Here are some headlines and stories from the world of health research news that caught my eye recently. I always try to fit this kind of news into the bigger picture of what makes us healthy and what has the opposite effect. Thinking about how new research findings fit into the long story of continuing human evolution and a healthy whole food diet often helps make sense of things. Please read the stories and form your own opinions and I will give my take of them as well.
Two articles about dairy
The first article is about a study in Africa to pin down why some people have no problems digesting milk and other dairy products while dairy causes others intense gastrointestinal upset. Lacking the necessary enzyme for lactose digestion is the known problem. How do so many people around the world gain the ability to make this enzyme?
Next is a piece by Natasha Longo about why butter is so much better for our health than margarine or vegetable shortening. I fully agree with the health conclusions of this article. The only exceptions I would make are that for optimum health only grass-fed dairy products should be consumed and that un-homogenized milk is probably much healthier than standard commercial milk.
Multiple genetic adaptations for digesting milk: ‘Soft selective sweep’ described in the population of Ethiopia
The Devastating Consequences Of Replacing Butter With Margarine In Our Diet
What is happening with statins?
Statin drugs are the big thing, the latest cure for heart disease and stroke, the drugs that lower anyone’s cholesterol to safe levels. Just a year or two ago major medical associations and pharmaceutical companies were poised to make a big push for prophylactic statin use: get everyone on the planet to take these safe drugs in order to preempt the high levels of cholesterol that cause heart attacks. Tens of millions of people who have had heart attacks or are deemed at risk by their doctors are already on daily doses of statin drugs. Advertisements for statins are everywhere on television and in magazines.
There have been some problems, however. High blood cholesterol levels have turned out to be a protective response to underlying problems caused by diet, not the cause of heart disease. And statin drugs have turned out to be not nearly as safe as advertised by the companies that make them. It seems that the more research done in this area, the stronger the case becomes for cholesterol and against statins. To me, this is one more instance of our health care system concentrating on the treatment of symptoms while ignoring the actual causes of a disease.
The Ugly Side Of Statins: An Honest Look At The Research Of Cholesterol-lowering Drugs
Statins Linked to Raised Risk of Cataracts
Some statins may impair memory
Statins Are The Greatest Medical Fraud Of All Time: Study Report
Healthy Whole Food Diet vs. Cost and Diabetes
The following two articles both concern the benefits of eating a healthy whole food diet. The first addresses the issue of how much the standard American modern diet costs our society in related health care and solutions to the problem using locally grown whole foods. The second article addresses the impact of eating whole fruits on diabetes.
Investing in Healthy Food Will Save Lives and Dollars
Whole Fruits Tied to Lower Diabetes Risk
Conclusions
The major chronic diseases of the modern world, such as heart disease and diabetes, are almost certainly caused by the massive shift in the average diet during the past several hundred years. Taking a pain killer is not going to cure your headache if someone is hitting you on the head with a hammer every hour. Taking statin drugs or insulin shots is not going to cure your heart disease or diabetes if you keep eating a diet of mostly highly refined grains, grain-fed meat, dairy and poultry, high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar. The only reason our average life span has remained relatively steady is because we have become so good at treating symptoms.
Our ancestors from just a few generations back showed almost no signs of the major modern killers. Those same ancestors ate a diet of almost entirely real, whole foods with perhaps a little refined flour and sugar. I am sure there is a diet connection between then and now but so far our modern health care system has mostly refused to acknowledge or even to study any possible link. There is just too much profit to be lost selling drugs for symptom treatment to push for real cures through proper diet.