Statins increase life expectancy in short-term trials, but not by very much. There are questions about the accuracy of trial results and the safety of statins in the long-term is not established. The cost-effectiveness of statins is also poor and the cost to the NHS for all those currently being suggested as needing them would be crippling.
Until a considerable amount of better evidence is available that demonstrate statins do have real, long-term benefits without serious adverse side effects, it might be wise to restrict their use to patients at very high risk.
Barry Groves on the work of Dr Uffe Ravnskov and statistician Al Lohse.
Category Archives: General
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AGEs (Advanced Glycaemic End-products)
The other cause of sugar damage is the uncontrolled (non-enzymic) attachment of excess sugar molecules (e.g. fructose and glucose) to proteins (such as collagen, elastin and receptors) around the body. Over time this gives rise to sugar-damaged proteins known as appropriately as Advanced Glycaemic End-products (AGEs). These AGEs cause, joints, arteries, heart, lungs and skin etc. to lose their elasticity.
The transport of the fat soluble nutrients (including vitamins A, D & E ) to all the organs of the body rely upon Lipids (fatty droplets) produced by the liver and circulating in the blood in the blood. A simplified version of this mechanism has the liver sending large particles (LDL) to deliver the nutrients and the tissues returning smaller particles (HDL) for recycling. The particles have apolipoproteins (APO) as labels the to identify their destination and purpose. Matching receptors are deployed on tissues to latch onto the lipids droplets they require. When the labels and receptors are damaged by attached sugars, the tissues cannot get the fats they require and the fats are scavenged by visceral fat cells in the abdomen. This causes a cascade leading to a variety of AGE related diseases as we age.
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Oxidative Stress
One way is the damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are produced by the burning of blood sugar (Glucose) and oxygen in our cells to produce energy. The free radicals produced by this can cause oxidation damage to surrounding tissues (oxidative stress). The body uses a variety of anti-oxidants (e.g. cholesterol & CoQ10) to control or limit such damage but these can be overwhelmed. The rate of damage may exceed the rate of repair with excessive use of energy from sugar.
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Sugar Damage
A spectrum of diseases, in modern civilisation, are caused by sugar damage. Such diseases include Diabetes, Heart Diseases, Alzheimer’s and a variety of conditions such as hardening of arteries, raised blood pressure, abdominal obesity and ageing skin.
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A man finds the woman he wants to share his life with – but can he persuade her to stay?
‘I think ‘A Second Summer’ would make a wonderful film’ Marion Nancarrow BBC Drama ProducerA SECOND SUMMER by Liz Wainwright A woman desperate to reclaim her life escapes from Paris to the Normandy…
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‘Don’t be disgusting! You’ve no right to talk about my Mother like that. She was right about you, she always said you didn’t know how to behave, and that you dressed like a tart. Look at you now, tarted up in that yellow dress like, like it was a day out in Blackpool not the day of my Father’s funeral!’
‘I put this on because your Dad said he liked it, it was like a bit of sunshine, he said.’
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The Girl who wasn’t Good Enough is the first of The Lynda Collins Trilogy.
Liz is currently writing books 2 and 3. The original Book 3 was the first of the books to be written and it was suggested that readers would want to know where Lynda Collins’ background. The writing of books 1 & 2 will cause a major revision of book 3. Liz is very enthusiastic about the whole project. Reactions to book 1 have exceeded expectations.
Liz’s Radio Drama & Stage Plays are also available in paperback.
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Eggs are perfect packaging of a fully balanced meal for any animal including ourselves. Tell ‘em Zoe!
I really have got better things to do than to continually dissect articles from so called scientists, but, when the item under attack is the super food called egg, someone has to leap to its defence. So here goes….
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If you get the chance to hear Paul talk about the birth of stars in far off nebulae take it, but be prepared to sing a song about the fusion of small atoms into carbon – ‘Like a diamond in the sky!’
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In May 2000, during the planetary alignment I thought about the impact of this on solar tides (Photosphere tides etc.). After calculating the contributions from each planet (inverse square for height, inverse cube for volume) I was impressed by the dominance of Jupiter’s effect and its orbital frequency, although orbital frequency when compared with solar rotation may complicate the gravitational coupling. The idea that Jupiter’s 11 year orbital cycle was somehow phase-locked with some mass-vibration in the sun would not leave me alone. Jupiter was phase-locked with an internal mass-vibration system of frequency 11 years producing an 11 year cycle of sunpot activity. This effect is complicated by contribution from Mercury to tidal volume . The idea was published in New Scientist by means of this letter:
While the work of Mausumi Dikpati suggests that meridional flows in the sun’s convective layer may allow us to forecast sunspot activity (6 March, p 38), other forces may also be at work. In particular, the giant planets in the solar system may play a role through the gravitational pull they exert on the massive amount of fluid flowing in the outer layer of the sun.
Curiously, this gravitational force can be expressed as a Fourier series whose most important terms have interesting periodicities: one of these coincides with the 11-year cycle of the sunspots. What we may be seeing, therefore, is the direct influence of planetary tidal forces and their effects on the stability of the magnetic loops created in the meridional flows in the sun’s convective layer. These forces could be a major factor in the cycle of magnetic loops believed to create the sunspots.
Jupiter is the largest contributor to the solar plasma tides. It may eventually transpire that its influence contributes to our climate.
Liz & Glyn Wainwright 