Health Campaigning Charities - creatures of the Drug Industry?

The Pharmaceutical Industry has a malign influence on the big health campaigning charities. I have visited this subject before: see http://wildeaboutobesity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/for-new-perspective-on-conflicts-of.html This corruption has been brought to my attention again because some journalists and other concerned individuals/bodies, e.g. here, have been drawing attention recently to the way big charities have been subverted away from their original charitable aims and objectives. They have become instead bloated, overpaid quangos, largely funded from taxation, serving political aims, campaigning for political objectives and deceiving ordinary citizens into donating their time, money and effort to organisations they would not want to fund if they knew the truth about them.

 

My own particular concern is the big health campaigning charities, which I regard as a front for promoting pharmaceutical drugs and thereby increasing the profits of Big Pharma. If drug promotion benefited people's health, I would not be against it. But that is not the case.

 

When the aim is to get more and more people taking prescription drugs, rather than the aim being to prevent, ameliorate or cure the disease, we are clearly in a dystopian world of lies and corruption, of blighted lives and unnecessary suffering. Although these health charities give a modicum of good advice, it is outweighed by misinformation, drug promotion and failure to draw attention to simple, really useful dietary measures. Here are some examples:

 

A crucial dietary measure that would reduce the incidence and severity of childhood asthma is to avoid feeding children salty meals and snacks. - See this article, where you will read, "According to a new study published in the American Dietetic Association, high-salt foods and snacks are linked to lung changes that trigger asthma symptoms.," and that researchers in Greece found, using questionnaires, "Kids who ate high-salt foods more than three times a week saw their risk of asthma symptoms go up almost five times." 

 

We read in this Telegraph report of research in Rome, Italy, led by Dr Giuseppe Corbo. "The study of 20,000 six and seven-year-olds, published in the medical journal Epidemiology, confirmed a strong link with asthma and obesity, but found that salt was the biggest risk. Those with the highest intake were two and a half times more likely to develop asthma." (my emphasis) See also Salt/Sodium in Foods. But AsthmaUK don't tell people about the massive difference salt reduction makes to the incidence and severity of childhood asthma, surely a greater benefit than any drug treatment and with no harmful side-effects or habituation to medications. - My personal opinion is that everyone's health and pocket would benefit if AsthmaUK were to close down.

 

Similarly, Diabetes UK (i.e. www.diabetes.org.uk) gives precisely the wrong dietary advice about diabetes. See this article by Dr Briffa. And this one.

 

And what shall I say about the British Heart Foundation (BHF)? The British Heart Foundation is a charity that states that it aims to prevent people dying from heart diseases. I don't believe that the advice it gives is very likely to succeed in that aim. - To me, the most important preventative measure, and indeed the most important remedial measure with regard to heart problems, is avoiding salt and salty food. This reduces the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, heart attack and heart failure, reduces obesity and reduces breathlessness. It is also helpful to cut down on carbohydrates and eat plenty of healthy fat. (Check out LCHF - Low Carb/High Fat - on your favourite search engine.) - Yet what does the BHF and its spokespeople plug over and over again? - Why statins, of course. It is a drug-oriented website. Its aim does not seem to me to be to prevent people dying from heart diseases. Its aim seems to be to get people to take drugs, especially statins. Statins are controversial, vastly over-prescribed drugs with many adverse side-effects.

 

Did you know that many of the most-prescribed drugs (tricyclic anti-depressants, steroids, antipsychotics, etc.) - by causing sensitivity to salt - can and do actually cause obesity, heart problems and type 2 diabetes, among many other serious degenerative health conditions? And that salt intake is also linked to stomach cancer? And that Paracetamol/Calpol/Tylenol/Acetaminophen (a painkiller) is especially harmful to children? And that there is massive overprescribing of powerful painkillers by UK GPs, leading to addiction and to death by overdose among their unfortunate patients?

 

It seems clear to me that the health campaigning charities should be strongly advising people to reduce salt and sugar intake and cut down or cut out processed food products, since these measures are of enormous benefit to health, particularly with regard to degenerative diseases. And rather than encouraging people to take pharmaceutical drugs that have so many harmful side-effects, often far more harmful than the illness they are being prescribed for, they should be on the side of avoiding drugs unless they are absolutely necessary.

Two simple suggestions that could help to stem the worldwide increase in childhood asthma

A crucial dietary measure that would reduce the incidence and severity of childhood asthma is to avoid feeding children salty meals and snacks. - See this article, where you will read, "According to a new study published in the American Dietetic Association, high-salt foods and snacks are linked to lung changes that trigger asthma symptoms.," and that researchers in Greece found, using questionnaires, "Kids who ate high-salt foods more than three times a week saw their risk of asthma symptoms go up almost five times." 

 

We read in this Telegraph report of research in Rome, Italy, led by Dr Giuseppe Corbo. "The study of 20,000 six and seven-year-olds, published in the medical journal Epidemiology, confirmed a strong link with asthma and obesity, but found that salt was the biggest risk. Those with the highest intake were two and a half times more likely to develop asthma." (my emphasis) See also Salt/Sodium in Foods.

 

Another important precaution is to avoid dosing children with paracetamol/acetaminophen (aka Tylenol and Calpol). There is a wealth of statistical data on that webpage which suggests a link between acetaminophen and childhood asthma.

 

Since AsthmaUK suggested this week that a third of people with asthma are at a high risk of having a potentially fatal asthma attack (see this BBC report), I reckon AsthmaUK ought to do the decent thing and bring these simple precautionary measures to the attention of asthma sufferers and their relatives and carers. Surely it is a moral imperative.

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities I invite you to put the name of one such charity and the words "pharmaceutical sponsors" into your favourite search engine's searchbox. - I typed

asthma.org.uk pharmaceutical sponsors

into my searchbox and I was led to a page about a publication by The Stationery Office, viz.

The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Fourth Report of Session 2004-05

By Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee, Health Committee Parliament Great Britain House of Commons.

Whoever the actual people were who wrote this publication, they were clearly aware that the drug industry's sponsorship of charities is not motivated by philanthropy, but by greed, in the hope and expectation of increasing the sales of their drugs, and thereby increasing their profits. You may draw your own conclusions from that, as I do mine. It leads me to conclude that the advice given on the websites and in the literature of some at least of the major health campaigning charities, such as AsthmaUK, DiabetesUK, British Heart Foundation and others, may not really be in the best interests of the patients/sufferers they ostensibly serve. I hold in mind that we are constantly assured that business companies must act in the interests of their share-holders. So if I wanted to help people suffering from asthma, I personally would advise them to cut down on salt and salty food as this would improve their health in many ways. It would reduce excess fluid retention and thereby reduce excess weight, one of the risk factors for asthma, It would reduce high blood pressure if they had high blood pressure. It would reduce breathing problems. - And very importantly, if they had gained a lot of weight from using prescribed steroids for their asthma symptoms, it would speedily reduce that weight gain and the other serious adverse effects of prescribed steroids.(See my webpage about prescribed steroids.) What I would definitely not do is donate to AsthmaUK... - I don't donate to drug company profits.

Come on, Asthma UK! - Tell people about the safe, easy to reduce their symptoms! - Just eat less salt and salty food!

Lowering Salt Intake reduces symptoms and increases lung function in people whose asthma is usually triggered by doing sports and physical activity

This article appeared on the website of Asthma UK almost 4 years ago. They don't seem to have given much publicity to the benefits of lowering salt/sodium intake since then. - It seems a shame not to.

***Note added May 2nd 2012: The link I have given above no longer works, and the article to which it refers appears to have been removed from AsthmaUK's website. That's a great shame. AsthmaUK is missing an opportunity to help asthma sufferers to reduce their symptoms and breathe more easily in a simple, cost-free way.

I suggest that AsthmaUK could have a page of low salt meal suggestions or recipes. This simple, safe, drug-free change to eating habits produces massive health benefits, not just to people with asthma. - Come on, Asthma UK! - Get telling people about how they can boost their lung function by cutting down on salt!

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
 
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.ukThe site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection