What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ October / November 2019

I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with antibiotics. On the one hand, I have to admit that I owe my life to them. In 1942, when my mother was 24, her dentist unwisely extracted a tooth while she had the flu. Within days, her neck ballooned with a streptococcus infection, and she was rushed to the hospital. My father, then her fiancé, wept helplessly at her bedside while priests filed past him after administering the last rites. But then the wonder drug arrived. As a last resort, my mother was given penicillin, still in experimental use then. Within a day or two, the swelling that had almost obscured her face simply melted away. My ordinarily doubting father rushed off to church and humbly knelt before the altar, convinced that he had…

Dr. Jean Monro, medical director of the Breakspear Hospital, is an internationally recognized specialist in environmental medicine, including such conditions as chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease and multiple chemical sensitivity. She is Fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine and a Board Certified US examiner. Dr. Damien Downing, whose practice specializes in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine and on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), he is also the author of numerous books, including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr. Harald Gaier, arguably the UK’s most knowledgeable practitioner of the major alternative medical disciplines, is registered in the UK as an osteopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, naturopath and medical herbalist. Former director…

A knee saved with exercise Dear WDDTY It was interested to read about how to avoid a hip replacement with exercise (WDDTY Aug/Sep 2019). By pure chance, a personal experience has given it extra credibility for me. I use my local gym two or three times a week, and from time to time I get Chris, one of the personal trainers working there, to put me through my paces. This week he decided that I needed to improve the strength in my legs, and in the course of suggested exercises for my knees he remarked that he had saved a client from knee replacement surgery through correct exercises. Apparently, his client told him that he was due for a replacement in a few months’ time, and Chris suggested that there would be no…

Wash your hands, doc! Patients getting fatal infections Around 100,000 Americans die each year from an infection passed on by doctors who didn’t wash their hands between seeing patients. Most of the deaths happen in hospitals; around 75,000 patients die in US hospitals every year from an infection spread by a doctor or nursing staff. Overall, 722,000 hospital patients pick up an infection from medical staff in the US every year—that’s around one in every 25 patients—including 30 percent of all patients in intensive care units (ICUs). And it’s all so avoidable, say researchers from the Roy J and Lucille A Carver College of Medicine in Iowa. Hospital staff just have to wash their hands, especially if they’re moving from a ‘dirtier’or more contaminated environment to a cleaner one. But after observing staff in…

Statins aren’t working for 50 percent of patients… Statin drugs aren’t working for half the people taking them to control their cholesterol levels. Although the drug’s manufacturers are expected to achieve $1 trillion in sales by next year, statins aren’t reducing the so-called ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol to healthy levels in 50 percent of patients, which means they are unwittingly still at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Researchers aren’t sure why the drugs have such a low rate of effectiveness. It could be because side-effects—such as muscle pains—become so bad that people stop taking them, or it may be down to their genetic makeup rendering the drug ineffective (see News Focus, page 20). The researchers, from Nottingham University in the UK, measured the effectiveness of statins in over 165,000 patients. They discovered that half…

Worldwide sales of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are set to hit $1 trillion next year—but two new studies question whether they are fit for purpose. In other words, can some of the world’s best-selling drugs actually do what they’re designed to do, and reduce levels of the ‘bad’ LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol that is supposed to clog arteries and cause coronary heart disease (CHD)? Statins fail to lower LDL cholesterol by any meaningful level in more than half of the patients taking the drug, the first study has discovered. After two years, 51.2 percent of patients hadn’t seen their levels fall by the 40 percent target set by medical guidelines.1 Researchers from Nottingham University analyzed data from 165,400 patients who didn’t have CHD but were considered at risk. The drugs were effective in…