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The above video is obviously “tongue-in-cheek”, and my apologies for the sarcasm, but REALLY bad ideas like giving statin drugs to children deserve to be ridiculed. Yes, childhod obesity is a growing problem and obesity does predispose people of all ages to a long list of chronic health problems. There is no doubt that steps need to be taken by parents to help their kids maintain a healthy weight. But the risks of statin drugs, which are really only now being recognized in adults, could be severe in children whose bodies are still developing. In my opinion, instead of pushing pharmaceuticals as the answer, the medical profession would serve its patients far better by stressing the importance of healthy diet and exercise habits.
I know it is not always easy to get your kids to eat healthy foods. In some cases, it may be difficult to get them to exercise and be active too. It’s even harder when parents fail to set a good example. So parents, if you don’t want your kids to have to suffer with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc., you need to get your own health in order first. If you won’t do it for your own benefit, I hope you will do it for the benefit of your children. Or would you rather just give them the drugs and hope they don’t cause too many side-effects? The choice is yours.
If you’re ready to start eating better and exercising, but you don’t know where to start, I offer you my FREE ebook:
Although the name suggests that it’s a weight-loss book (and it is), it is also a generally healthy approach to eating and exercise, whether or not you need to lose weight. If your current lifestyle is really unhealthy, I don’t recommend that you try to switch over to the program in the ebook right away. Instead, choose one change at a time to implement and get your whole family involved. Maybe it’s just cutting back on soda. Maybe it’s getting SOME exercise. Maybe it’s eating more vegetables. Every little bit counts, and getting started NOW is the important thing. Regardless of what’s going on in your life, start making changes right now and gradually implement more and more changes. You’ll be surprised by how much better you feel. If you get your kids to participate too, you may be surprised at how much better they behave, how much better their overall mood is, and you may even see improvements in their grades and school work. It can be tough going at first, but by making small changes over time, your kids will notice that they feel better too, and then getting them to participate in further changes gets easier over time.
The quote above comes from Robert Brown, Ph.D., one of my instructors when I was in chiropractic school. What Dr. Brown was referring to was that research and statistics, particularly biomedical research and statistics are subjet to all sorts of non-scientific and non-factual “twists” put forth by people with an agenda - and EVERYONE has an agenda - even if they don’t realize it or admit to it.
The point of this post is to make you aware that health-related research and statistics may not always mean what the source wants you to think they mean. To illustrate this, let me give you some examples.
One hotly debated issue in the nutrition field is whether farm raised fish are equivalent nutritionally to wild fish. For instance, about a year ago, I read an “advertorial” (a paid-placement article) that emphatically stated that farm raised salmon have the same amount of omega-3 fatty acids as wild salmon, according to nutrient analysis done by the U.S.D.A.. Yet I had just read an article that stated the opposite. Since both articles referenced the U.S.D.A. as the source of their statistics, I figured that someone was lying and all I had to do was check the U.S.D.A. analysis to find out who.Â
I was wrong - as it turns out, both articles were correct. How could that be, since they had made opposing claims? Well, according to the U.S.D.A., farm raised salmon does have about the same omega-3 content as wild caught - when you look at the amount of omega-3 for an equivalent weight of fish. The thing is, farm raised salmon has a much higher overall fat content than wild salmon, so the amount of omega-3 relative to the total fat content is much less in farm raised salmon than in wild salmon. So, the omega-3 content is about the same, but the omega-3 concentration is quite different.
Another example comes from a study that appeared a few years ago in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. This study was picked up in the popular media and the conclusions of the study were pretty widely reported on television and in many major newspapers. Basically, the study concluded that chiropractic treatment was no better than placebo (a placebo is a sham treatment with no therapeutic benefit) for asthma.Â
Now, I may be biased myself, but let’s look at what that study actually showed. First, the patients were not “run of the mill” asthmatics. They had “treatment-resistant” asthma, which means they had not responded to conventional medical treatment. I think it would be fair to say that these were especially tough cases. Second, the “placebo” they compared chiropractic treatment to was massage therapy. While far from conclusively proven, there has been indication that many asthmatics benefit from massage therapy, so the choice of massage as a placebo treatment is questionable at best. Finally, about half of these treatment-resistant asthma cases actually had a very good response in both the chiropractic and the massage treatment groups (thus the conclusion that chiropractic is no better than placebo). So, did this study prove that chiropractic treatment is worthless for asthma patients (as was how it was reported)? You be the judge. My take on it is that both chiropractic and massage are beneficial about half the time in asthma cases that have not responded to medical treatment. I think that’s pretty good - but I didn’t get to write the headlines.
One final example of how research can lead us astray. Several years ago, the “experts” proclaimed that eggs were terrible for your health, because high cholesterol is bad, and eggs are high in cholesterol. This concept persists to this day despite one little problem with that thinking… about 70% of the cholesterol in your blood is NOT from the food you eat - it’s made by your liver! Several studies have shown that eating eggs, even on a regular basis, does not significantly raise your cholesterol. So, we have all these people worried about their cholesterol (even though cholesterol in and of itself is really not that big of a deal - but that’s a topic for another time) and avoiding eggs in favor of eating cereal for breakfast. Most of that cereal is refined grains and a lot of it is high in sugar - which, to make a long story short, does far more to create health problems than eating eggs ever did.
So is medical research worthless? No, but it is important to realize that one study or statistic can be misinterpreted when taken by itself or outside the context of what else is known and what other studies have been done. My advice is to view any research or statistic reported in the popular media with a little skepticism and a willingness to look further if the findings might impact the way you choose to manage your health.
