Christopher C. Barr
http://www.healthtruthrevealed.com
May 9, 2009

Drug Companies Switching Tactics To Sell More Cholesterol Drugs

HDL as Holy Grail

Statin drugs that reduce the type of cholesterol known as LDL have been all the rage for many years.  LDL is called “the bad cholesterol”.

Statins are the biggest selling class of drugs with annual sales estimated at $20 billion or more.  These drugs have begun to go off patent so sales dollar amounts are set to plummet as generic varieties are set to flood the field.

The focus of mainstream research has finally turned from bad to good – but alas only figuratively speaking.

Research has heated up for drugs that increase the type of cholesterol known as HDL in recent years.  HDL is called “the good cholesterol”.

Why has it taken decades to turn the focus from “bad” to “good”?  Is the change in focus as the “bad” is about to fall out of grace as a financial windfall due to love of humanity or love of money (the root of all evil).

Heavyweights such as Merck, Roche, Eli Lilly and Pfizer as well as lesser pharmaceuticals have stepped into the ring to fight to be first to develop drugs that increase “good” HDL rather than to decrease “bad” LDL.  None have made it to market because they are not only not so “good” but actually quite “bad”.

The Pfizer one was so bad that it was recently shelved even though $800 million dollars went into its development.

Get ready, get set … CHROMIUM

Few if any scientific researchers of the last 100 years were more accredited and experienced researchers regarding cardiovascular health than the late Dr. Henry Alfred Schroeder, M.D., a long time Dartmouth University professor.

Dr. Schroeder noted that cholesterol increases were linked to sinking levels of the mineral trace element nutrient chromium more than 30 years ago.

Schroeder discovered that chromium was the factor that managed cholesterol as he wrote “we found that chromium in the aorta was not detected (too low to be found) in almost every person dying of coronary artery disease, one manifestation of atherosclerosis, and was present in almost every aorta of persons dying accidentally.”

Cholesterol has been blamed for decades as a primary cause of heart disease.  However, cholesterol problems are only an effect caused by a deficiency of chromium.

Schroeder wrote of “the typical American diet, with about 60 per cent of its calories from refined sugar, refined flour, and fat”.  He noted that this diet “was apparently designed not only to provide as little chromium as feasible, but to cause depletion of body stores of chromium.”

“The result is a prevalent disease, in this case, atherosclerosis,” concluded Schroeder about chromium deficiency.

Right tool for the job

Schroeder noted chromium supplements that are grown rather than concocted by man in his laboratories to be “100 times more active”.  He expressed great hope for atherosclerosis and diabetes when these grown source chromium supplements became available.  It was not until after his death during the 1970s that these supplements became available.  They have been tragically ignored ever since.

My own personal observations with a great many individuals have confirmed the postulations from Dr. Schroeder and his research.  Reductions of LDL and total cholesterol levels, and increases in HDL levels are consistently noted with use of chromium supplements from grown origins.  Reductions of triglyceride levels have been noted as well.

Patently absurd

Chromium studies on these matters by (and funded by) government research consistently utilize patented – and not grown – chromium supplements.  Almost exclusively this is with the patented chromium picolinate concocted by man in his laboratories.  Inconsistent are the results received.

Why not test the grown variety?  Do they want for us not to get better or is it a matter of money?

In a curious – or not so curious – twist chromium picolinate just happens to have been created and patented by the government.

The term “patent medicines” once referred to questionable nostrums.  Today’s patented medicines are now the gold standard in a literal, monetary sense though more and more are being discovered for the noxious – and questionable – nostrums that they all too often are.

For the $800 million dollars spent by Pfizer for their failed HDL drug more than 3 million people could have received a hearty (pun intended) amount of 100 per cent whole food grown chromium supplements for more than one year.

For the $20 billion dollars spent on statin drugs annually almost every adult American could have received a hearty (pun intended) amount of 100 per cent whole food grown chromium supplements in the same year.

Patented “nutrients” may not be as bad as patented medicines but they may be little better, either.

Of course, the government could simply enforce the Pure Food & Drug Act so that vital chromium was not removed more than 90 per cent during the refining of white flour and white sugar.  But that is yet another money matter.

Christopher C. Barr writes Naturally Speaking from Arkansas: The Natural State … naturally! You may write him c/o P. O. Box 1147, Pocahontas, Arkansas 72455 or by e-mail at servantofYHVH@hotmail.com .