Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent heart attacks could be doing themselves more harm than good.

The drug, which reduces the risk of blood clots, can be taken by patients who have already suffered a heart attack or are at risk of one.

Millions of others are also believed to take a daily dose as an "insurance policy" with the hope of guarding against heart trouble.

But the routine use of aspirin by healthy people to prevent heart problems "cannot be supported," professors from the Aspirin for Asymptomatic Atherosclerosis (AAA) said.

Their study found that the risk of cardiovascular problems had to be set against the increased risk of internal bleeding.

Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation which partially funded the research, said: "We know that patients with symptoms of artery disease, such as angina, heart attack or stroke, can reduce their risk of further problems by taking a small dose of aspirin each day.

"The findings of this study agree with our current advice that people who do not have symptomatic or diagnosed artery or heart disease should not take aspirin, because the risks of bleeding may outweigh the benefits."

The study recruited 28,980 men and women aged between 50 and 75 who were free of clinically evident cardiovascular disease in central Scotland.

They were given either a daily dose of 100 milligrams of aspirin or a placebo.

Major bleeding requiring admission to hospital occurred in 34 (2 percent) subjects in the aspirin group and 20 (1.2 percent) of the placebo group.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,544575,00.html?test=latestnews#ixzz17Orl3ykw

Passive smoking 'kills 600,000' worldwide

The first global study into the effects of passive smoking has found it causes 600,000 deaths every year.

One-third of those killed are children, often exposed to smoke at home, the World Health Organization (WHO) found.

The study, in 192 countries, found that passive smoking is particularly dangerous for children, said to be at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome, pneumonia and asthma.

Passive smoking causes heart disease, respiratory illness and lung cancer.

"This helps us understand the real toll of tobacco," said Armando Peruga, of the WHO's Tobacco-Free Initiative, who led the study.

'Deadly combination'

The global health body said it was particularly concerned about the 165,000 children who die of smoke-related respiratory infections, mostly in South East Asia and in Africa.

It said that this group was more exposed to passive smoking than any other group, principally in their own homes.

"The mix of infectious diseases and second-hand smoke is a deadly combination," Mr Peruga said.

As well as being at increased risk of a series of respiratory conditions, the lungs of children who breathe in passive smoke may also develop more slowly than children who grow up in smoke-free homes.

Worldwide, 40% of children, 33% of non-smoking men and 35% non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, researchers found.

This exposure was estimated to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer.

According to the study, the highest numbers of people exposed to second-hand smoke are in Europe and Asia and the lowest rates of exposure were in the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa.

The research also revealed that passive smoking had a large impact on women, killing about 281,000 worldwide. This is due to the fact that in many parts of the world, the study suggests, women are at least 50% more likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke than men.

New Study Reveals That Back Surgery Fails 74% of the Time

Researchers reviewed records from 1,450 patients in the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation database who had diagnoses of disc degeneration, disc herniation or radiculopathy, a nerve condition that causes tingling and weakness of the limbs. Half of the patients had surgery to fuse two or more vertebrae in hopes of curing low back pain. The other half had no surgery, even though they had comparable diagnoses.

After two years, just 26 percent of those who had surgery had actually returned to work. That’s compared to 67 percent of patients who didn’t have surgery. In what might be the most troubling study finding, researchers determined that there was a 41 percent increase in the use of painkillers, specifically opiates, in those who had surgery.

“The study [1] provides clear evidence that for many patients, fusion surgeries designed to alleviate pain from degenerating discs don’t work”, says the study’s lead author Dr. Trang Nguyen, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. [2]

Just a month after back surgery, Nancy Scatena was once again in excruciating pain. The medications her doctor prescribed barely took the edge off the unrelenting back aches and searing jolts down her left leg. “The pain just kept intensifying,” says the 52-year-old Scottsdale, Ariz., woman who suffers from spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the chanel through which spinal nerves pass. “I was suicidal.”

Finally, Scatena made an appointment with another surgeon, one whom friends had called a “miracle worker.” The new doctor assured her that this second operation would fix everything, and in the pain-free weeks following an operation to fuse two of her vertebrae it seemed that he was right. But then the pain came roaring back.

Experts estimate that nearly 600,000 Americans opt for back operations each year. But for many like Scatena, surgery is just an empty promise, say pain management experts and some surgeons.

This new study in the journal Spine [1] shows that in many cases surgery can even backfire, leaving patients in more pain.

The study provides clear evidence that for many patients, fusion surgeries designed to alleviate pain from degenerating discs don’t work, says the study’s lead author Dr. Trang Nguyen, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. [3]

27 Million Adults With Back Problems

A recent report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a federal organization, found that in 2007, twenty-seven million adults reported back problems, with $30.3 billion spent on treatments to ease the pain. While some of that money is spent on physical therapy, pain management, chiropractor visits, and other non invasive therapies, a big chunk pays for spine surgeries.

Complicated spine surgeries that involve fusing two or more vertebrae are on the rise. In just 15 years, there was an eight-fold jump in this type of operation, according to a study published in Spine in July. That has some surgeons and public health experts concerned. [4]

---

You may also want to review the recently published
European Guidelines for the Management of Acute and Chronic Nonspecific Low Back Pain, because it specifically states:

“Surgery for non-specific CLBP cannot be recommended unless 2 years of all other recommended conservative treatments — including multidisciplinary approaches with combined programs of cognitive intervention and exercises — have failed”.

This study also re-confirms the findings of the UK BEAM Trial, published in the British Medical Journal in 2004. [5] Those authors stated:

“Manipulation, with or without exercise, improved symptoms more than best care (medical care) alone after three and 12 months. However, analysis of the cost utility of different strategies shows that manipulation alone probably gives better value for money than manipulation followed by exercise” (page 1381).

You may also want to read these 3 recent Editorials:

Why Do Spinal Surgery Rates Continue To Rise? 
Chiro.Org Blog ~ April 10th, 2010

New Study Finds Chiropractic Care Superior to Family Physician-directed Usual Care
Chiro.Org Blog ~ October 7th, 2010

If Not Chiropractic Care, Then What’s Your Alternative?
Chiro.Org Blog ~ September 25th, 2010

---

REFERENCES:

1. Long-term Outcomes of Lumbar Fusion Among Workers’ Compensation Subjects: An Historical Cohort Study
Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2010 (Aug 23) [Epub ahead of print]

2. Study Says Back Surgery Often Makes Things Worse
The Daily Hit ~ Oct 14, 2010

3. Back surgery may backfire on patients in pain
MSNBC.com ~ Oct 14, 2010

4. Why Do Spinal Surgery Rates Continue To Rise?
Chiro.Org Blog Editorial ~ April 10th, 2010

5. Findings from the: “United Kingdom Back Pain Exercise and Manipulation (UK BEAM) Randomised Trial” 
British Medical Journal 2004 (Dec 11); 329 (7479)

SURGERY FOR THE MOST OBESE

Dr. Green Says:  I'm posting this article to show the misguided thinking towards bariatric surgery that exists in the minds of the medical community itself.  Despite the huge saving in money to England, they are rationing this life saving surgery.  There remains an attitude that being obese is somehow the fault of the individual.  Ridiculous and anyone who is truly familiar with obesity research knows that we don't understand why it is happening but it is. Also, the Gastric Band is one of the worst surgeries available.  It often leads to complications and has to be removed.  I recommend the Gastric Sleeve.  That was my surgery of choice.  Here is the article, read it with a wary eye.

VIEWPOINT By Dr David HaslamA GP specialising in obesity care

Surgery is needed before you get too fat

Britain is in the grip of an obesity epidemic, with more than a million severely and morbidly obese.

Surgery is available. But in this week's Scrubbing Up, Dr David Haslam, from the group Experts in Severe and Complex Obesity (ESCO), warns the wrong people are getting it and says some of those who are biggest should just be offered "palliative care" for their obesity.

Weight-loss - bariatric - surgery is a rare and precious resource that has the capacity to permanently induce major weight loss, and 'cure' diabetes in 90% of cases, sometimes within days.

Continue reading the main story

Scrubbing Up

• Doctors 'should check no-shows'
• Cancer race bias 'costs lives'
• Surgery 'not entertainment'
• The dangers of laziness

It is cost-effective, with gastric bypass paying for itself within three-and-a-half years due to reduced drug costs and hospital admissions, and this is before we take into account the individual's renewed productivity, and benefit - rather than burden - to the economy.

Even the most cynical, fat-phobic taxpayer should rejoice in the benefits of bariatric surgery.

According to the National Institute of health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), of the 1,010,000 severely and morbidly obese population in the UK, there are currently 230,000 people both eligible and willing to have surgery.

However, this year fewer than 2% of these patients will actually receive treatment.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Some people are just too big for any constructive cure to be countenanced”

Professor David Haslam

• Read your comments
• BMI Calculator

Wrong people

The availability of surgery is limited, as relatively few surgeons perform laparoscopic techniques within a limited number of designated centres, with a substantial initial financial outlay, so it should be used carefully and offered only for those who will benefit most.

Like anything precious, bariatric surgery should be rationed. But the wrong people are currently benefiting.

NICE guidelines are well-considered and based on clinical-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, deeming surgery appropriate in anyone with a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 40+, or 35+ if they have other illnesses.

However current barriers, set out by administrators rather than clinicians, ration access to surgery and are discriminating against deserving patients and reducing the number who benefit - and promoting surgery for the wrong people.

Continue reading the main story

How gastric bands work

• Gastric band fitted around the upper end of the stomach
• This restricts flow of food into the lower stomach
• Band can be adjusted via the access port

Here are a couple of examples of the kind of cases that occur.

Doris is 62, with a BMI of 72. She has been housebound for 10 years in her fourth floor flat and has complaints including heart disease and chronic leg ulcers.

She smokes 40 cigarettes a day and sleeps in front of the television, as severe osteoarthritis prevents her from moving. She lives just one street from the sea, but can't get there.

Sean is 38, married with two young children and has suffered from type 2 diabetes for 10 years.

He is insulin resistant, on 300 units of insulin, has retinopathy (damage to the retina), burning feet and erectile dysfunction as a result of diabetes. He has depression and is gaining weight rapidly due to insulin, with a BMI of 35.

His prognosis is dreadful. He can look forward to a future of weight gain, blindness, heart disease and the prospect of an early death, leaving his wife to support their children alone.

Shocking concept

Doris will be granted surgery because she has sleep apnoea and weighs enough to fulfil local guidelines, despite the risk, and has limited potential gain in health, longevity and productivity.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The current route to treatment means that the most needy and deserving individuals often go without”

Professor Haslam

Sean will be denied surgery, and will resort to gaining weight for a few more years before becoming eligible.

If both could have surgery, all well and good, but if only one can, clearly Sean is the more deserving.

What then should become of Doris? Physical activity is out of the question, dietary interventions won't scratch the surface, and most anti-obesity drugs have been removed from pharmacies.

Like anyone else with incurable, terminal diseases, she can be offered palliative care. The concept is a shocking one, and recognises that some people are just too big for any constructive cure to be countenanced. There are times when palliative care is appropriate for obesity: enough is enough when there is no chance of effective treatment.

Doris will then fulfil her ambition to see the ocean, by moving into warden-controlled accommodation by the beach, receiving pain management for arthritis, smoking cessation advice from the district nurse, psychotherapy from the community mental health team, while remaining irreparably obese.

Sean, having undergone surgery, will return to work as a security guard, feed his family and pay his taxes.

It's inevitable that bariatric surgery is rationed, but the current route to treatment means that the most needy and deserving individuals often go without.

Death by Chiropractic: Another Misbegotten Review

Anthony L. Rosner, Ph.D., LL.D.[Hon.], LLC 

    

ChiroACCESS 

Published on 

July 27, 2010

The title of one of Edzard Ernst’s most recent articles, “Deaths after chiropractic: A review of published cases”, seems to have wasted no time in creating a worst-case scenario, frightening the reader from a profession which has successfully treated patients for 115 years and for which evidence supporting its effectiveness and safety is abundant.  Ernst has declared an opposing view with copious publications for at least the past 16 years.  Unfortunately, many of Ernst’s assertions regarding spinal manipulation and chiropractic have been discredited in the past and, in several instances, found to be blatantly misleading.  The current article is no exception.

1. The problem in perspective:
   
   Ernst reports a total of 26 deaths in 75 years of chiropractic practice.  That would average to less than 1/3 death per year.  Given the facts that there are an estimated 250M chiropractic visits per year in the United States,¹⁸ 13.4M chiropractic visits per year in Canada,¹⁹ and 2.25M visits per year in the United Kingdom,²⁰ the death rates in each country after chiropractic according to Ernst’s figures calculate to be 0.000000132%, 0.00000246%, and 0.0000132%, respectively.
   
   These figures are absurdly infinitesimal when compared to the 230,000-280,000 deaths caused by iatrogenesis in medical treatment as reported by the Institute of Medicine,²¹ or from just the use of NSAID medications, producing 10,000-20,000 fatalities from multiple organ systems adversely affected—in the United States alone.^22-24  Even what has been regarded as the more relatively benign COX-2 inhibitors and acetaminophen medications have been described to generate serious GI, cardiovascular, and hepatic problems at rates an order of magnitude greater than the side-effects attributed to spinal manipulation.^25-29
   
   A more complete accounting of the extremely low relative risks of spinal manipulation compared to medical interventions for back and neck pain has been presented elsewhere.^30-32  Given far too little consideration by Ernst is the fact that the majority of vertebral artery dissections have been found to be spontaneous, possibly exacerbated by high levels of endogenous homocysteine.^32,33  Final credibility to this argument is the fact that there was no evidence of excess risk of vertebrobasilar artery stroke associated with chiropractic care as compared to the primary care administered by allopathic physicians.³⁴  This fact alone should do much to dismiss the unmistakable implications from Ernst’s argument that at least a large proportion of the deaths listed could be attributed to chiropractic care.
2. Lack of risk-benefit analysis: 
   
   A balanced view of any healthcare intervention needs to make use of risk-benefit ratios in order that a fair and balanced analysis be presented.  There is no such mention of any benefits in Ernst’s current publication,¹ as is the case for any of his other papers as cited.^7-14 This is in spite of the fact that the clear benefits of spinal manipulation as administered by chiropractors have been already discussed.^2-6  Simple mathematics dictates that a denominator [benefits] which is set to zero will yield a risk-benefit ratio of infinity, regardless as to how infinitesimal the numerator [risks] may be.
3. Incompleteness and carelessness of review:
   
   In addition to the substantial lack of considerations pointed out above, it is peculiar to hear of Ernst’s assertion that his review is “systematic” when in fact through 1985 it accounts for just 16 deaths, whereas 24 through the same period were carefully described in a review of 257 cases that Ernst himself cited in his bibliography in discussing a different subject.³⁵  Even more worrisome is the fact that in the same reference Terrett clearly points out that the majority of the cases of vertebrobasilar artery accidents were mistakenly—often deliberately—attributed to chiropractors instead of the myriad of other practitioners responsible for the adverse events.³⁵  This point was not only ignored by Ernst but deliberately distorted to suggest that more chiropractors (17) were responsible for complications than medical practitioners (9), naturopaths (1), or physiotherapists (0).¹  To make matters worse, there is more recent data which clearly demonstrates that vertebrobasilar artery accidents are more likely to occur in the hands of nonchiropractors rather than actual chiropractors.³⁶  Finally, there is an inaccuracy in this actual citation itself³⁵, in which the entity responsible for its publication is listed in Ernst’s article as “JCMIC” instead of “NCMIC.”  All of these indications suggest that the article by Ernst falls far short of what would normally be considered as a carefully prepared, scholarly systematic review worthy of publication in the peer-reviewed, scientific literature.
   
   What is peculiar is an apparent disclaimer by Ernst himself, in which he states in his article that “Obviously, the present article is not aimed at providing incidence figures; this would require a different methodology entirely. To date, no reliable incidence data are available.”  Under these circumstances, one has to question how Ernst ever was able to invoke the term “systematic” in the first place.
4. Signs of bias and blanket statements:
   
   Statements to the effect that “when carefully evaluating the known facts, one does arrive at the conclusion that causality [of arterial dissection] is at least likely.”  Unfortunately, we are never privy to what the “facts” may be, in addition to being given a statement that is contradicted by both the mechanistic^32,33 and actual patient data³⁴ supporting spontaneity discussed earlier.  Finally, Ernst’s assertion that “the risks of chiropractic neck manipulations far outweigh their benefits” is clearly unsupported by the data in the literature with the complete ignorance of any benefits or risk-benefit ratios as argued earlier.
   
   For these reasons, one must greet Ernst’s current article with extreme skepticism and hope that the host of its inaccuracies does not misguide the journal’s readership. It is certainly regrettable to contemplate the prospect of having this error-prone paper emulated in future citations in the scientific literature for years to come.

References can be found in original article.

Public 'misled' by drug claims

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News
 

Doctors and patients are being misled about the effectiveness of some drugs because negative trial results are not published, experts have warned.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they say that pharmaceutical companies should be forced to publish all data, not just positive findings.

The German team give the example of the antidepressant reboxetine, saying publications have failed to show the drug in a true light.

Pfizer maintains its drug is effective. Reboxetine (Edronax), made by Pfizer, is used in many European countries, including the UK.  But its rejection by US drug regulators raised doubts about its effectiveness, and led some to hunt for missing data.

This is not the first time a large drug company has come under fire about its published drug trial data.

Trial information Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was criticised for failing to raise the alarm on the risk of suicidal behaviour associated with its antidepressant Seroxat.
GSK rejected claims that it improperly withheld drug trial information.

The research authors

But GSK has also been forced to defend itself over allegations about hiding negative data regarding another of its drugs, Avandia, which is used to treat diabetes.

Now researchers from The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care say there is unpublished trial data for Pfizer's antidepressant reboxetine that should be made public because it could change views about the drug.

Dr Beate Wieseler and colleagues carried out their own assessment of reboxetine, looking at the results of 13 trials, including eight previously unpublished trials from the manufacturer Pfizer.

They found the drug was no better than a placebo in terms of remission and response rates. And its benefit was inferior when compared with other similar antidepressants.

Furthermore, a higher rate of patients had side effects with reboxetine than with placebo. And more stopped taking the drug because of side effects compared with those taking a placebo or a different antidepressant.

Biased picture The researchers said there has been a publication bias and this had overestimated the benefit of reboxetine and underestimated potential harm. And, they said, it was a widespread problem that applied to many of the drugs in use today.

"Our findings underline the urgent need for mandatory publication of trial data," they say in the BMJ.
They warn that the lack of all information means policy makers are unable to make informed decisions.
In the US, it is already a requirement that all data - both positive and negative - is published. The UK is also striving to achieve this.

The UK's regulator, the MHRA, said: "There is a European initiative to provide public access to the results of clinical trials. The currently planned timeline is that this information could become available in late 2011/early 2012."

A spokeswoman for Pfizer said: "In the UK, Pfizer's reboxetine is licensed for the acute treatment of depressive illness/major depression and for maintaining the clinical improvement in patients initially responding to treatment.
"This medicine presents an effective treatment option to clinicians for the use in patients suffering from these conditions.
"Pfizer discloses the results of its clinical trials to regulatory authorities all around the world. These regulatory authorities carefully balance the risks and benefits of each medication, and reflect all important safety and efficacy information in the approved product labelling.
"Pfizer will review the meta-analysis relating to reboxetine published in the British Medical Journal on 13th October 2010 in detail and will provide further comment after completing the review."
Others lay at least some of the blame with the medical journals that publish drug trial data.
In response, the BMJ has promised to devote an entire issue to the topic next year.
BMJ Editors Dr Fiona Godlee and Dr Elizabeth Loder said: "It is time to demonstrate a shared commitment to set the record straight."

Beauty Parlor Stroke

A grieving widower in the UK is warning women to beware of hair salon stroke, caused by their heads being bent back while being washed. Malcolm Crabb is convinced his wife died of stroke because her head was bent back at the beauty salon while they were washing her hair. His wife Pamela was 51.

He said "I think there should be warnings in hairdressers about it."

Mrs. Crabb had a stroke in September 2000. The stroke hit soon after her appointment. Her speech became slurred and her hands claw-like. She was taken to hospital where tests revealed she had had a stroke. Mrs. Crabb died last week after having a second stroke.

According to the Stroke Association (UK), no real research has been carried out to show a link between beauty salons (hair washing) and strokes. However, the association says there are many cases reported in medical journals. They would like to see research done into this.

According to experts, when you push a person's head back into a sink his/her neck over-extends. According to neurologists Dr. David Bateman, Cumberland, UK, the neck can be stretched so that it kinks for a long time - as in hair-washing at a salon - the arteries get stretched and can tear if you are unlucky. As the bleeding between layers of tissue continues you can get clots building up, this eventually leads to a stroke.

Mr. Crabb said, when talking about his wife's first stoke "When she got up she wasn't speaking like she normally would. She felt awful and I didn't know what the matter was. Her speech then became slurred and her hands became like claws."

When he took her to hospital he said they asked whether she had had her hair done.

Mr. Crabb said "After that it all fell into place and we connected the stroke with the way she had her hair washed."

After her first stroke she became increasingly intolerant to cold weather. The couple eventually moved permanently to southern Spain.

An article 8 years ago in the Lancet writes about a woman who had her hair washed for five minutes at a salon and developed a stroke as a result of it. The doctors said that salons should place a cushion so as not to over-extend the neck.

Recent Barbaric Experiments in Medicine

The following scientific experiments are considered sick, unethical or just plain sadistic by today's standards:

• 1939 ‘Monster Study,’ which involved berating and ridiculing children.
• World War II Porton Down Experiments, during which military servicemen were exposed to toxic nerve agents.
• Program F, which involved saturating public drinking water supplies in Newburgh, New York with high levels of fluoride for 12 years.
• 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a “mock” study of volunteer prisoners and inmates carried out in the basement of Stanford University that caused lasting psychological trauma to many study participants.
• Milgram Experiment, which studied the effects of authority on human behavior.
• 1950s to 1970s Holmesburg Dermatological Experiments, which involved injecting Holmesburg prison inmates with cancer-causing chemicals like dioxin.
• 1950s – 1960s Project MKULTRA, which involved the CIA giving LSD and other mind-altering drugs to uninformed test subjects.
• 1960s Willowbrook Hepatitis Experiment, during which researcher Saul Krugman infected mentally disabled children with hepatitis B so he could develop vaccine for it.
• 1970s – 1980s Aversion Project, which involved inhuman experiments like electroshock therapy, castration and forced sex-change operations among those suspected of being homosexual in South Africa’s military.
• 1932 Tuskegee Experiment, which involved 400 black men from Alabama with syphilis. Researchers did not inform them they had the disease (which allowed them to spread it to others), despite symptoms, and did not offer them treatment (even though it could have been treated with the development of penicillin in 1947).

An additional study, called the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948, involved intentionally infecting Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea or chancres. The U.S. government just apologized for the study in October 2010.
The majority of these experiments happened years ago.

BENEFITS OF SATURATED FATS – traditional societies

Japanese in Okinawa
The people of Okinawa, an island in Southern Japan, are well known for their longevity and excellent health – to the extent that books have been written about the Okinawa diet. The main cooking oil used by the people of Okinawa is pork lard.
The Japanese, in general, are also known for their good health and long lives. This is often attributed to a low fat diet, but it is not true. Although the Japanese eat few dairy fats, the notion that their diet is low in fat is a myth; rather, it contains moderate amounts of eggs, pork, chicken, beef, organ meat, fish (fatty fish like tuna and salmon) and seafood. These are all foods relatively high in saturated fats and cholesterol.
The French
Well known for their love of good food, the French also have low rates of heart disease and other degenerative diseases compared with, say, the Americans. The French diet contains lots of saturated fats in the form of butter, cheese, cream. eggs, meats and liver, including pates.
Apart from using butter generously in their cooking, some French cuisine also feature goose fat!
in France the death rate from heart disease is 145 per 100,000, compared with 315 of every 100,000 middle-aged men who die of heart attacks in the US each year. In the Gascony region, where goose and duck liver form a staple of the diet, this death rate from heart disease is only 80 per 100,000.
The relatively good health of the French, called The French Paradox, is often attributed to them drinking wine. This could well be a reason.
But when one accepts the view that there are many health benefits of saturated sats, then the good health enjoyed by the French begin to make more sense.

Other Mediterranean groups
In general, people of the Mediterranean countries consume quite large amounts of saturated fats – and enjoy good health.
One explanation often cited is olive oil but, in fact, many of these people take far more saturated fats than olive oil. On the Greek island of Crete, for example, fat makes up about 70 percent of the total diet!
Again, while Olive oil is beneficial, these people are also enjoying the health benefits of saturated fats.

The Jews
The Jews, when they lived in Yemen, ate plenty of saturated fats from eggs, meat and butter. Yet they had low rates of heart disease and diabetes.
Modern Jews in Israel consume margarine and vegetable cooking oils – plus plenty of sugar. And they suffer high rates of heart disease and cancer.

Indians in North and South India
Originally, Indians in the North consumed plenty of meat and they cooked with ghee or clarified butter, which is high in saturated fats. Indians in the South were more vegetarian and fish eaters, and they cooked with coconut oil, which is also high in saturated fats.
Both groups originally had low rates of heart disease. Then the South Indians began to use less coconut oil and more margarine / vegetable cooking oils. And they developed a much higher rate of heart disease compared with North Indians who took a lot more saturated fats.
Now, the North Indians are also beginning to switch from ghee to margarine – and the heart disease rate is starting to increase.
Other societies
Other societies that enjoy the health benefits of saturated fats include:

• Swiss, Austrians and Greeks, who live as long as the Japanese but take much more fatty diets.
  
  
• The people of Soviet Georgia – where a study found that those who eat the most fatty meat lived the longest.
  
  
• The Eskimos who, because of their harsh environment, eat mainly meat and lard. They, too, have low rates of heart disease and “clean” arteries that are not clogged up with saturated fats.
  
  
• The Masai, an African tribe whose diet consists primary of meat, blood and milk.

The benefits of saturated fats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The much-maligned saturated fats—which Americans are trying to avoid—are not the cause of our modern diseases. In fact, they play many important roles in the body chemistry:

1. Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50% of the cell membranes. They are what gives our cells necessary stiffness and integrity.
   
    
2. They play a vital role in the health of our bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into the skeletal structure, at least 50% of the dietary fats should be saturated.
   
    
3. They lower Lp(a), a substance in the blood that indicates proneness to heart disease. They protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol.
   
    
4. They enhance the immune system.
   
    
5. They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids.
   Elongated omega-3 fatty acids are better retained in the tissues when the diet is rich in saturated fats.
    
6. Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for the heart, which is why the fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated. The heart draws on this reserve of fat in times of stress.
   
    
7. Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect us against harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.

The scientific evidence, honestly evaluated, does not support the assertion that "artery-clogging" saturated fats cause heart disease. Actually, evaluation of the fat in artery clogs reveals that only about 26% is saturated. The rest is unsaturated, of which more than half is polyunsaturated.

Go to the site and read more.