtually no press.
²⁸⁵

In the meantime, Cruise was eviscerated by much of the media. Mike Duffy from the
Hollywood Reporter
summed up the general consensus: “We’re seeing Tom Cruise gone wild and it’s not pretty.” Other reporters suggested that his stance against antidepressants and psychiatry would alienate fans.
²⁸⁶
(The
New York Times
supported Cruise’s behavior as a refreshing departure from publicist-controlled, scripted happy talk.)
²⁸⁷