One Good Reason to Avoid Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs

By Shane Ellison, M.Sc.

I've been called a lot of things. Science Nerd... Professor... and Cholesterol-Lowering Drug Nazi are among those that can be mentioned here. The only one I'll admit to is being a Cholesterol-Lowering Drug Nazi.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) amass billions of dollars each year pretending to be a safe and effective way to protect against heart disease. Yet science shows that these drugs represent a clear and present danger to your health. In addition to lowering cholesterol, they elicit some really nasty side effects. Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) is just one of them.

ALS occurs when cells of the nervous system (brain and spinal chord) become inactive. This can be caused by many cellular dysfunctions. But it's usually from a protein entanglement within the nerve cell. Once tangled, these cells can no longer pass electrical messages through the body, resulting in a loss of voluntary muscle control. As time passes, muscle wasting (a Science Nerd would call it "atrophy") develops. Victims of ALS usually die from the inability to breathe when muscle loss has reached an extreme.

The national average of those who suffer from ALS is a mere .0005 percent. But - sit down for this one - among those who reported suffering from "drug-induced ALS," nearly a third were using cholesterol-lowering drugs! Apparently, this class of drugs can "tangle" something known as "tau proteins."

But protecting yourself from premature heart disease does not mean you have to put yourself at risk of wiping out your nervous system. You can do it with four simple tactics: Minimize your sugar intake, take part in interval training, maintain healthy vitamin D levels by spending time in the sun, and supplement with fish oil to boost your omega-3 levels.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. An internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition, he is the founder of The AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery package.]

It's Good to Know: Depositing Checks From Home

The ATM freed bank customers from having to wait in long lines to deposit checks. And soon, this simple transaction could be taken care of from the comfort of your home. Several banks are considering adopting technology that would allow customers to scan checks with their home computers, and then submit them to the bank over the Internet.

This system - Remote Deposit Capture - has been in widespread use for several years among business clients. A banking services company recently modified it for individuals and has been lobbying banks to adopt the innovation. Check with your bank to see if they offer it.

(Source: CNN)

Word to the Wise: Magniloquent

"Magniloquent" (mag-NIL-uh-kwent) refers to lofty or grandiose speech or expression. The word is from the Latin for "great" + "to speak."

Example (as used by Algis Valiunas in Commentary): "[Wallace] Stevens did for American poetic language what Saul Bellow was to do for prose, extending its boundaries, taking in the magniloquent, the arcane, the plainspoken, the gaudy, the low-rent."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2305, 03-17-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.