Talk about health

Reading and researching all things health-wise certainly shows one thing. And it's not that we're all going to die sooner or later - although that's for certain! No, it's that what was once taken as a fact appears to be not so true as knowledge progresses.

I visualise it something like peeling an onion. Starting with the skin - you examine it, look at it under a microscope, see how it forms and grows, what damages it, the effects of environment, etc, etc. Then you formulate a series of so-called 'facts' about it and publish them as the latest on onion skin.

If you're lucky, the onion establishment review your 'facts' and accept them into the establishment archives to be used as the latest and most up-to-date 'facts. Then, someone decides to take off that skin and see what is underneath - another layer to be investigated and researched. Now, a new set of 'facts' appears to be subject to review and establishment scrutiny.

The very latest 'facts' then become the starting point for research into the third layer of the onion... and so it goes on, with the eventual goal of reaching the very heart of the onion, when all of the 'facts' will be known.

For me, it's the same with medicine and health. Today's facts are either ignored or updated as research reveals more information. However, medical research has a much harder time than my onion investigators. Your body and mine are infinitely more complex than an onion. You have a plethora of factors that influence your health for good and ill.

You have a complicated and delicate but robust physical body - a combination of muscles, bones, heart and blood vessels, hormones and nerves with an equally complex protection system (your immune system), digestive system, healing system, and an extremely powerful brain.

All of these interact constantly to maintain your health as best it can. And, overall it works.

Over many centuries, scientists and doctors have compiled a large database of knowledge on how the body works and the symptoms and treatment of disease. Knowledge has evolved just as my onion peeling analogy and 'facts' on illness and treatment are constantly beong discovered and verified.

BUT, are they always correct, these 'facts'?

An example of the flaws in them I suggest the cholesterol story. Conventional medicine would have us believe that cholesterol is the main factor in heart disease, and that by lowering your cholesterol to the extreme means your risk of heart attack or stroke is thereby reduced to a minimum. And on that basis, they have forced the statin drugs on the world as the ideal way to cut cardivascular disease from cradle to grave.

A few years ago, I might have agreed with this based on what we knew then. However, things have moved on and today it's all a bit different. Now, it seems that as much as 75% of heart attacks are in people who have 'normal' cholesterol. How would a low cholesterol cut their risk?

Low cholesterol seems to make people more prone to illness, more aggressive, more forgetful, so why use drugs to lower cholesterol even further?

Statn drugs have a number of serious side effects, so why prescribe them without pointing these out to the patients?

And now it appears that cholesterol, far from being a kind of poison to get rid of, is actually an important part of the way your body protects itself from damage. Cholesterol is rushed round to coat damaged blood vessels to allow them to heal and counteract inflammation. The problem occurs when too much builds up in the vessels and blocks them off.

Remember, too, that you need cholesterol to maintain your hormones, digest fats in your diet and much more.

What's the answer? Conventional medicine has it that you need to get your cholesterol as low as possible. Alternative therapies aim to keep cholesterol within normal levels by a combination of diet, exercise and supplements - all of which also help control inflammation as well.

What do you think? Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. What is clear is that this problem highlights the shifting nature of health today. We can measure cholesterol and artifically or naturally bring it down. It's a combination of all of this that points up the 'facts' as we know them right now.

But, tomorrow .. well then things could be very different. Then where will todays 'facts' be?

If you would like to find out more on the choleterol story, why not send for my book "All About Cholesterol - villain or saviour"? Visit http://www.healthexplored.co.uk/eOrder/shop.php or e-mail me at info@healthexplored.co.uk and request a copy.

Wishing you the very best of health.