Capitalism at work...

[dwenius]

Item #1: “Drugs for ‘Good’ Cholesterol Fail Tests”. From the article (edited for brevity): “[D]octors have been trying to boost HDL, or good cholesterol... to further lower risk. An extended-release niacin drug called Niaspan, sold by Kos Pharmaceuticals Inc., does this. But it can cause a prickly hot sensation called flushing that some people find intolerable. Pfizer,Merck & Co. and Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG are testing drugs that boost HDL in a novel way. On Monday, scientists reported the results of several studies on torcetrapib. In one, the drug boosted HDL by 61 percent, but trends in death, hospitalization and heart attacks "are all going in the wrong direction," Nissen said.”

So, freely available and cheap over the counter Niacin in bulk doses: works. Expensive (and lest we forget, highly profitable!) Big Pharma products: worse for you than doing nothing. I’ll happily trade a little hot prickly sensation (which lasts 5 whole minutes a day, Jesus people grow a pair) for an extra decade or two of heart-healthy living. Why is this difficult for people?

Item #2: the pet food thing. It comes down to this: the cause is rat poison, a variety banned in the U.S. -- do you realize how hard it is to get something banned in the U.S.?-- is found in the wheat gluten in a dozen pet food brands, leading to pet trauma and death and a giant recall and just you wait, a humongous class action lawsuit. What I haven’t seen in any of the commentary so far is, HELLO? CATS AND DOGS DO NOT, under any normal evolutionary or historical circumstance, EAT WHEAT. They are carnivores and can survive in the wild eating nothing but meat. Hot, fresh-killed meat, and a bit of water. The only rationale for the presence of wheat gluten in cat food in the first place is...wait for it...it improves the profits.

Feh.

Comments

[rwx.livejournal.com]

my cat tries to eat tortilla chips, because most cat food is indistinguishable from tortilla chips with meat by-products drizzled on.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Torcetrapib was developed in Pfizer's Ann Arbor location (Lipitor was also invented here, which is why Pfizer bought Warner-Lambert). Its failure is considered a large part of the reason why Pfizer is shuttering their Ann Arbor campus six years after buying it and spending twelve million dollars expanding it. We're losing our second biggest employer (the university is the biggest by far).

So hooray for a bad drug being taken off the market, but this is adding a lot of screwedness to the local economic screwedness.

[megasus4.livejournal.com]

My cat tries to eat plastic.

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

Actually eat it?
Mine just seems to like to lick it.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

...which lasts 5 whole minutes a day, Jesus people grow a pair

Actually, it lasts quite a bit longer than that, at least in my experience, and it's most unpleasant. It took me quite a while to find a timed-release Niacin that didn't make me feel like my skin was on fire for several hours.

[deeptape.livejournal.com]

So this Niacin thing. Too much is bad, no? Liver failure bad?

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

You have to start the regimen very slowly and work your way up to the right dosage (1500 mg for me). I started with 100, added 100 mg whenever it stopped itching longer than about a half hour. It took about 3 months to get up to the full level.

I drink a lot more water than I used to. I do Bikram yoga to sweat out junk and make my liver work less hard. My doctor pointed me to studies showing no long term effect of niacin on the liver at this dosage, with these other lifestyle changes. I'll see if I can track it down.