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Crestor Jupiter Study – Problems, Issues and Solutions
By Mark Schauss | November 11, 2008
The recently reported study JUPITER, which shows that the drug Crestor, aka rosuvastatin, would help reduce inflammation in the arteries which would help reduce the number of heart attacks has got me puzzled. What struck me was the amazed reactions by physicians who were shocked, shocked that C-Reactive Protein, a marker for inflammation, was a factor in coronary heart disease. I’ve known this for years as have many of my colleagues. How could they be so suprised?
Anyone who has been to one of my lectures over the past few years can attest to, I have been touting the issue of inflammation over and over again. While it is an important mechanism in triggering immune responses, and helping to rebuild damaged tissue. As defined by this article pulled from the University of Stony Brook, inflammation isn’t all bad – The process of inflammation is designed to dilute, destroy, or otherwise inactive the agent that caused the injury in the first place. Ultimately, the goal of inflammation is to restore damaged or infected tissue to its original state, insofar as possible.
It is acute and chronic inflammation that is the problem though, not the beneficial type I just described. Constant injury to tissue through stress, infection, drugs (both legal and illegal) and environmental toxins that causes the bad type of inflammation that can lead to heart disease (amongst others). Lowering your exposure to these things will lower inflammation. But easier said than done. How do we accomplish this?
Over the next few posts, I will discuss a number of easy to do, economical and effective ways to lower inflammatory reactions that won’t cost $500,000 per person as Crestor will cost to reduce one heart attack. Instead of paying $10 billion a year to prevent 28,000 heart attacks, the methods I will discuss will save a lot more and cost less than 5% of that outrageous figure.
Topics: Drugs, Health, Healthcare, Laboratory Tests, Opinion, pharmaceuticals, Research, Toxicity | No Comments »