The Pharmaceutical Industry's Wet-Dream (Starring McDonald's)

Do you like fast food? If you could eat it, (cardiovascularly-speaking) risk free, would you? The newly published article in the Journal of Cardiology seems to believe that this is what people do want, and even more so, that it would be in the interest of public health to counteract the unhealthy choices made by citizens by providing free pills as "condiments" to unhealthy food choices.

This narrow-minded view of the world and it's health problems is pervasive in our current times and it is important as eaters, health professionals, and citizens of the world to bring awareness to the fundamental problems in this proposed "solution" to the health disasters of the Western food model.

The article being referenced is:

Can a Statin Neutralize the Cardiovascular Risk of Unhealthy Dietary Choices?

Emily A. Ferenczi, Perviz Asaria, Alun D. Hughes, Nishi Chaturvedi, Darrel P. Francis - American Journal of Cardiology - 15 August 2010 (Vol. 106, Issue 4, Pages 587-592)

(Image from article, titled: New concept in fast food risk reduction.)

"Given the frequency of fast food consumption and the adverse health consequences of the foodstuffs supplied, we propose that the fast food industry is well placed to offer advice and supplements to counteract the cardiovascular harm arising from the foods they purvey."

"A generic statin could be added to the panoply of items in the self-service tray, at littlemarginal cost, in combination with other healthy lifestyle suggestions."

The authors feel that providing low dose statins as condiments to fast food, a person can essentially 'neutralize' the cardiovascular harm caused by the meal by taking the supplemental pill. They are basing this theory on their calculations of relative risk reductions of statins compared to the risk of cardiovascular events from eating the elevated amounts of saturated fat and trans fat found in fast foods.

I refer to this notion as narrow-minded because again, like so many narrow-minded health campaigns in the US, it is focused on quantity of fat in the diet and ignores the quality of fat in the diet and the contribution of cheap, nutritionally inadequate carbohydrates to the prevalence and incidence of diabetes in our country. Diabetes being a HUGE risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

While statins may decrease cholesterol levels and promote favorable results in your lipid panel owing to a pat on the back from your doc, they do not combat other venues of ill health that a diet rich in fast food will take you down. A low fiber, low fruit and vegetable, low micro nutrient diet sets you up for other health complications, such as: inflammation, diseases of the intestinal tract, and diseases caused by impaired immunity. Currently there is research that suggests statins having a protective affect against cancer, but I have read conflicting evidence on this, so I think we won't know for sure either way for several years as more people chronically taking statins age.

"Reports have concluded that statins have a favorable "benefit-to-risk" ratio, with only rare adverse effects reported in hepatic, renal, and muscle tissue..."

For a better idea of the risks associated with statins, visit the Mayo Clinic's website on the benefits vs. risks to make up your own mind if the risks are worth it to you. The highlight of the page for me is where it lists the populations that have increased risk for statin side effects.

The populations at increased risk are WOMEN (50% of the population), over the age of 65 (10% of the population in Texas), persons with diabetes (10% of the population 18 years and older in Texas), and persons taking multiple medications to lower cholesterol (a phenomenon called polypharmacy; I have no statistics on this regarding cholesterol-lowering medications, but polypharmacy is a huge issue in our pill-popping culture and no doubt would present a significant percent of the population).

So basically, my crude math finds that at the very minimum, 60% of the population is at increased risk for side effects that include permanent liver damage and muscle breakdown.

"We can conclude that the documented safety record of statins is substantially better than that of fast foods, which carry not only direct cardiovascular risks but other risks due to obesity."

"It cannot therefore be reasonably argued on safety grounds that individuals should be free to choose to eat lipid-rich food but not be free to supplement it with a statin."

Wow. Then I must be completely unreasonable in saying that drugs are prescribed by physicians with years of education and experience because of all the things that can go wrong if people without the educational background were able to self-medicate as they saw fit. It is a physicians' responsibility to look at the entirety of the patient's health profile including the medications they are already on and make recommendations based upon this information.

Medications as well as herbal supplements must go through detoxification pathways in the liver before they exit the body. This means that in addition to the potential medication-medication and medication-herbal and medication-food interactions that may harm a person, there is also an increased stress on the liver with more and more chemicals added to a person's body.

Saying that because we can choose our foods therefore we can choose our medications is totally irresponsible. The reason that we can choose our food, besides the fact that food is essential to life whereas statins are not, is because food, for the most part, kills us very slowly. A diet of fast food takes upwards of 40 years to kill us; whereas overdosing on pharmaceuticals can kill us within hours, days, or months. The authors do state that more research would need to be done on how much statins you would have to take for it to be toxic (ie. kill you), but they do not even touch the problem of polypharmacy.

"We envisage a future in which fast food restaurants encourage a holistic approach to healthy living. On ordering an unhealthy meal, the food will arrive labeled with a warning message similar to those found on cigarette packets ("This meal increases your risk for heart disease and death"), and on the tray, next to the ketchup, will be a new and protective packet, "MacStatin," which could be sprinkled onto a Quarter Pounder or into a milkshake."

A) I'm deeply bothered by the use of the word 'holistic' in such a non-holistic setting. I get that they are trying to say that a combination of drugs and lifestyle is the way to attack the issue, but combining two therapies is hardly considered holistic.

B) The authors suggest the MacStatin coming with a leaflet that details other healthy activities you could engage in for your health and information about statins. Health literacy, the ability of people to read and comprehend health information, is a gigantic problem in the US! National surveys consistently find that ~50% of the population is considered low literacy and are at risk for "non-compliance" with health and medication instruction due to misunderstandings of the instructions.

Do the authors really feel that their leaflet is going to be read, much less understood by the vast majority of Americans? How many languages will such a leaflet be available in? How many people taking the statins will understand that large quantities of grapefruit juice interact with the drug? What does "large quantities" even mean?

"We suggest that the MacStatin concept not be rejected on the grounds of condoning unhealthy diets, any more than seatbelts should be rejected on the grounds of an appearance of condoning speeding."

Oh, bringing out the big guns! I love (sarcasm dripping from voice) how the authors chose the example of seat belts to back their campaign for widespread statin use as good for public health reasons. Seat belts - strips of strong fabric that hold you in place in the event of a car accident, with or without speeding involved. Statins - a pill that causes biochemical systemic changes in a person's body based on the good fat vs. bad fat misinformation of our time. Totally the same. Yeah.

I suggest the MacStatin concept be rejected not on the grounds of condoning unhealthy diets, but on the grounds that it is insane, irresponsible, and is positively counterintuitive to the direction I believe the country needs to go!!

That direction being a lessened reliance on pills and a revitalization of small family run businesses, farms, and food systems.

The MacStatin concept is profitable for the pharmaceutical industry and the fast food industry. It is you and I and the health of our country that will pay, big time. The fundamental problem with this article (which I still believe in the back of my mind is some kind of demented April Fools joke, several months late...) is that it claims to be about public health but it is not at all in the interest of public health, it is merely a business-as-usual tool for the richest 2% of the country to profit more off the ill health of the many.

Health does not come in a pill. Sorry folks. But please don't let them fool you. Health comes from within, and can be nurtured with love and food that was raised in loving conditions. I don't care how many statins you take, it will not erase the damage of a fast food diet.