YOU DON'T HAVE TO DIET TO CONTROL CHOLESTEROL!
Right! When you hear "cholesterol," you may automatically think "diet." That's because you have been brainwashed over the years by diet advocates and the food industry. The media has played a major role in brainwashing the public, but they haven't known any better - until now. This book should serve as a wake-up call for the media and the public. It can simplify life for almost everyone.
You do not have to diet to control cholesterol - if your doctor is good at niacin. Niacin, a drug whose use for cholesterol control I pioneered in the United States (1955) and introduced to the medical world (1956), does everything right to achieve today's goals of cholesterol control. It does so while you eat as you please!
At best, diet is a weak and often ineffective method of altering blood cholesterol levels. Drugs accomplish this purpose better, and niacin is unquestionably the best drug currently available. No other drug has all of its benefits.
If niacin treatment for cholesterol goes back more than forty years, why haven't we heard more about it? The most important reason is that niacin has never been patentable, so no company can make large profits from its exclusive sale. Therefore, niacin has had no blockbuster ad campaigns to teach physicians and the public its distinctive advantages. Besides that, die-hard advocates of diet have kept singing their tired refrain, and the unsuspecting public has accepted its message. Pharmaceutical companies with patents on expensive (and less effective) products have sponsored gigantic studies, then inundated the medical profession (and lately the public as well) with multi-million dollar advertising, seeking larger shares of the multi-billion dollar market. And who has paid for all this? If you say "the drug companies," you are wrong. Those who pay are the purchasers of their expensive products, whose benefits dim by comparison with niacin.
Why is niacin better than the other drugs? To begin with, it reduces blood levels of "bad" cholesterol. Because bad cholesterol is the largest fraction, this reduces total cholesterol as well. Niacin also increases "good" cholesterol. It reduces triglycerides, if they are part of the problem. These changes all tend to reduce heart attack risk. No other drug does all of these things.
Niacin also produces favorable changes in several lesser-known cholesterol-containing fractions, which we will discuss in an early chapter. No other drug currently available produces these benefits in newly discovered cholesterol fractions. Neither does any other maneuver, such as diet or exercise.
What is the end result of these niacin-induced changes in blood cholesterol values? In a landmark study, the Coronary Drug Project (CDP), performed from 1966 to 1974, niacin reduced heart attacks, strokes and related events, cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) surgery, cardiovascular hospitalization, all hospitalization, and deaths. None of the three other drugs studied in the CDP produced any of these benefits, and none of them is still in current use. No currently used drug has all of these favorable effects, although studies in the last few years show that a couple of drugs have some of them.
Because of a1l these distinctive advantages, not shared or even approached by any other cholesterol-control drugs on the market today, niacin stands alone as the drug of choice. When penicillin was first discovered, it was called a "wonder drug." In today's more sophisticated society, the term "designer drug" is more appropriate for niacin. If one lists all the desirable characteristics for a cholesterol-control drug, niacin accomplishes every goal on the "wish list." No other drug comes close.
Could there possibly be even more good news? Yes, there is. The usual cost of niacin, whether plain or time-release, is about eight to ten dollars a month. The cost of other drugs for cholesterol control can be as little as $48 a month or as great as $332 a month. In general, the other drugs cost six to ten times as much as niacin. Project this for a year in one patient: $96 to $120 for niacin, six to ten times that (about $600 to $1200) for other agents.
Niacin is available over-the-counter, without a prescription. Then, some might conclude, the proper thing to do in order to control cholesterol, to prevent heart attacks and other related events, is to buy some niacin and start taking it - right? Absolutely not! Here is the most important message of this book: Niacin is not a do it-yourself drug. It requires knowledgeable medical supervision. You need a doctor in charge who is adept in its use - good at niacin. This book teaches the reader how to be sure his doctor is good at niacin. The best way is to give the doctor a copy of this book. It contains not only the essentials both physician and patient need to know but also a section of medical reports and commentary, bringing the doctor more detailed information which will give him the confidence to use niacin successfully.
Both patient and physician should know as much as possible about any method of treatment. Usually the doctor knows and teaches the patient the essential information. In this instance, both can learn about niacin from this book. A patient can understand niacin's use and work with his doctor, applying their mutual knowledge.
The book is written in the same plain words that I use in my office when talking to patients. Even the section of medical details for doctors is written in this manner because I expect most readers to understand it also. If I use a medical term that is not familiar to the general public, I explain it immediately. In addition, there is a glossary of medical terms and abbreviations. To doctors, I offer no apology for using nonmedical, understandable language. They might even enjoy reading about these matters without the stilted style of medical journals. I hope physicians will use this book as a starting point to bring their patients a better understanding of cholesterol problems.
One more note regarding writing style. I am not going to say "he/she" each time I use a pronoun in a situation that could refer to either sex. Likewise, I am not going to make this manuscript gender-neutral by changing such pronouns to "persons," "people," or "individuals" in every instance. To resolve the thorny gender issue (although I can't understand why anyone finds it a problem) I will arbitrarily try to refer to a patient as "she" or "her" and a physician as "he" or "him." This is realistic for a couple of reasons. Women are better about going to doctors and taking care of their health than men, who often wait until a heart attack gets their attention. Also women are now having more heart attacks than men, 51% by latest estimates. There are still more male physicians than women physicians, although medical school classes are now about equally divided and the numbers of women in medicine are steadily increasing. I hope my gender decision will not offend anyone or distract any reader from the book's important message.
This book is intended to make the patient an intelligent consumer regarding cholesterol control. The goal is to eliminate many heart attacks and strokes while postponing others till much later in life. I would like every person to live as one who has never had a heart attack rather than living as a heart attack survivor. There is a world of difference! For any of you who have already survived heart attacks, strokes, or blood vessel surgery, the book teaches special guidelines for you, aimed at making some cholesterol deposits regress (become smaller) while slowing the formation of new deposits. Since I brought the use of niacin for cholesterol control to the attention of the medical world more than forty years ago, it has been used increasingly in recent years. I have had the satisfaction of knowing that niacin has already prevented or delayed heart attacks and other artery-narrowing disorders in millions of people around the world. You can bring the message about niacin's use to your doctor and to your family and friends as well. Doctors can bring the good news to their patients and have probably 90% or more of those with cholesterol problems taking niacin successfully. We can all be part of a gradual but revolutionary change in cholesterol management and heart attack prevention.
Now my challenge to the media. Put aside all the brainwashing you have received over the years from diet advocates and, in recent years, from pharmaceutical manufacturers, striving to sell their expensive drugs, none of which matches niacin's efficacy or affordability. It is not your fault that you have parroted their messages and slogans in your writings, but this has, in turn, brainwashed the public. You missed the Veritas Society's symposium, which led to the book Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, cited in these pages, but the book is still available.
I invite members of the media to read the simple truths and logic of Cholesterol Control Without Diet and report them, undismayed by the howls and screams of dietary advocates and niacin detractors. You can do a great service to untold numbers of persons who, without your work, might not learn these lessons. For some, this could mean the difference between life and death, or between living as a person without a previous heart attack rather than as a heart attack survivor. You yourself or some one close to you could be one of those beneficiaries.
To everyone: know what your bad and good cholesterol fractions are and realize that if they are both in the proper ranges, total cholesterol is really irrelevant. If either or both (bad and good cholesterol fractions) should not be in desirable ranges, work out a treatment program with your doctor, as outlined in this book. If your bad and good cholesterol fractions are now in desirable ranges without treatment, resolve to recheck them in three years. Then go on living a normal life and enjoy every day! As I have said in another place and time1: "Perhaps we can get back to basics: eat food because it tastes good, exercise because it feels good, control weight because it looks good, and be happy, because life should be enjoyed, one day at a time |
