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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
Do Not Expect or Look for Miracles In A Bottle—Why the New Cholesterol Standards and Attendant Drug Promotion by the Federal Government Is A Very Bad
George Santayana, who gave the English-speaking world many a memorable line (including "fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aims"), was of the opinion that "miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood." Just so. Yet, instead of encouraging citizens with moderately high cholesterol levels to engage in self-managing lifestyles (diet, exercise, stress management and so on), and recommending incentives to help them to do so, a government panel (most of the experts are consultants to or receive honorariums from Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers or other drug companies) has urged miracles in a bottle.
Specifically, in case you have not heard, a quasi-governmental group appointed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (a part of the National Institutes of Health) has released new cholesterol standards that will create a flood of money for big companies like Pfizer, Merck and Bristol-Myers-Squibb. Expensive drugs such as Lipitor, Zocor and Pravachol, made by these companies, respectively, are being put forward as treatment protocols in the new guidelines. These changes will triple -- to 36 million people -- the number of Americans with prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs. No less than 18 percent of adult Americans will be on these so-called "statin" drugs, which not incidentally will bring in nearly $30 billion a year for the drug giants, according to Federal estimates.
From a wellness perspective, it seems that our government has created conditions for medicating an increasingly larger segment of the population. Overnight, this new ruling on cholesterol standards will require HMOs and other insurers to support vastly more citizens on "drug therapy," many, if not most, of whom could derive the same cholesterol-lowering benefits from wellness-related initiatives. The lifestyle alternative is being ignored because there is no confidence on the part of the people who advanced this latest miracle in a bottle scheme that citizens could be persuaded to make lifestyle changes.
This is a morbid form of pessimism that should not be acceptable to taxpayers, physicians asked to prescribe these medications, or the 36 million intended recipients of more drugs and less lifestyle intervention protocols. In my view as a wellness promoter, it's a pitiful situation, one that appalls not only wellness extremists, such as yours truly, but others as well who believe people are capable of assuming more responsibility for the quality of their lives. These dissenters include such notable lifestyle advocates as Dean Ornish, author and internist at the University of California at San Francisco and Sidney Wolfe, director of the consumer empowerment organization, Public Citizen.
What is most needed is a crash program in self-management for those at risk of heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses linked to high cholesterol and other medical indicators. Coupled with financial and other incentives and creative learning opportunities, such a quality-of-life strategy would lessen citizen dependence upon drug companies and increase consumer ability to live a drug-free life. Does anyone really believe that the human species in our modern world, in a country with all the advantages enjoyed by Americans, ought to have such a huge percentage of its citizens in such dire health straits, medicated to this degree?
The goal of the NIH and all other government and private organizations associated with health policy should be to motivate people to do more than avoid heart attacks and others disease conditions. We should be affirming well-being, and helping people learn why it pays handsomely to stay well in the first place and recover most expeditiously from risk situations (such as high cholesterol levels) with diet, exercise and other self-managing strategies. Personally, I don't believe that anyone should be taking these or related medications who has not been medically supervised while following ambitious diet, exercise and other wellness-related initiatives.
The cynical view of the public, apparently adopted by the committee members who surely would not have allowed their drug-industry associations to taint their judgments, is that people are too lazy to stop smoking, lose weight around their bellies and exercise vigorously and regularly, learn to better manage stress, and find ways to enjoy life more. They believe citizens will always favor miracles in a bottle to the hard work of self-management. Scott Grundy, the director of the center for human nutrition of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and chairman of the committee that made these recommendations, said as much in an interview with the Wall Street Journal ("New Government Cholesterol Standards Would Triple Number of Prescriptions," 5/16, B1 and 6): "We used to say to try lowering it (cholesterol) with diet first, but now we say that if your LDL is above 130 and you have coronary disease, you should be on drug therapy." Dr. Ornish, on the other side, maintains that very low-fat diets should be prescribed before drugs, adding, "It's so easy to write a prescription for a statin drug. Most people don't even know they have a choice because most doctors assume people can't change diet and lifestyle."
That's what it has come to—physicians, the government and its experts have written off the American public as lifestyle lowlifes too feeble, lazy and/or dumb to take better care of themselves.
Don't YOU get sucked into the miracle in a bottle conspiracy by drug-company subsidized and focused experts and cynical public officials. Take responsibility for the quality of your own life, minimize your reliance on drugs while favoring exercise, diet and the other domains and skill areas of a wellness lifestyle. You will save money, minimize or completely avoid medications and live better and, most likely longer, as well.
Choose wellness over Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers-Squibb and all the other miracle in a bottle merchants. Best wishes. Comments, as always, are warmly welcomed and always appreciated and acknowledged.
Domain: mentalSubdomain: effective decisions
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