The AHA also rakes in millions from food companies which are also million dollar donors and which pay from $5,490 to $7,500 per product to gain the "heart-check mark" imprimatur from the AHA, renewable, at a price, every year. The foods so anointed have to be low in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol yet Boar's Head All Natural Ham (340 milligrams of sodium in a 2-ounce serving) somehow made the cut as did Boar's Head EverRoast Oven Roasted Chicken Breast (440 milligrams of sodium in a 2-ounce serving). Such processed, high-sodium meats raise blood pressure, the risk of cardiovascular disease and the risk of diabetes. A review of almost 1,600 studies involving one million people in ten countries on four continents showed that a 1.8-ounce daily serving of processed meat raised the risk of diabetes by 19 percent and of heart disease by 42 percent.
The new guidelines might make sense if statins were truly as effective as their proponents claim, and if they had no adverse effects. But they have an increasing list of side effects, which affect at least 18 percent of people who take them. These range from muscle pain, weakness and damage to cataracts, cognitive dysfunction, nerve damage, liver injury and kidney failure.
Even the most avid statin proponents agree that statins do not prevent 60 to 80 percent of cardiac events. This is called "residual risk." If there were a vaccine, say Vaccine X, that did not prevent 60 to 80 percent of cases of Infection Y, very few would be inclined to take it.
As Jerome Hoffman, MD, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at UCLA wrote recently with regard to these guidelines: "How did we arrive at a place where conflicted parties get to make distorted semi-official pronouncements that have so much impact on public policy?" How indeed?
By Barbara Roberts, MD is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She is the author of The Truth about Statins and How to Keep from Breaking Your Heart: What Every Woman Needs to Know about Cardiovascular Disease . Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and author of Born with a Junk Food Deficiency.
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