Re: Magnesium Factor

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:

( previous post snipped-follow thread )
My advice is that you consult your physician before making that judgment. The 'raw commercialism' that you state is designed for YOUR consumption. Your doctor, however, uses a far different criteria when making that judgment. And I would conjecture that your physician makes his judgment from a far more informed and educated position that perhaps you might.



I must admit that I don't have a heck of a lot of confidence in
the medical establishment. I was up to 270 pounds at one point,
dieting hard much of the time as one diet failed after another.
Now I'm 215 pounds, due to the Atkins diet, the only thing that's
ever worked for me. I lapsed during eggnog season, and went
up from 213 to 220, but eggnog season is over now and I'm back, even though I did buy another quart of eggnog a couple
of days ago. I'm back on the wagon now though: I think 180 would be about right for my frame, though I'll reëvaluate when
(and if) I get there. After I got down to 215, I eased off
on the Atkins, but my weight went up to about 235, so now I'm back on stricter Atkins. I've lost the weight I gained. If I don't
lose weight further at a satisfactory rate, I'll try cutting out
coffee, though that will be much harder than giving up any of the foods I gave up, most of which I didn't much like anyway:
I just ate them because I was told by conventional medical wisdom that I should.

I had the best medical advice from one doctor about dieting: Eat less. If you reduce your caloric intake to below what you require on a daily basis, you will most definitely lose weight. Proved over and over again in WWII prison camps. You can avoid the negative side effects by taking vitamin supplements. But you need significant will power, or, as in the case of WWII prisoners of war, physical prevention of your getting food. However, I have used the Perricone Diet, which I had written about previously. I find that satisfactory.

I hadn't taken ephedrine for a while, but I got nervous and
bought a new batch a few weeks ago when I heard on TV
that the government was thinking of banning it. To my surprise, it helps the pain in my arthritic knees much better than any pain-killer. It also really kicks ass in helping out
the Atkins though that may be just a transient effect due to
cutting down water-weight. My knee arthritis is probably due to the fact that I have hardly any cartilage left. I
enjoy walking, and walked for hours a day even when I was
heading up to 270 pounds, so that's probably when I wore out my cartilage. Lately, I've been walking much less because of the pain in my knees, but I lost the extra 20
pounds I'd put on even without walking much - in fact, activity, like eating fat, seems to make no difference at all to my body: only carbohydrates seem to matter. 

I sympathize with your problems.

There's also a possibility that I have cartilage fragments
that are causing most of my knee problems, which is often the case among younger people. That's something else I'll enquire about next time I go to the nest of vipers - pardon me, I mean to the hospital - for a checkup. cartilage fragments can be removed relatively easily, compared to other knee surgery. A friend of my brother-in-law's had messed up his knees playing football, and was in pain when walking until he got the fragmented cartilage cut away, and then he was like new. That's probably not
my problem, but it's worth a try.

I would suggest that you rethink some of your prejudices about the medical profession. True, they aren't all powerful, but they will ultimately do what is in the best interests of your health.

My only real complaint with Atkins is the boring beverages,
mostly weak tea and water. I'm not keen on tea: the best thing about America for me was coffee. I've had two homemade 8-oz cups and one cafe 16-oz cup of (strong) coffee today. As for food, Atkins is a breeze. The food is tasty and satisfying and you don't have to measure anything: in fact it's what I would always have eaten if I hadn't listened to the medical
profession, except that under Atkins I've mostly cut out milk (not cheese: cheese is OK) and vegetables, and cut out bread, pasta, and sugar almost completely. That's not too hard when I can eat all the meat and cheese I want. There's
no need to worry about fats at all on Atkins, just carbohydrates. It maybe doesn't work for everybody, but it works for me.

Atkins, as does Perricone, recognizes the negative effects of caffeine on metabolism, which is why they suggest decaffeinated tea. Coffee defeats the metabolic objectives of the diet. IOW, you can't go on any particular diet and cheat and expect the diet to be effective.

I don't dispute the side effects that you indicate. But you should know that the link between heart disease and cholesterol is not in dispute, as are the number of coronaries which occur due to that. So there is a definite link, one which the medical profession has acknowledged as serious. I believe it is one you should not ignore or otherwise minimize.




I read a book called "The Cholesterol Myths", and was pretty
startled by how bad the science behind the current cholesterol
push is. Data that doesn't support the preördained bias toward
high cholesterol associated with heart disease is simply discarded before the results are computed. The author gave an example of an apparently well known chart showing a clear
correlation between cholesterol and mortality in five countries.
Actually, there was data for 15 countries, but ten were discarded.
He shows the same chart with all 15 countries included. The
correlation almost disappears.

I would suggest that the overall scientific community does not share that view. You should ask why. And when you do, you will likely discover that the author( he may be the one I have seen on television promoting his holistic cure ) has some commercial ulterior motive of his own.

My cholesterol was high, nearly 300 total count, next-to-last
time I checked, but the HDL/LDL ratio was right on target,
and the triglycerides and blood-pressure and everything else were normal. After I was on statins for six months, the cholesterol was down to 200, with the same HDL/LDL ratio, but my muscular "inflammation" was way up, well above the
"normal" range. I don't know what the status is now. I guess
I'll get a checkup in a couple of months. I haven't had one since August, before I dropped the Zocor.

Not being a medical practitioner and being unfamiliar with the chemistry, I am ill-equipped to respond. I can only say that my cholesterol was always low, and when my LDL count approached high normal, my physician suggested a minimal does of Lipitor. My cholesterol count is down to 151 with my LDL count standing at 81. When he first suggested a statin, I tried diet, but was unsuccessful in reducing the LDL count. So diet and exercise don't always do the trick.

But your count is way above mine. I never had a cholesterol count above 200, most of the time having a count at around 170-180. I think you're in a different category.

			Alan

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