Polypill

'Polypill' offers more drugs, but no results

Why... why... WHY???

That's the question millions of seniors ask every single time the doctor hands them yet ANOTHER pill to swallow... a question you may have asked yourself if you're on all the meds the middle-aged and seniors typically take these days.

Why statins? Why aspirin? Why BP meds?

Ask your doc, and he'll paint a pretty picture about all the wonderful things the pills are doing to save your life.

Baloney!

Those drugs -- the drugs millions of Americans are practically forced to choke back every day -- don't improve lives, and they don't save them. And now, new research proves I've been right all along on this.

The study was done on the polypill, which is four bad ideas in one: a statin, an aspirin and two different BP meds all combined into a single nightmare of a pill.

The idea is that seniors are like children who can't be trusted with their meds. Give them a bunch, and they'll forget to take at least some of them.

But in most cases, it's not because they're doddering and confused -- it's because the meds come with awful side effects. (But you might want to think twice before you mention them to your doc because he's liable to tell you that you're just suffering from the "nocebo" effect. And no I'm NOT kidding. Read the whole ridiculous story here.)

Putting four meds into one pill makes it impossible to skip just one, so the study finds the polypill improves "compliance" in seniors. (See? Even the word they use here is belittling. Grrrrr...) Among seniors prone to skipping pills, the polypill TRIPLES the rate of them taking their meds.

So should we call this a success? The researchers sure are celebrating -- but in their rush to improve "compliance" they forgot one little thing...

RESULTS!

Triple the compliance should lead to triple the results, right? In a way, I guess it does -- because three times ZERO is still ZERO, and that's the improvement here: ZERO.

Despite all that extra "compliance" -- and despite so-called improvements in biomarkers such as blood pressure and cholesterol -- there was ZERO change in the rate of heart attack and ZERO change in the rate of stroke, according to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So much for success!

There's a much better way my friend. If you're on meds and don't know why -- if your own doc can't give you a really good reason to keep taking them -- it's time for a second opinion.

Seek the advice of a naturopathic oriented physician who cares about results... not meaningless measures of "compliance."

The four-in-one drug that's four times as risky

Some "researchers" should get out of the science business altogether and just start doing infomercials.

Dr. Wald recently released a study for what I think is a little horror called the polypill, which combines three blood pressure meds with a cholesterol-lowering statin drug.

In his latest "study... in my opinion an absolute masterpiece of junk science...the doctor's managed to "conclude" that 94,000 heart attacks and strokes would be prevented in the U.K. each year if half of everyone over the age of 50 was given the polypill.

I have a one-word response to that... but my editor will only let me use half of it: BULL.

All the study really proved was that 12 weeks on the polypill can cut cholesterol and BP levels, which is about what you'd expect would happen when you give people cholesterol and BP meds.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it prevents heart attacks and strokes.

As I've told you time and again, I think those measures are practically meaningless when it comes to predicting outcomes.

Yet despite the fact that the study was short and that a nurse at the British Heart Foundation said that "there are still many questions to answer before this...is prescribed by doctors" -- Prof. Wald is still making headlines and urging regulatory bodies to give the okay on his father's drug.

Yes, HIS father's drug. You see, Wald's father -- Sir Nicholas Wald holds the patent for the polypill. And if EVERYONE starts to take it...well you do the math.