




Uffe Ravnskov

I am republishing here the April newsletter of Dr. Uffe Ravnskov.  Dr. Ravnskov is a Swedish physician, a nephrologist (kidney specialist) and internist. And for many years, he has been at war with the medical establishment over cholesterol and use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, particularly statins.  The evidence is very strong that statins do no prolong life, and they may even shorten life.  I'm sure that Dr. Ravnskov would say that statins are the biggest medical scam of all time- and I agree with him. So, here is his latest newsletter. Be glad to know about this extremely knowledgeable and immensely competent physician, Dr. Uffe Ravsnkov. 

In a recent Danish paper published in European Heart Journal the authors claimed, that negative statin-related news stories decrease statin persistence and increase myocardial infarction and cardiovascular mortality. It was based on the fact, that early statin discontinuation by some of more than 800,000 Danish statin-treated people was associated with the number of negative statin-related news stories published in the media between 1995 and 2010., and that 1.1% more of those with early statin discontinuation had died after 10 years of follow-up compared with those who continued. 

A more reasonable explanation is that the statin-treated individuals learned that their many unpleasant symptoms were caused by the statins, because most adverse effects do not appear immediately. Very often they develop several weeks or months after the start of the treatment. As the side effects of almost all drugs appear immediately, neither the “patient” or the doctor realize that the late statin side effects are caused by the drug. The muscular problems, the mental disturbances and the decrease of sexual potency, the most common side effects, are therefore seen as a result of of increasing age. 

An interesting observation is that the heart mortality difference of 1.1% is what those who continued their treatment won after 10 years of treatment. This is much less than reported from the statin trials. In the first statin trial 4S for instance, the difference between the statin and then placebo group as regards heart mortality was 2.5% after about five years of treatment. Notary impressive, but more than four times as much as in this paper.

Furthermore, there was not a word about total mortality in the paper. The only reason for excluding this information is of course, that either there was no difference, or that those, who stopped statin treatment lived longer than those who continued. It was not possible either for a Canada Free Press journalist to get this information from Børge Nordestgaard, one of the authors and head of the department, where the study was performed. He just answered the followingWe probably could have looked at all-cause mortality. What I thought would have meaning for people that are interested in this field was myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death. Those are the two major endpoints that you look for when trying to prevent cardiovascular disease.  

Aren´t the main interest of people on preventive medicine to prolong their life?

In an interview in the Danish newspaper Politiken, Nordestgaard declared that people, who stop their statin treatment have a 26% increased risk of a heart attack and 18% higher risk to die from a cardiovascular disease compared with those, who continue the treatment. 

What explains his misleading words may be that he has strong economical links to the drug industry. In the section Conflicts of interest you can read the following: B.G.N. has received consultancy fees and/or lecture honoraries from Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Sanofi, Regeneron, Omthera, Dezima, ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Aegerion, Fresenius, B. Braun, Kaneka, Lilly, Kowa, and Denka Seiden. 

Much evidence has shown that there is little benefit from statin treatment, if any at all. In my previous newsletter for instance, I told you about the Danish study, where the authors had calculated how may years you are able to prolong your life by statin treatment. What they found was that on average you can only prolong it by a few days. 

Recently a research group from Italy, the UK and Sweden published a study in BMJ Open about the trends of statin use and heart mortality between 2000 and 2012 in 12 European countries.  In all of the countries statin treatment has increased and heart mortality had decreased, apparently a support of statin treatment. However, there was no association between the degree of statin increase  and the degree of mortality lowering between the countries. In Germany, for instance, statin treatment had increased by 54% during these years and heart mortality had decreased by 85%, whereas in Portugal statin treatment had increased by102%, whereas heart disease had decreased by only 41%. 

As I have told you before, the directors of the statin trial do not allow access to the primary data. This has raised much criticism and a campaign, backed by the British Queen´s former doctor  Sir Richard Thompson calling for urgent public enquiry into drugs firms' 'murky' practices. You can read more about that in in Daily Mail, in Sunday Express and in The Western Australia 

In 2005 new, stricter regulations were introduced in the conduct and publication of randomized controlled trials. Since then the results of all statin trials have been minimal compared to those published before 2005 You can read more about that in a paper published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology by Professor Harumi Okuyama and his co-authors; in a paper in Journal of  Controversies in Biomechanical Research by Michel de Lorgeril and Mikael Rabaeus, and in Sunday Express. The authors of the two scientific journals are no amateurs; most of them are members of THINCS and de Lorgeril was the first who demonstrated the benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

This letter has been sent to more than 1200 doctors, scientists, journalists and bright, openminded lay people all over the world, and unfortunately, it is not an April Joke

Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, independent investigator

From a new study out of USC, it was learned that in both mice and humans, fasting caused stem cell regeneration of the immune system, after damage was done by chemotherapy.  Fasting was said to have "flipped a regenerative switch" activating the response of hemopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow which are responsible for building blood and immune cells.




The longest fast involved was 4 days, and it resulted in the removal of old, damaged immune cells and their replacement with new ones.

I have been involved in conducting fasts for people most of my adult life, and I have seen fasts much longer than 4 days. The longest fast I have ever done is 28 days. That's water-only for 28 days. And the longest fast I have ever supervised is 40 days. However, we know beyond doubt that there have been fasts much longer than that- longer than 100 days. 

To many people, not eating for an extended period may seem drastic, but in practice, it's not as hard as it seems. For one thing, hunger disappears after a day or two. The ketosis of fasting, in which the body switches from burning glucose to burning fat, takes away the appetite. Most people feel quite indifferent to food while they are fasting. In fact, the biggest complaint we hear from fasters is not that they are hungry but that they are bored. And that's why we keep a lot of books and movies around to help them pass the time. Freeing the body from having to process food from scratch, saves the body a tremendous amount of energy and work. And, the process of living on one's reserves, forces the kind of cleaning-out of old damaged cells that we are looking for. The breakdown of tissues during fasting (in search of food) is a rigidly controlled process, and it results in discarding the bad and hoarding the good. You can compare it to peeling back the layers of an onion to get to younger, fresher tissue.

 I am proud to say that I am one of the most experienced fasting practitioners in the world.  And, I know that under the right environment and with the right conditions, fasting is one of the most healing and regenerative things that a person can do, as it aids and benefits a broad array of health issues. It would be great if the medical world became more aware of fasting and its potential to enhance human lives. 




A new study out of Sweden and published on Medscape, which is an online magazine for doctors,  reported that nonsmokers who stayed out of the sun had a life expectancy similar to that of smokers who soaked up the most rays. Hence, not getting sufficient sunlight is as dangerous and life-shortening as smoking. The study involved nearly 30,000 Swedish women over 20 years.

This indicates that avoiding the sun "is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking," write the authors of the article, published March 21 in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Compared with those with the highest sun exposure, life expectancy for those who avoided sun dropped by 2.1 years.

Pelle Lindqvist, MD, of Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Sweden, and colleagues found that women who seek out the sun were generally at lower risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and such diseases as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and pulmonary diseases, than those who avoided sun exposure.

And one of the strengths of the study was that results were dose-specific — sunshine benefits went up with the amount of exposure.


"We did find an increased risk of.skin cancer. However, the skin cancers that occurred in those exposing themselves to the sun had better prognosis," Dr Lindqvist said.

Some Daily Exposure Important for Health

Given these findings, he told Medscape Medical News, women should not overexpose themselves to sun, but underexposure may be even more dangerous.

"We know in our population, there are three big lifestyle factors that endanger health: smoking, being overweight, and inactivity," he said. "Now we know there is a fourth — avoiding sun exposure."

Sweden's restrictive guidance against sun exposure over the past 4 decades may be particularly ill-advised, the study finds, in a country where the maximum UV index is low (< 3) for up to 9 months out of the year.

Use of sunscreen is also widely misunderstood in the country and elsewhere, Dr Lindqvist said.

"If you're using it to be out longer in the sun, you're using it in the wrong manner," he said. However, "If you are stuck on a boat and have to be out, it's probably better to have sunscreen than not to have it."


Women with more pigmentation would be particularly well-served to stop avoiding sunshine, he said, adding that many people in India, for instance, follow guidelines like those in Sweden to avoid sun year round.

And because melanomas are rare among women with darker skin, benefit goes up in those populations when weighing sun exposure's risk against benefits, Dr Lindqvist said.

Age and Smoking Habits

The researchers studied sun exposure as a risk factor for all-cause mortality for 29,518 women with no history of malignancy in a prospective 20-year follow-up of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort.


The women were recruited from 1990 to 1992 when they were 25 to 64 years old. Detailed information was available at baseline on sun-exposure habits and potential confounders such as marital status, education level, smoking, alcohol consumption, and number of births.

When smoking was factored in, even smokers at approximately 60 years of age with the most active sun-exposure habits had a 2-year longer life expectancy during the study period compared with smokers who avoided sun exposure, the researchers note.

.Role of Vitamin D Still in Question

The results add to the longstanding debate on the role of vitamin D in health and the amount of it people need, but this study doesn't resolve the question.



Dr. Cinque: Even the role of sunlight in causing skin cancer is not fully understood because it is not uncommon for people to develop skin cancers in areas which have not been over-exposed. Likewise, there are plenty of areas which, which for some people, are chronically over-exposed- say the arms of a fisherman- where the incidence of skin cancers doesn't correlate. Protecting the skin from too much sun exposure is definitely a good idea, apart from cancer, because we know it ages the skin and damages it. But, there are plenty of people who want to avoid the sun completely, and that is wrong. The sun's ultraviolet has a powerful anti-cancer effect which seems to work against every kind of cancer except skin cancer. And yes, skin cancer can be deadly, but caught early, it is about the easiest cancer to treat. Here's a good rule of thumb: if the sun exposure you are are getting is causing frank, visible tanning, then you're getting too much sun. The frank, visible tanning is a reaction to too much sun. And here's another good rule: if you want to protect your face all the time, it's fine. You are not going to suffer if that small part of your body doesn't get exposed to the sun. But, find large, broad areas of yourself that you can expose directly to effective sunlight for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. There is more danger if you don't than if you do.    

A new study has shown that aging mice lose the ability to absorb and utilize zinc. For a long time, that has been suspected in humans as well. Dr. Walter Pierpaoli, who is responsible for introducing the world to melatonin, believes that the failure of zinc nutrition is responsible for much of the frailty and decrepitude of old age. And, he is very interested in preventing it. He discovered that melatonin tends to reverse the effect. Yes, melatonin enhances your body's ability to absorb and utilize zinc. And that is why he puts a little zinc in his melatonin supplement- so that it will be there at the same time as the melatonin, so that it can work on it.

Zinc absorption is a dicey situation even in the young. Are you aware that the essentiality of zinc in human nutrition wasn't discovered until the 1960s? And I'll tell you how it was discovered. It involved some growth-retarded boys in Iran. It was found that their diet was heavily weighted in unleavened bread made of wheat- which was high in phytic acid. Phytic acid, which is a form of phosphorus, binds minerals, rendering them unabsorbable, including zinc. Raising bread with yeast breaks down some of the phytic acid- so it is less of a problem. Even though I do not avoid wheat completely, I'm willing to admit that it's a food we should go light on, and some people shouldn't eat it at all.

But, phytic acid occurs in much more than wheat. It occurs in virtually all grains, nuts, and legumes, and also vegetables to some extent. Phytic acid is so widespread in plant foods, that's why they call it phytic acid, which means plant acid.

But, there is also oxalic acid which is also widely distributed in plants, including, fruits, vegetables, sesame seeds- even coffee beans. Oxalic acid combines with minerals forming insoluble oxalates which cannot be absorbed. The spinach family vegetables, including chard and beets, are high I oxalic acid, but there is some in just about every fruit and vegetable.

Because of these digestive antagonists, we only absorb a small portion of the zinc we consume. The recommended daily quota is 12 mg, but that is based on the idea that we will absorb just 20% of it. So, that means that only 2.4 mgs of zinc actually gets through. But, there may be times and conditions in which even less than that gets absorbed.

I should also mention that the fiber in plant foods- wonderful as it is- can also interfere with zinc absorption.

So, getting some supplemental zinc each day isn't a bad idea no matter who you are. But, if you are older, then it is especially important. Zinc is one of the top reasons why taking a good multi is a good idea.

By the way, an excellent source of zinc are pecans. They really are loaded, and pecan growers in Texas have to use a foliar spray of zinc or else the nuts won't fill out properly. I have a pecan tree at my health retreat that is not starting its 3rd year, and I give it foliar zinc as well. And, pecans are relatively low in phytic acid and oxalic acid, compared to other nuts. And what a tasty way to get your zinc.

So, the fact is that zinc is one of the weakest links in the modern diet, and the damage it is doing is probably incalculable. Making sure you are supplied with optimal zinc is one of the best things you can do for your health.