Don?t believe all drug companies say

After reading the newest study about cholesterol-reducing statins versus anti-oxidants with the antioxidants losing out I took notice.

The first thing that came to mind was which pharmaceutical company paid for the expensive three-year clinical study? It was reported in the Nov. 29 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was a double-blind placebo-controlled study by the way, the gold standard for studies, and it is what catches a prescribing physician's eye. Double-blind means the physician doesn't know which patient is getting what, nor does the patient. Placebo-controlled means that some people only get sugar pills.

The study raised questions about the effectiveness of using inexpensive anti-oxidants to reduce cholesterol levels. Of course the media reported the results be-cause they were newsworthy and the opposite of widely accepted knowledge.

As a result, the already-confused public probably wonders, "NOW what do we take to stay healthy?"

Harvard School of Public Health phys-ician Eric Rimm immediately discounted the study's conclusions because the sampling was too small only 160 people.

Rimm also noted that researchers didn't sort out the effects of the different kinds of antioxidants that were used in the study. Rimm studied the antioxidant Vitamin E eight years ago and made a connection between it and staying heart-disease free.

I'm not knocking pharmaceutical companies not much anyway. They've saved countless lives and relieved pain with innovative drugs. But as a wise friend once told me, always follow the money to see who benefits.

The money in this case comes from the big business of the sale of statins, be-cause everyone seems to have high cholesterol these days, and in America, if we can take a pill for it, we usually will.

But today's smart consumers those who opt for lifestyle changes over drugs also want more than just ballyhoo about the newest drug on the block. They want information, and it's available on the Internet. By looking it up they can make knowledgeable health care choices, not just blindly follow the fad or ad-vice of the day.

I know the wisdom of this from personal experience. When I entered what has been described as "the old crone" stage of life when estrogen slows down and progesterone stops altogether I readily took the artificial hormones my OB/GYN suggested. That was my immediate response to my first "hot flash," or what my enlightened women friends term "power surges." My first came as I notarized a document for clients my face burned, sweat dripped from my head and my glasses fogged up!

The widely prescribed PremPro worked OK, but I bloated up like a ripe watermelon waiting to be thumped one of the side-effects mentioned on the insert that came with the pills. A woman friend, tired of my whining, introduced me to the pioneering work of Dr. John Lee.

Lee, a California physician, took the advice of a biochemist and started treating his older female patients with natural progesterone cream to combat meno-pause symptoms and help rebuild bone.

Lee also recommended herbs like gingko biloba for memory and ginseng for fatigue for his patients. The biochemist taught him which vitamin supplements would reduce symptoms, too.

They worked! Lee said the pharmaceutical companies weren't delighted when he wrote about his findings in the landmark book "What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Menopause," but women were. And women told other women, as they have since time began.

Lee said progesterone is a necessary hormone from which many other hormones are derived for all humans, and also stimulates cells that make bones. He also said that estrogen and estrogen-like substances are in plentiful supply in our food and environment, and suggested that women are not estrogen-deficient but rather are estrogen-dominant and need, in most cases, natural progesterone to balance the excess estrogen.

That's not exactly the current wisdom being touted by the pharmaceutical companies who want women to buy their ex-pensive drugs.

Lee also said progesterone, like Vita-min E, is a naturally occurring substance and can't be patented. So drug companies invented their own version artificial hormones. They altered the chemical make-up of natural progesterone and came up with a salable product, generically called "progestin" which has many side-effects not found in the natural product. Then the drug companies added "conjugated estrogen" made out of horse urine! Yucka!

And what's so funny about that besides the horse urine part is that a compounding pharmacy can provide natural estrogen products for women if prescribed by a doctor. Only who knew? The drug companies didn't want to tell us.

Up until a few years ago, there had not been clinical trials on Lee's experiences. He had to rely on his work with his own patients. He also collected stories from women who used natural progesterone and their doctors who documented the results. But now there's plenty of data that suggests he might be right.

And from my own experience, he's right. But I keep reading, keeping up with the literature just so I can share the info with my kindly, but busy doctor!