(The 5 deadly pills: Beta blockers, Folic acid, Anti-depressants, Vitamin D and Statins.)
Chemist Exposes 5 Deadly Pills!
By: Shane Ellison, MS
Don’t ask me why. But, just as I’ve reveled in swallowing nine shots of tequila in a dank, Mexican bar, American’s are proud pills poppers. They wear their prescriptions like a badge…I’m not sure which is worse. But, if I had to bet, I’d say “pill pride.”
When I toss too many back, I know what I’m getting into. My ego goes from being really big to very big in the blink of an eye. This is partly why my book, Over-The-Counter Natural Cures, is so much fun to read (or offensive depending on your point of view). At times, I drank to break up the monotony of writing, and subsequently my ego took pot-shots at the pharmaceutical and supplement industries (essentially, one in the same). That’s a predictable outcome, and knowing that is awareness in motion, no matter how stupid the act might be.
In contrast, the outcome associated with popping pills can be unpredictable because you rarely get what you’re being promised. Rather than gain health, sometimes you lose it, along with your wealth. Just as counterfeit Rolex watches are sold to intoxicated teenagers on the streets of Mexico, the pill pushing industry sells counterfeits of Mother Nature to consumers dizzy with marketing spin. Here are five of the deadliest pills that you and your loved ones might be swallowing.
#1 Fat Fertilizers that Plummet Sexual ability
Metabolism is controlled by switches in the body known as beta-receptors. When triggered, they tap into our fat stores to create energy; much like a wine merchant may go to the wine cellar to grab a customer’s favorite bottle of Merlot.
Without this key metabolic switch being activated, fat festers in the gut with nowhere to go, and the body uses carbohydrates (sugar) as fuel. This is why overweight people crave sugar – their body is constantly burning it, while storing fat. Patients using beta blockers are circumventing the vital fat burning process, while at the same time losing sexual ability to due artificially low blood supply to those critical areas of male anatomy. Over time, unsightly belly fat comes on like gangbusters regardless of exercise or diet – and wives get grumpy.
It doesn’t have to be like this. High blood pressure is not an instant death sentence. In fact, sometimes it is a normal process of aging. The goal of maintaining a blood pressure at or near 120/80 or more recently 115/75 is based on drug company hype, not science. Such low recommendations ensure that healthy people are converted into patients. When blood pressure goes beyond this, there is an easy fix.
Weaning from prescription drugs – beta blockers – and using hawthorn in place of them plummets blood pressure, while enhancing the health of your blood and heart! And it won’t accidentally put you in to the Fat Gain Hall of Fame! For aggressive control of blood pressure, inflammation and blood clotting, I designed CardioFX.
Note: Commonly Used Brand Names in the United States: Betapace (sotalol), Blocadren (timolol), Brevibloc (esmolol), Bystolic (nebivolol), Cartrol (carteolol), Coreg (carvedilol), Corgard (nadolol), Inderal (propranolol), Inderal-LA (propranolol), Kerlone (betaxolol), Levatol (penbutolol), Lopressor (metoprolol), Normodyne (labetalol), Sectral (acebutolol), Tenormin (atenolol), Toprol-XL (metoprolol), Trandate (labetalol), Visken (pindolol), Zebeta (bisoprolol)
#2 The Pregnancy Vitamin That Increases Cancer 30%
Just as counterfeit Rolex watches are sold to intoxicated teenagers on the streets of Mexico, the drug industry pushes counterfeits of Mother Nature to consumers dizzy with marketing spin. I’m talking about the “folic acid fallacy.” Folic acid is a cheap counterfeit isolate of the naturally occurring “folate.”
The term folate (not folic acid) encompasses a slew of naturally occurring chemical cousins – chemists call them isomers – that have a wide range of positive roles in the body. Without full-spectrum natural folate, our body becomes a breeding ground for Alzheimer’s disease, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, neural tube defects, poor cognitive performance, depression, hearing loss and many types of cancer.
In one of the biggest natural heists in pharmaceutical history, Big Pharma has stolen the real folate from the marketplace and replaced it with their counterfeit: Folic acid. Known to chemists as pteroylglutamic acid monoglutamate, the drug folic acid is one of the best-selling counterfeits infiltrating nutritional supplement products such as multi-vitamins and prenatals. Adding injury to insult, the FDA mandated that grain-based foods such as bread and cereal, be fortified with it in 1996. The only thing missing is a “black box warning,” because the side effects are staggering.
Today, an estimated 274 million people are being exposed to folic acid. Unbeknownst to them, the synthetic compound has proven adverse effects and according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “no long term studies exist to evaluate the risks associated with prolonged use.” Supplement promoters always get their panties-in-a-wad hearing this, insisting that “I’m missing vital studies.” Please. I have piles of research papers bigger than most midget thinkers who push cheap, nutritional supplement propaganda online –Ah, there goes my ego again, and I’m not even drinking.
Prenatal and postnatal supplementation of folic acid in mothers on a standard diet resulted in the occurrence of higher numbers of cancer tumors. The Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening trial linked folic acid intake with 20% to 32% increased risk of breast cancer in women consuming more than 400 microg/d supplemental folic acid.
Moms who supplement with folic acid face a drug induced illness known as MTHFR (methylenetetrahydrofolate polymorphism). Kinda like the shuffling of cards, folic acid can shuffle your genetic map leading to altered DNA activity, putting moms at risk for heart disease as well as colonic cancer and acute leukemia later in life. Writing for Nature magazine, scientists warned in 2005 that the use of folic acid in fortification programs worldwide could have, “the side effect of increasing the prevalence of some of the most significant, human life-threatening diseases.”
The history of folate dates back to 1931 when chemists concluded that anemia was caused by a dietary deficiency of the vitamin, based on their discovery of it in folate rich foods like liver and yeast. Big Pharma – smelling big money in a synthetic version – moved quickly to counterfeit the natural cure. Folic acid was created in a lab in 1941 and today has replaced natural folate consumption, but not without risk.
Fortunately, wiping out illness associated with a folate deficiency is simply a matter of adhering to “nutrient logic” rather than popping unpredictable pills. You can do this by bolstering your diet with foods rich in folate like liver, leafy green vegetables (such as spinach and turnip greens), fruits (such as citrus fruits and juices), eggs, dried beans and peas, and the forgotten master folate supplement, non-fortified brewer’s yeast.
#3 Common Psychiatric Drug Induces “Neurotransmitter Hijacking”
Antidepressants strive to increase the levels of a “coping” molecule known as serotonin in the brain. It supposedly helps us find happiness when it’s covered in an avalanche of nastiness. But, it’s never been proven. Still, the drugs attempt to boost serotonin by “selectively” stopping the “reuptake” among brain cells. This is where the whole SSRI acronym came from—“selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.” It’s a slick name, but a stupid idea. Nothing is selective in the body.
While trying to block the reuptake of serotonin, antidepressants can also prevent its release and that of another brain compound known as dopamine. The areas of the brain responsible for release and reuptake of these neurotransmitters are so damn similar (after all, they work on the same molecule) that an antidepressant drug isn’t smart enough to understand which one it is supposed to work on. So it does what any dumb drug would do, it blocks both. That’s why users usually carry a glassy stare in their eye. Fully under the psychiatric spell, they’ve tuned out.
Deep sadness, fear, anger and aggression can set in over time. By removing serotonin and dopamine from the brain, long-term antidepressant users can’t find or feel happiness. Instead, they may become buried in the avalanche of nastiness. And if you can’t find or feel happiness in life, what’s the point? What’s going to stop you from snapping your own neck or spraying bullets on your classmates? Not much when you live in your own personal antidepressant hell.
Think this is all opinion?
According to the FDA, antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior, worsening depression, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, aggression, psychotic episodes and violence. Some even cause homicidal ideation according to the manufacturers. Many long-term antidepressant users will tell you they no longer feel normal emotions—they’re numb, like zombies.
But the side effects of these drugs aren’t limited to hijacking your feelings and emotional state, causing violent and psychotic states. Physical side effects occur too and include abnormal bleeding, birth defects, heart attack, seizures and sudden death. Over one hundred and seventy drug regulatory warnings and studies have been issued on antidepressants, to sound the alarm on these side effects.
While people can suffer miserably from emotional or mental duress that can hinder their lifestyle, the pseudo-science of psychiatry has yet to solve any of these problems, and in fact only contributes to poor health as seen by the wide array of side effects. In place of psychiatric pills start every other day with exercise, and get plenty of sunshine. Supplement your diet with L-tryptophan and whey isolate protein. Before bed each night, take Mother Nature’s knockout pill, valerian. Combined, these will help your body produce its own “antidepressant compounds” throughout the day. Minimize sugar and alcohol, which put a monkey-wrench into this innate protective mechanism.
#4 The Sunshine Counterfeit That Suffocates Your Heart
In the early 1930’s, some dude (a pharmaceutical shill) learned that as sun rays beamed down to earth at light speed – 670,616,629 miles per hour – our skin produced a family of hormones known as secosteroids in response. I call these “sunshine hormones.”
Profiting from Sunshine
In the 1930’s, seeing great profit potential in sunshine hormones, Big Pharma went to work manufacturing a copy cat. In that pursuit, they narrowed the scope of our sunshine hormones and postulated that it was a single isolate that was responsible for the vast, biological benefits of sunshine. At the same time, they disregarded the unique balance and protection mechanism built by the body to guard against toxicity. Once successful in designing their “Franken-chemical,” they launched a campaign to systematically contaminate our vitamin and food supply with it and make billions.
Turning Sunshine into a Drug
Today, Big Pharma cartels BASF and Hoffman La Roche are the largest manufacturers of the synthetic hormone isolate. To get the masses to swallow it, they erroneously named it “The Sunshine Vitamin,” AKA vitamin D.
Consumers, stimulated by ads, couldn’t wait to start choking it down – so much that old ladies now brag about taking the “drug disguised as a vitamin” to their hairdressers. In reality though, it’s as close to being a sunshine hormone as a tootsie roll is to being chocolate, or a porno is to having sex. I’m not the only one pointing out this fact.
“Vitamin D is not really a vitamin,” wrote scientists for the New England Journal of Medicine.
For something to be a vitamin, it must provide the body with an essential nutrient that it cannot make on its own, but requires for survival –officially.
Since synthetic vitamin D is a drug, foreign to the body, and not required for survival, it’s technically a fraud – an impostor posing as a vitamin. It has “vitamin like” activity, which initially tricks the body into thinking the host of associated co-hormones is present. But this biological ruse proves to be devastating to the body over time.
Before the vitamin D scam was fed to consumers, the deadly “D” was fed to rodents as a means of eradicating the pesky creatures. In their report, “The Endocrine System,” the University of Colorado, reminds us, “Ingestion of milligram quantities of vitamin D over periods of weeks or months can be severely toxic to humans and animals. In fact, baits laced with vitamin D are used very effectively as rodenticides [rat poison].” This is in stark contrast to naturally produced sunshine vitamins, and it isn’t hard to understand.
Once swallowed, the copycat hormone bypasses our innate protective mechanisms and throws hormonal balance out of whack. This “plugs” the body with calcium and induces calcification, which leads to heart failure, kidney damage, and more. Since it’s a “cumulative poison,” people who take the recommended dose every day as vitamin D are saturating their fatty tissues, and at the same time, offsetting their God-given hormonal intelligence. Anyone eating and drinking foods “fortified” with vitamin D are at serious risk.
Nobody has ever been poisoned by naturally produced sunshine hormones.
Scientific Trickery
Promotion for the drug disguised as a vitamin is “business as usual” for the drug, food, and vitamin industries: They work together to instill fear and confusion designed to blur the lines between synthetic and natural. And they’ve done it with a “deficiency hypothesis” that has everyone regurgitating their “25-hydroxy vitamin D” levels in an attempt to avoid rickets, infection, cancer and even a bad haircut, so it seems. But it’s as weak as my PC laptop battery (I’m buying a Mac soon). Ever wonder who defines our “ideal levels?” (See Big Pharma cartels above.)
The God of Medicine
Ironically, the sun was previously known as Apollo, the God of Medicine. And yet, consumers go to great lengths to avoid it thanks to the propaganda. It’s their loss. Responsible sun exposure (minus the sun block) and the subsequent release of sunshine hormones has proven to directly ward off cancer, as well as a number of other serial killers like obesity and type II diabetes.
Vitamin D pills have never been proven to offer such vast benefits…
And if you can’t get adequate sunlight for whatever reason, Mother Nature produces “sunshine hormones” that won’t accidentally put you on a hospital gurney. Salmon, mackerel, sardines, beef/chicken liver, eggs, and select non-fortified cod liver oils are all smart choices for the “solar challenged.”
Nothing like the Real Thing
Highlighting the Vitamin D pill controversy, The New York Times recently wrote that “The excitement about their health potential is still far ahead of the science.” Amen. As long as excitement remains ahead of common sense and science, I’ll take chocolate over a Tootsie Roll, and sex over a porno…I’ll also choose sitting under the sun – over swallowing dangerous vitamin D.
#5 The Cholesterol Pill that Plummets Testosterone and Raises Cancer Rates
As an ex-drug chemist, I witnessed how drug side-effects are hidden from patients and doctors by “big Pharma.” Cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Lipitor, Crestor, Pravachol, Zocor and Mevacor serve as poignant examples.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs decrease CoQ10 levels within the heart, which is well publicized online. This essential nutrient serves as an energy producing molecule and is crucial to proper cardiovascular function. Without it, the heart fails. Congestive heart failure is the outcome. This was highlighted when Merck, makers of the first cholesterol-lowering drug, filed for a patent for its profit-pulling “Mevacor.”
Cholesterol-lowering drugs cut testosterone rates among men – I’ve seen testosterone to be as low as a 13-year old girls among men who use statin drugs! It’s not a mystery. Cholesterol serves as the backbone of this life enhancing hormone, the body uses the compound to produce the male dominant hormone. Cut cholesterol, cut testosterone – grown men start watching chick flicks and are often found cuddling more often than a West Hollywood male – some women love this.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs can also destroy memory. Cholesterol works to ensure the integrity of the “myelin sheath.” This coating within the brain is responsible for encouraging the passage of electrical messages. It is needed for memory and focus. As the cholesterol-lowering drugs deplete cholesterol the myelin sheath breaks down. Memory deteriorates.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs can increase the risk of cancer. Studies show they mimic a growth factor responsible for its proliferation. The growth factor is known as VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor). VEGF is “cancer fertilizer.” Thus, Cholesterol-lowering drug users are creating an environment within their body conducive to cancer growth.
The fact that cholesterol-lowering drugs can potentially cause cancer will never be mainstream. Drug company-funded studies are conveniently short in nature, typically 5 years or less. It takes decades for cancer to develop. Heavy smoking will not cause lung cancer within 5 years. Yet it is a well-known fact that smoking leads to lung cancer. As long as the cholesterol-lowering drug trials last only 5 years, this side-effect will continue to fly below the radar. A coincidence?
Side-effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs are discounted by medical doctors because they are usually hidden by drug companies who pay for the study. Consider: The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has reported that only 30% of statin drug trials have reported the number of participants with one or more negative side-effects caused by the drug!
According to USA Today, the U.S. Government is not sending out warnings either. They reported, “Statins have killed and injured more people than the government has acknowledged.”
Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on cholesterol-lowering drugs to prevent heart disease. Studies show that cholesterol does not play a role in the pandemic killer. In fact, cholesterol appears to increase life-span. You will have to wrestle with this; it is the antithesis of what drug companies and medical doctors promote. But true nonetheless. In 2003, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society showed that elderly with low total cholesterol levels (<189 mg/dL) were at higher risk of dying relative to those with cholesterol levels from 276 to 417 mg/dL!
Choose the Right Pills!
Choosing the right pills, like drinking tequila, has a predictable outcome. But unlike irresponsible tequila consumption (which I don’t condone), deadly pills – no matter how much mass appeal they have – have deadly outcomes. Big Pharma will have to suffer a pay cut as this nutrient logic becomes a reality and natural vitamins stage a comeback. Pill trashing must replace pill popping.
Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison holds master's degree in organic chemistry and is the author of Over-The-Counter Natural Cures (SourceBooks). He's been quoted by USA Today, Shape, Woman's World, US News and World Report, as well as Women's Health and appeared on Fox and NBC as a medicine and health expert.
http://thepeopleschemist.com/chemist-exposes-5-deadly-pills/
