Sid: God has a strategy, the strategy is we show a miracle we demonstrate a miracle and that demands the attention of the audience. I have to tell you I’m really getting upset over the amount of time devoted on Christian radio and Christian television for vitamins and alternative medicine. It seems as if the emphasis is there as opposed to the supernatural of God. So you can understand why that upsets me; however I recently got a hold of two books by a Doctor, Dr. Ray Strand. One book is called “What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine May be Killing You.” The other book is called “Death by Prescription.” This is the most balanced approach, I mean there is a great deal of confusion about vitamins, about herbs, about eternal medicine, about diets. And you’re going to be outraged when you hear some of these things because you know though God will protect you when you take poison there are many people that don’t have their faith at that point. And there’s a lot of medicine out there that’s literally killing you. And so I have on the telephone Dr. Ray Strand. Ray you were telling me before we went on the air the number 3 cause for death in America. Would you tell me that again?
Ray: Well, the number 3 cause of death in this country is medication. And people are not aware of it. In fact Sid, if you take properly prescribed properly administered medication it is causing over 100,000 deaths each and every year and that would make it the fourth leading cause. If you add the improperly prescribed medication or taken medication it adds another 80,000 deaths each and every year. So it becomes the 3rd leading cause of death in this country.
Sid: And you understand this better than me but I was raised as a child when I would go to the doctor anything that they would say that was truth, that’s I would do. I wouldn’t contest it; I wouldn’t go for another opinion; whatever my doctor told me. But then as I got older I recognized that there was a lot of guess work going on. And you make a statement in your book that I want to quote “That we cannot rely on doctors we must do our homework.” Give me an example as to why this is true.
Ray: Well, the main thing is the fact that when the FDA releases a drug to the market to be used by the people that are in your listening audience they know less than half of the serious adverse direct reactions. The way that they find out the others is what I call “The great clinical trial” which is you the patient. So even if the doctor is knowledgeable on everything; which most of us only know the major drug reactions. What happens is the way we find out all the others is when people start using this in large quantities, then we find out the other adverse drug reactions. And so every drug has an adherent risk and so you need to become familiar with what they do know and at least conscious of the fact that jeepers you could react to any medication the doctor prescribes. It’s not that he’s doing things wrong it’s just the nature of medicine itself.
Sid: Now you talk in your book in the introduction of the book “Death By Prescription.” You talk about a young child named “Heidi.” Tell me about Heidi.
Ray: Well, Heidi was a daughter of a neurologist that I practiced with in Rapid City here, and his daughter came in with pneumonia. And Heidi actually had a severe atypical pneumonia and we gave her a drug called Erythromycin; this was the proper one. But we also gave her a little Tylenol to keep her fever down. Well, about 3 days into treating her pneumonia her liver enzymes started to rise dramatically. And of course I was a younger doctor then and Dr. Savo is a gentleman’s name we realized that things were wrong and so we cut off the medication realizing this could be a problem. And we had to air ambulance her up to the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital. While I was there that they said that she had an allergic reaction to the Tylenol and it was causing liver damage. And this was a real shock for me as a young doctor and dealing with my first real serious adverse drug reaction.
Sid: Tell me about in the first chapter you talk about Cynthia.
Ray: Well, this is a gal who actually it was not a patient of mine I knew her from other sources. But she actually had been prescribed some actual hormone replacement therapy because she’s going through menopause and experiencing hot flashes. And actually wasn’t too bad, but the doctor had actually promoted it to her as a situation where she actually felt that it was going to prevent heart attacks and strokes and help maintain her bone density. And about 7 months after being on this hormone replacement she suffered a heart attack. And everything else checked out fine, but in the end the cardiologist kind of told her that he thought she suffered the heart attack at age 49 because of the hormone replacement therapy. And that’s what the literature’s now showing us. This happened several years ago but now we’ve had 2 major studies come out last summer showing that actually hormone replacement therapy increases the risk of heart attack and stroke in our woman. And it does not decrease it and they’re basically recommending that we don’t use hormone replacement therapy for long term prevention of chronic diseases. Now if you need it to get through the menopause sometimes we have to use it. Of course, I like natural hormones but that was Cynthia’s story.
Sid: In your book “Death By Prescription,” there’s another sacred cow, the FDA and you explain who few American’s understand what the FDA does and why it’s so important; and why there maybe some financial ulterior motives. I wonder if you would explain that.
Ray: Well the FDA obviously is the Food and Drug Administration and they’re there to protect us and make sure that what we eat and what we take in medication is safe or as safe as possible. But what happened is that the FDA was very very strong in protecting us and in fact the statistic that hit me as a doctor was the fact that before 1990 of all the drugs release worldwide to the public only 4% of those drugs were first released in the United States. Well, this bothered a lot of people we had the AIDs epidemic, we had cancer patients who wanted a lot of the drugs that were in other counties but not ours. So there’s a lot of pressure on Congress to get our drugs approved quicker and faster and more frequently. So they past the User Fee Act in 1992 which made the pharmaceutical companies pay a fee to the FDA to get their; you know help get their drugs approved. Well, that user fee then created what I call the deadly partnership. In other words, the group that they’re supposed to be protecting and actually monitoring is actually now supplies over 50% of the budget for the FDA. So over half of the budget of the FDA comes from the pharmaceutical industry through these user fees. So if I want to get a drug approved by the FDA and I’m a pharmaceutical company I have to pay; originally it was a quarter million dollars, $250,000 was paid to the FDA to get your drug approved. Since that time now over 60% of all of the drugs released now worldwide are first released in the United States. And the number of drugs being approved has accelerated; it used to take an average of 24 months to get a drug approved by the FDA that dropped down to 12 months and they have a rapid, what they call a fast track method of getting drugs approved. And you can get drugs approved within 6 months. And so it’s totally changed how the FDA looks at things. It used to be the FDA used to say “Should this drug be approved for use by the public?” Now, the attitude seems to be “How can we get this drug approved to be used by the public?” And so it’s a real change in the FDA and the way that they approve our drugs and they protect us and our safety.
Sid: But you in your book “Death By Prescription” that’s a pretty shocking title. But I mean the average doctor if they see your cholesterol numbers are wrong will give you medication. And the average doctor if they see your blood pressures a little high will give you medication. You’re pretty negative on this medication.
Ray: Well you know Sid I want to make a statement. I really believe medication is very, very important; it has saved a lot of lives, it has helped a lot of people But I think that we need to adopt an attitude to use medication as a last resort not a first choice. And what you’ll find is all almost the top 7 or 8 killers of us, you know the leading causes of death in the US and the western world is the result of a lot of our lifestyles. In other words, you take diabetes, heart disease, cancer, cholesterol, high blood pressure, osteoporosis; all of these really major diseases are strongly related to patient’s lifestyles. So if people would just improve their lifestyles…
Sid: Now you’re saying that but I have to tell you I look at all the different diets that are all contradictory, one contradicts the other. I look at all the different claims on the various vitamins, I look at all the various claims on the various medication and I have to tell you doctor it’s confusing out there.
Ray: Well and you’re right Sid and the more you learn the more confused you get and I guess that’s where I feel I would like my role to be is to try to look at the medical literature and give a practical common sense solution that anybody can do whether they’re traveling, eating at home or whatever. And this is where the truth is because there’s too much hype and none of the diets work. And none of them are really all that healthy and people gain the weight back. What I try to promote are healthy lifestyles and just happen to have a side-effect of fat loss, but at the same time you decrease your blood pressure, you decrease cholesterol; you decrease your risk of heart disease and diabetes. And this is where people need to be going because that’s the true preventive medicine.
Sid: I’ll tell you what we’re out of time; we’ll pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth