Читать книгу The Juice Master Juice Yourself Slim: The Healthy Way To Lose Weight Without Dieting - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 17

Let me give you an idea of what I am talking about here. If a drug company gets their ‘fat drug’ licensed it is worth well over $1 billion per year. That’s ONE BILLION DOLLARS. The advertising budget for drugs of this nature can be as much as $150 million (that’s apparently more than Pepsi Cola’s!). This type of drug is known in the industry as a ‘blockbuster’, and getting one appears to be the Holy Grail of drug companies. These companies can spend as much as £10,000 trying to convince their main distribution centres – doctors’ surgeries – that this new, all-singing, all-dancing drug will solve the world’s obesity problem. If they can convince the doctors, they have effectively struck gold, and the pills – no matter how potentially dangerous they are – will be taken by many desperate overweight people. And when you are overweight and it’s affecting every aspect of your life, you really can get desperate. We will seemingly try anything, regardless of whether it makes any rational sense or not. I mean, people even thought eggs and bacon swimming around in fat was better for healthy weight loss than fruit after reading the Atkin’s Diet. This just shows how our natural intuitive common sense can go out the window when weight loss is promised, and never more so than when weight-loss drugs are involved.

When you are overweight and it’s affecting every aspect of your life, you really can get desperate. We will seemingly try anything, regardless of whether it makes any rational sense or not.

There have been many blockbuster ‘weight-loss’ drugs over the years, each hailed as the new ‘wonder’ drug. Sometimes, though, I wonder why.

Dying to Lose Weight

Take the ‘amazing’ weight-loss drug known as phen-phen. So amazing that along with the weight loss came heart disease, hypertension and even death. A lawsuit against phen-phen manufacturer Wyeth found the company responsible for the death of a Texas woman diagnosed with PPH (primary pulmonary hypertension). The woman’s family was awarded $1.13 billion to compensate for her death due to PPH, caused by taking Pondimin, a phen-phen diet pill. Although this is a rare case, in that the woman actually died, Wyeth have set aside $22 billion to pay damages to over 600,000 people.

Collateral Damage

It has been reported that over 10,000 people in the UK are killed every year by ADRs (adverse drug reactions). To put this in some sort of perspective, there are just over 3,000 people a year killed on our roads in the UK. In the US this figure is estimated at near the 100,000 mark! However, the casualties of ADR are simply viewed as the result of ‘friendly fire’. After all, the only reason why ‘they’ produce such drugs is not to maim or kill but to provide genuine solutions to health problems, especially obesity – a health problem which, coincidentally, just happens to be worth billions for the right pill. What I find incredible is that despite the huge number of undisputed adverse side-effects caused by weight-loss drugs, the argument is always the same: ‘They do more good than harm’ and ‘In the fight against disease and obesity there will inevitably be some casualties until we find the cure.’

The cure, of course, is about as obvious as it gets when it comes to the disease (for that is how it is now classified) known as overweight or obesity. I don’t honestly think you need a Harvard degree or a masters in bioscience technology to realize that if someone who is overweight ate less and moved more on a regular basis, they would indeed have found the ‘cure’.

However, in reality the ‘cure’ for overweight and obesity is much more complicated. Genuine addiction to certain foods and drinks plays a major part in weight problems, as do a ‘diet mentality’ and a lack of inspiration. If it were as simple as just knowing what to do to lose weight and keep it off, obesity would be as rare as finding a free parking space in London. Luckily, once you understand how to shift from a ‘diet mentality’ to one of ‘food freedom’, as fully described in Chapter 10, then contrary to popular belief, getting slim and staying slim can be easy. A full understanding of a ‘food freedom’ mentality is essential before the brain will even accept that the words ‘easy’ and ‘slimming’ can ever go in the same sentence.

Luckily, once you understand how to shift from a ‘diet mentality’ to one of ‘food freedom,’ then contrary to popular belief, getting slim and staying slim can be easy.

Pharmageddon

It’s not just drug companies getting fatter off the fat crisis. There are a million ‘alternative’ weight-loss remedies out there also searching for their piece of the fat pie. The difference is that when an alternative ‘natural’ remedy suggests it can help aid weight loss in any way then it is immediately described as ‘worthless’ and sometimes even ‘dangerous’ by some of the medical profession. Even today as I write this page there is a headline in the national press which reads:

Herb Cures that Do More Harm than Good

The reason for this bold statement is due to the fact they claim there is ‘no scientific evidence’ that these therapies work or are safe to use. Dr Canter, who was reported in the Daily Mail on 3 October 2007 as saying he wants these treatments banned, said, ‘It seems to me if you look at a drug in mainstream medicine it doesn’t get used on a patient until its efficacy has been demonstrated.’ This same argument seems to be used against just about every type of ‘alternative’ treatment. But unless I am missing something – or again I’ve gone mental – haven’t there been hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of medical drugs pulled off shelves due to dangerous and sometimes death-causing side-effects? Drugs which were passed and ‘scientifically tested’ for ‘effectiveness and safety’? Haven’t I just talked about what happened with phen-phen?

Then we have the well-publicized Vioxx. This ‘scientifically tested drug’ was approved yet responsible for tens of thousands of deaths – yes, TENS OF THOUSANDS! The drug was designed simply for pain yet was no better than any over-the-counter drug for the same condition. How the hell did this get approval? The answer is simple – MONEY! A simple pain-reliever can make billions, so imagine when there’s a promise of no more fat – a licence to print money.

Isn’t it true that there have been several lawsuits filed against major ‘legal’ drug companies over fraudulent scientific data? Isn’t it also true that the scientific study into a drug’s ‘effectiveness’ and ‘safety’ is sometimes funded by the producer of the drug itself? Isn’t it also true that many of the companies who are responsible for the so-called ‘independent’ scientific study have a financial interest in the drug company for whom the study is being conducted? In case you didn’t know, the shocking answer is yes.

Please, if you get nothing else from this book, DON’T EVER TAKE A WEIGHT-LOSS PILL. I hope I can show you in this book that weight loss is within everyone’s power. The ‘cure’ is the same for all and – guess what – it’s NOT a flipping drug. What a shocker! If you are overweight the cause of your problem is not a ‘slimming pill deficiency’. Let’s get to the cause and quit simply trying to treat the symptom.

THE FIRST EVER NON-PRESCRIPTION WEIGHT-LOSS PILL

GlaxoSmithKline launched the ‘Alli’ pill in the US in 2007. Such is the desperate need for a quick-fix weight loss that 75 million of these drugs were sold in the first six months alone, proving once again that big people are big business for the pharmaceutical industry. By the time you read this book, Alli will probably be on sale in the UK, no prescription needed. Alli often causes oily anal leakage and flatulence if you eat more than their recommended 15g of fat a day.

A Touch of OCD

The main issue I have with any OCD (Over the Counter Drug) weight loss drug is the huge potential for abuse. For people desperate to lose weight, the temptation to take more than the recommended daily dose can be too great. There are many who will wrongly think the more they take the more weight they will lose, and there is no doubt that in some cases people will get obsessed with the drug. It’s worth knowing that in the USA Alli sold around $7 million worth of the drug every week (yes, week) at the start of 2008. Not only is there a problem with anal leakage, but Mayo Clinic specialist Donald Hensrud MD estimates Alli would only contribute to about three pounds a year of weight loss. Yes, a year! He also advises users to take a daily multivitamin to help make up for the drug’s other negative effect on absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, K and beta carotene.

However, unlike drugs for other diseases, in my view the science behind this drug is flawed for the following reasons, so it’s quite easy for people to see that pills are not the solution for fat, and that natural methods are the obvious and only way forward. Alli stops the body absorbing fat in food. This undigested fat, rather than being stored, is passed through the body. This sounds like a dream for most overweight people and no doubt is why millions are buying it. The problem is that these pills can do nothing about the excess refined sugar that is converted into fat. Not only that but WE NEED FAT! If these pills get misused (which could easily happen with a non-prescription drug), many could end up with an EFA deficiency. EFA stands for essential fatty acids, the clue here being the word essential. If we don’t get a regular supply of good fat we will suffer many adverse health symptoms, which ironically we would no doubt treat with more drugs, keeping the drug merry-go-round going nicely. On top of that, Alli interferes with the absorption of some vitamins, so people are advised to supplement their diet with a daily multivitamin – once again, you really can’t make this stuff up! Oh, and the severe diarrhoea which can occur with this drug can also cut the effectiveness of contraceptive pills – brilliant! Once again my advice is as clear as it gets: NEVER EVER TAKE A WEIGHT-LOSS PILL!

Fat Lies

There have been many cases of ‘foods’ that have passed every test in the book for human consumption which have proved years later to be extremely harmful. Take trans-fats for just one of hundreds of possible examples. A recent report from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said, ‘The trans-fats found in food containing hydrogenated vegetable oil are harmful and have no known nutritional benefits. They raise the type of cholesterol in the blood that increases the risk of coronary heart disease. Some evidence suggests that the effects of these trans-fats may be worse than saturated fats.’

The question I have is a simple one: how come this wasn’t known before this type of fat entered the food chain? Why, after all the ‘tests’ and ‘research’ which is required before any food is passed, weren’t the harmful effects spotted? One thing’s for sure: if this type of adverse reaction was ever seen with any type of juice therapy it would be banned immediately, and no doubt I would be up on some kind of charge for ‘endangering the health of others’ and possibly even ‘manslaughter’. What’s mental is that despite the fact these harmful effects of trans-fats are known and have been known for over 20 years, there is still (at the time of writing) no obligation for food manufacturers to display the amount of trans-fats on product labels.

EGG ON HER FACE

In 1988 a senior government scientist became convinced that a general rise in salmonella poisoning in the UK must be caused by the bacteria getting inside chickens’ eggs. The junior health minister at the time – Edwina Currie – took his comments on board and made a public announcement which led to complete panic. Millions of chickens were slaughtered and thousands of small egg producers were put out of business. Four years later the government reversed its policy, acknowledging that eggs had not been the problem after all. Just one scientist’s opinion gets taken as read and millions suffer.

The point I am making is that just because something has been ‘medically and/or scientifically tested’ for ‘effectiveness and safety’, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective or in any way safe. And, again, it isn’t true to say drugs are always fully tested for their safety and effectiveness before going into the public domain – just read Dr Richard Halvorsen’s superb book The Truth About Vaccines with regard to the short time the MMR jab was ‘tested’ before being made almost compulsory.

If all the medicines that were tested were super effective there wouldn’t be a multi-billion-dollar alternative market. After all, we all pay into the kitty and life would be much cheaper if most medical treatment had the ‘good and positive’ effect so often claimed. When I was covered from head to foot in psoriasis the only treatment I was offered at the time was either high-potency steroid cream or going to hospital and being covered in ‘tar’ and bandages for six weeks. Both treatments would have ‘thinned’ my skin and caused me to become sensitive to sunlight, which, ironically, is one of the best natural treatments for this skin condition. Both treatments would also have done nothing whatsoever to try to get to the cause of problem.

In countries such as Denmark, people with severe skin conditions such as psoriasis are flown to the Dead Sea in Israel for one month in order to treat their condition. The enlightened medical profession, along with those responsible for the best use of taxpayers’ money, realized that it actually costs less to send patients to the Dead Sea for a month than it does to keep them in hospital covered in bandages for six weeks. Not only is it better value for money but it is extremely effective as well. The Dead Sea is one of the most unique places on earth, highly dense in natural healing salts and minerals, as well as being the lowest place on earth – making it one of the safest places to get natural sunlight therapy. I was never offered this option, and despite what I put into the ‘kitty’, I always had to pay my own way to Israel, as well as for any alternative treatment for my condition. It is nice to know that we all pay for health care many times over, once in tax and once again in ‘alternative’ measures when, not so much if, any ‘tested’ medical treatment fails us.