[Madmick]

Originally Posted by King Kabuki

Speaking of which one of my long-term success stories came in to see me tonight. This guy was up to 241 and stands about 5'7", and he's diabetic and was so bad if he ate a piece of WHOLE WHEAT bread his insulin would spike and he'd almost go straight into a diabetic coma. His cholesterol and heart was also bad. Now he's 201, looks so good I didn't even recognize him, and can eat 25g of carbs in a sitting with no insulin spike.

He told me a story about how they had him on Lipitor, and every other damn cholesterol medication known to mad made by phramaceutical companies and NONE of them worked. Add that to the side-effects and it was a huge pain in the ass to find anything worth taking. So his cardiologist finally says "try time-released Niacin, 500 mg at first and move up to 750"...now I think he said his LDL was 89 and total cholesterol was 102. I think.

He asked why I thought they never told him about the time-released Niacin (which he bought at fucking Walgreen's), before. I said simple...they make no money off it.

Cardiologists don't really make any money off pharmaceuticals, Kabuki, not even indirectly (except for a select few who have no morals and use their "MD" as a billboard). I don't think that's a fair analysis of his doctor's motives. I don't really know too much about Lipitor, but my understanding was that for many, it works.

[King Kabuki]

Lipitor works but one of it's side-effects is severe muscle cramping. Red Yeast Rice does the EXACT same thing as Lipitor for much less money and minus the cramping. It's so effective you cannot take the two at the same time because they'll cancel each-other out. Now I'm not saying Red Yeast Rice should replace Lipitor, because I'm not AGAINST Pharmaceuticals entirely, I just think people should be given both options.

In-terms of the cardiologists...it's true specialists aren't as much so on the big-phrma take, but they do get kick-backs from what I know. My Aunt worked in an office with a cardiologist and a gastro-enterologist and she said on random days week-to-week they'd have some moop walk in in a business suit with a box of bottles and offer to buy the whole office lobster lunches if they'd be willing to distribute such and such a new medication. She also told me she could get basically whatever kind of medication I need at work for free. If those aren't incentives to push pharmaceuticals I don't know what are. What's killing me about all this is how many of these Companies are coming from the Private Sector and not from the Health Care field. Medical Care for Profit is just bad the way I see it.

[King Kabuki]

Oh yeah and I think pseudoephedrine may be heading for the ban. I have shit sinuses and buy nasal decongestants week-to-week and now in certain pharmacies you have to go through the actual pharmacies to get ones containing pseudoephedrine. Plus they only have x-amount of types of them where they used to have a big selection. I thought this was odd, then I read some re-printed articles about the DEA stopping shipments of it to this Country to try and stint methamphetamine Production.

I went as far as to call up Walgreen's specifically and ask their Customer Service deparment what the dealy-o is and got a bullshit run-around answer. lol So for those of you who like myself, have used these things with no adverse effects (until I started taking small doses of it day-to-day, I was never able to breathe out of both my damn notrils at the same time), we may have to take it in the ass with this one. Damn America and their utter hatred for shit that works and focus on regulation as opposed to education.

[rickdog]

Great read King Kabuki. I agree whole heartedly with what you have written. I think the FDA needs to back off. IMO they should lay off the pro hormones too. Lets use Anabolic Extreme for an example. They provide many great supplements that WORK. ALot of people are calling their supps steroids and some researchers came out with tests that shows they are (I will search for link). Anyway, my point is that you get away with taking 20 or 30 mg's instead of 1000, 2000 mgs of the real deal. It is safer with relativly no side effects. People will go back to the black market now that these supps are being banned and then we will see the truly negative effects of injecting fake concoctions in your ass. Enough of my confused rant. When it comes down to it, I am just sickened by the witchunt put on by asswipe politicians who are smoking their cigarets and drinking their third cup of coffee while talking about the dangers of drugs. They can f themselves

[King Kabuki]

It's all about the cash rick. That's what this Country has been about from day one (in terms of it's "discovery" and "settlement") and that's what it continues to be about now. Health, freedom, these are but side-issues. The Government will do what is in it's financial best-interest plain and simple. It's funny, too because Supplement Companies are starting to catch-on to this. So in a couple of years I have a bad feeling the supplement Industry is going to be no different than pharmaceuticals, figuring if they can't beat the system it's better to join the system.

The reason I say this is because I recently read the second part of a two-part interview with BALCO's Victor Conte. He was asked about if there were any interesting findings (without disclosing confidential medical information on individual clients) in the blood and urine work-ups of Professional atheltes he did when BALCO first really began to get huge. He said probably the most interesting thing they found is that first, the athletes were open and honest about everything they took. Meaning they disclosed in full-detail whatever performance enhancing drugs they were taking mainly because they knew BALCO would find out anyway. Then he went on to say that what was funny about it was that of all the high-end drugs the ahtletes THOUGHT they were taking...most of what they were taking was actually either total bullshit (placebo) or low-grade and low-potency doses of testosterone and nothing more. He said they were very upset to find out how much money they had dumped on "high-end" drugs and "anabolic stacks" when really very few of them had anything in their systems worth purchasing at all.

I think that's quite funny. But what's disturbing is I've noticed a growing trend of this sort of thing in the Supplement Industry as a whole. An example is MRI. This Company has a GLOWING reputation for creating the NO2 and CE2 supplements which are all the rave. Now they have this thing called "Age Less" which is a high-potencty Alpha Lipoic Acid. ALA is well-known for it's health benefits but MRI is the first company to have come out mainstream with a time-released version of it at 600mg. Now here's the clincher for why it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A normal single serving of ALA you can get at 300mg per pill (not time-released), so 2 per day and you have the 600mg right? According to the bottle on the MRI 2 caps is 600mg and it has an asterisk by it. Then the recommended doses says to take 1-2 caps in the morning, and 1-2 later on in the day. So if this shit is so great at $50 per bottle for 120 caps why then do I need to take 1200mg of fuckin time-released ALA? Something is amiss if you do the math. Basically, you're paying twice as much for half the amount of pills, needing to double your dose per day to get effectiveness and according to MRI it's all because it's time-released. I think maybe it's because they make more cash that way.

[Madmick]

Originally Posted by King Kabuki

Lipitor works but one of it's side-effects is severe muscle cramping. Red Yeast Rice does the EXACT same thing as Lipitor for much less money and minus the cramping. It's so effective you cannot take the two at the same time because they'll cancel each-other out. Now I'm not saying Red Yeast Rice should replace Lipitor, because I'm not AGAINST Pharmaceuticals entirely, I just think people should be given both options.

In-terms of the cardiologists...it's true specialists aren't as much so on the big-phrma take, but they do get kick-backs from what I know. My Aunt worked in an office with a cardiologist and a gastro-enterologist and she said on random days week-to-week they'd have some moop walk in in a business suit with a box of bottles and offer to buy the whole office lobster lunches if they'd be willing to distribute such and such a new medication. She also told me she could get basically whatever kind of medication I need at work for free. If those aren't incentives to push pharmaceuticals I don't know what are. What's killing me about all this is how many of these Companies are coming from the Private Sector and not from the Health Care field. Medical Care for Profit is just bad the way I see it.

Oh, definitely.

My little brother's ex-girlfriend's dad was a OB/GYN and he had some new dude over 1-2x a month, according to Cam.

But then there are doctors like my dad who tell those guys, "If it doesn't work the best, you can shove it."

However, what I'm pointing out is that most of that machinery takes place out of the doctors' sphere. They're usually the ones battling the HMO's on such things.

[Madmick]

Actually, I just had a discussion with a cardiologist I know (I coached his kids on my swim team), and he was aware of GI dieting. The problem, he said, is that 90% of people simply won't exercise enough in conjunction with the dieting to effectively lower cholesterol. Even with the knowledge of how to cure their condition, they won't. What can doctors do when their patients are lazy? A doctor cannot treat a person who is not committed to treat himself.

Concerning your customer, I don't know, Kabuki, why the timed-release Niacin wasn't mentioned earlier. Dr. Dahnke said that for about 50% of the population, this option would work; however, it requires at least 2,000mg per day, and he said many have difficulty tolerating that much (this was news to me, but this guy isn't corrupt, and he knows a whole lot more about this than me).

But he said that unless someone's diet was truly horrible to begin with, usually changing diet alone will not make a difference. Apparently it requires a level of exercise most aren't willing to accept.

So the reason for Lipitor to succeed on the scale it has isn't corrupt doctors, it's lazy patients.

Makes sense to me. I've seen enough check-ups to know that people want to come in and have the doctor magically fix them, and they'll resort to really infantile behavior if he can't do this. It pisses me off. They don't want to do any work, they don't want to hear any bad news. They want him to touch them with a wand and have everything be better, and somehow, they feel they've been wronged if this doesn't happen.

I'm not saying there aren't bad doctors out there. Plenty, I'm sure. But I am a believer they're outnumbered by bad patients. I've seen it too much.

[King Kabuki]

I can agree to that. RJ (who is NOT a friend of mine) and I had a discussion earlier about the same principal with Pharma. I basically disclosed that my problem isn't with pharmaceuticals. They do what they do and they do operate on a much more grand a scale than the Supplement Industry. I disagree entirely with their business approach and ethics, but that kind of thing is SUPPOSED to be kept in-check by the FDA. Problem is the FDA is financially dependant on the pharmaceutical industry. This should not be allowed. I'm not entirely against lobbying necessarily, but there should be some sort of cap or system in-practice to keep it reasonable. But rather than that tax dollars are being wasted to NOT confirm that people who we KNOW are using steroids are or aren't. Brilliant.

But Public Ignorance is at the center of it all. And it's a circle. The Public is ignorant and responds in record numbers to scandals, they pressure the Government, who won't pressure the pharmaceutical industry because they don't want to lose the cash. So they pressure the supplement Industry who in-turn draws attention to the Medical Community and the Pharmaceutical Industry who then refers to public ignorance. At some point though someone has to take some responsibility, I'm just unclear as to who it'll be or how it's going to go down. I think eventually Pro Athletes are going to get fed up, because they're the only ones with enough money and people behind them to make a difference.

[King Kabuki]

So the other day this Soldier is in my store. He says he's in a Command position and is attempting to recover from injuries sustained in Iraq. Now get this: I suggest creatine and he freaks out. Says they test people for drugs in the Military. After a few moments of me staring in bewilderment at his reaction I said "they do know Creatine is not a drug, and is perfectly legal, correct?" He said that in his position, if they notice TOO MUCH enhancement in athletic performance then they get very suspicious and start testing for things. And if they find CREATINE there will be serious repercussions. Anyone want to give a shot at what's wrong with this? Hands?

I mean let's not even mention steroids. Let's leave aside creatine for just a moment. TOO MUCH enhancement? These are Soldiers, what's left of the Warrior class. Are they saying they don't want troops to have an advantage in War that is of their own physical being? Of all the people who SHOULD be enhanced it's Soldiers. What is it not "fair" for an enemy we're at WAR with if our soldiers are strong and healthy? This guy had serious injuries, too. Now like I said, I'm not talking about steroids because that's a HUGE debate already going on with Cops...but this is CREATINE. There are 17 year-old High School fucking Wrestlers taking creatine. But for Soldiers who risk their lives to defend bureaucrats it's TOO MUCH enhancement?

I don't even know what more to say. The ridiculousness speaks for itself.

[UbetterTAPout]

On a similar note, KK, I was a Navy Seabee, and 2 of my friends got into a lot of trouble for using creatine. Also, 1 kid ran wind sprints forever just because he had a tub of Ultimate Orange while we were in Bosnia. We never got an answer as to why these over the counter products were feared to be too "steroid like."