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Bill Sardi
the vitamin supplement answer man
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Posted October 31, 2011: by Bill Sardi
I’ve been given a peek of a data report showing the annual sales of dietary supplements ranked by dollar sales. The rank of the top 500 selling supplements may surprise you. It is a list of raw ingredients rather than branded products and it doesn’t include all sales of supplements (Wal Mart, Whole Foods, other big box stores and online sales were not tabulated in this list). However many thoughts come to mind as I review it. I’ll share some of those thoughts with you as I read through the report.
So what do you think is the top-selling dietary supplement today? Vitamin C? Vitamin D? Well actually it isn’t on the list. It is Lovaza, a prescription fish oil concentrate prescribed by doctors to reduce high triglycerides, a blood fat. Annual sales are about $1.5 billion. Once this dietary product became a drug and covered by insurance ($25 co-payment), its sales soared beyond imagination. So consumers play a role in the gouging of pooled funds in insurance plans.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted October 27, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The CNN article entitled “Steve Jobs: A Difficult Patient” provoked hundreds to comment online. Here is a sampling of some of the responses:
Mr. Jobs survived by nearly 9 years a slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer first discovered in 2003. He initially shunned surgery (a drastic operation called a Whipple procedure) which is a very trying operation for surgeon and patient. You can get a view of this complicated operation at the Mayo Clinic website here. The operation involves removal of the head of the pancreas where most tumors originate as well as removal of the gall bladder and the first part of the small intestine (duodenum) and reconnection of the digestive organs.
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine, Resveratrol ; No Comments »
Posted October 12, 2011: by Bill Sardi
In recent days the Journal of Nutrition reported that dietary supplements make a significant contribution to the daily need for vitamins and that meeting the Recommended Daily Allowance could not possibly be accomplished via foods alone. But, ERASE, ERASE! Never mind that. On a day when a report in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition claimed that doubling vitamin D blood levels would reduce the global vitamin D–sensitive disease mortality rate by an estimated 20 percent, the news media chose to run with a front-page headline that made it sound like multivitamins kill.
The multivitamin study does instruct, but its interpreters attempt to scare the public away from vitamin pills to soften them up for the next blow – the FDA is scheming to cut the daily vitamin and mineral requirements in half, a move that would ensure a certain level of disease to treat in the population.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Vitamins ; No Comments »
Posted October 10, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The e-mails, telephone calls and personal inquiries were continuous. Since 2004 when Steve Jobs was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so many people, knowing the dire prognosis of this form of cancer (97% succumb within 2 years of diagnosis), and knowing I had written a 500-page book about cancer, asked if I would write to Mr. Jobs about promising alternative therapies.
Finally, after so many inquiries (a couple from Apple employees), I relented and wrote a letter and sent it to his office at Apple and suggested he consult with his doctors about well-referenced natural remedies, while still unproven, were the most promising.
Doctors kept Mr. Jobs alive for 7 years with chemotherapy and finally a liver transplant. But the immune-stunting drugs employed to avoid organ rejection did him in say news reports. Mr. Jobs had some quality of life to the end, saying his goodbyes and staying on as the visible leader of Apple till his end.
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine ; No Comments »
Posted October 8, 2011: by Bill Sardi
Males have heard time and again that the PSA test, which is a marker of inflammation in the prostate gland, is an inaccurate way to determine whether the prostate is cancer free and its use should be abandoned. A repeat of this same message has just been issued. But as an Associated Press report says men “may not listen” because the vast majority of men over age 50 already get tested. Doctors have continued to string along instead of dropping the test from their physical exam regimens — it’s good for business. Men are fearful, even that tough bearded former Marine. A survey some years ago showed if men are told they have prostate cancer and their options for treatment are given to them at that time, most men will opt for immediate surgical removal of the prostate gland. But if the decision is delayed for two weeks and men have opportunity to educate themselves about treatment options, far fewer will opt for treatment. So the PSA builds fear and fear results in impulsive decisions to undergo treatment, in many cases for men who don’t have prostate cancer at all. So how do you stop the train? Great Britain doesn’t even use the PSA test. This is immaterial. Doctors are playing upon patient fears to boost their business. What medical board will chastise them? None. It will be business as usual. — Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.
Posted in Health Care System ; No Comments »
Posted September 30, 2011: by Bill Sardi
All roads to adult wellness and longevity lead to resveratrol, but the public isn’t buying it. An estimated 345 producers of dietary supplements have all raced to enter their version of resveratrol pills into the marketplace, but not much more than 100,000 American take these red wine pills. It is inexplicable why resveratrol continues to astound in the research laboratory but physicians are loathe to recommend it and consumers reticent to take this pill that may be the pill that ends all other pills.
The broad biological scope of the red wine molecule resveratrol is becoming legendary. Dr. Dipak Das at the University of Connecticut has documented the large number of genes that resveratrol controls. Resveratrol is beneficial for brain, heart, liver, blood circulation, immunity, cholesterol, blood clotting, etc, etc. It is difficult to address the breadth of resveratrol’s biological action without writing an encyclopedia.
Posted in Anti-Aging, Dietary Supplements, Health Care System ; No Comments »
Posted September 20, 2011: by Bill Sardi
Modern medicine is getting tantalizingly closer to curing cancer in the true sense of the word. The announcement that germ/tumor-fighting T-cells have recently been genetically “weaponized” and then instilled back into 3 leukemia patients with near or total 1-year remissions has hit the news media in recent days. It is a thrilling moment in the history of medicine.
So the most recent announced cancer cure is also a stunner — that an extract (crocin) from crocus, the autumn-flowering perennial plant (Crocus sativus), from which golden-yellow saffron spice is derived, can be re-engineered to ignite a fuse that destroys blood vessels that feed growing tumors, but only after it has entered a tumor cell, not before.
Posted in Modern Medicine ; No Comments »
Posted September 18, 2011: by Bill Sardi
When you examine the labeling that accompanies a bottle of aspirin you will read a warning about the use of aspirin pills for young children to quell fever during viral infections which may result in a life-threatening condition called Reye’s Syndrome.
The incidence of Reye’s Syndrome suddenly rose in the 1950s with advice to use aspirin to quell fevers but then suddenly disappeared in the 1980s without adequate explanation. With no obvious cause, physicians nebulously blamed it on “inborn errors of metabolism“ at the time.
Reye’s Syndrome cases are still reported today, but not in the numbers reported decades ago.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine ; No Comments »
Posted September 13, 2011: by Bill Sardi
NUMBER FIVE IS THE MOST UNLIKELY TO EVER OCCUR
— Bill Sardi, Sept 13, 2011
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
Posted September 2, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The Federal government has launched a double assault against the dietary supplement industry recently, which includes onerous new labeling requirements (Durbin bill, proposed) and testing requirements (New Dietary Ingredient guidelines, proposed) which would literally demolish the supplement industry.
To pull off these draconian measures the news media appears to be working in concert with government in a brainwashing effort to gain public support for these draconian measures. And that means dietary supplements, which are safer than aspirin, tap water or table salt, must be made to appear risky and unsafe.
The smear campaign against dietary supplements began August 27 in The New York Times with an article that reveals potential problems with foreign-made supplements that creep past US Customs and FDA inspectors. But these products do not represent the vast majority of dietary supplements sold in the marketplace today.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
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