Comments on: Statins and Why Patrick Holford Is Breaking My Heart: Part 1

By: Mariana

Mariana — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:02:10 +0000

Really?

So is it possible to acieve a 100% perfect health like the title of one of his books? So your genes, environmental factors and viruses do not play an important part of your health? AMAZING! Congratulations!

By: GREENKITTY

GREENKITTY — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:47:41 +0000

Everybody’s biochemistry is different and has different nutritional needs so what will work for one person may not work for another. I think as with all things trial and error is the best approach to our health. I personally go by results, hundreds and thousands of people have had fantastic results with Patricks help, myself included so I am going to keep doing what I’m doing. People are always going to criticise and find some kind of fault in everything we do so if it doesn’t work for you personally, try something else. Qualified in nutrition myself, I feel it is wrong to condemn Patricks work as he has been a huge help to my health and many others over the world so to say he is wrong in many things I feel is unrealisitic unless you have applied his methods yourself to the word. Try things out and see how they work for you.

By: jonhw

jonhw — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:14:50 +0000

I’ve ignored Holford’s advice, and my health is also very good :) There are limits to how far anecdote can get you…

By: KENNETH

KENNETH — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:56:55 +0000

LOOKS LIKE PEOPLE ARE OUT TO DISCREDIT PATRICK HOLFORD,I HAVE READ MANY OF HIS BOOKS,AND HAVE FOLLOWED HIS ADVICE AND MY HEALTH COULD’ NT BE BETTER.

By: Neomand

Neomand — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:07:40 +0000

The fact that statins are over-sold doesn’t mean that supplements are a better or cheaper replacement.

By: Holford and Burne’s Food is Better Medicine than Drugs is “packed with sound science and statistics”, according to the Daily Mail « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:46:05 +0000

[...] We would beg to differ, having gone through this book in frankly rather tedious detail but still failed to adequately cover the errors contained within. In terms of examples of problems with the book, one might note that it took us a number of posts just to detail some of the errors in Holford and Burne’s work on statins. [...]

By: Patrick Holford distorts research findings on statins to push his pills « gimpy’s blog

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:02:02 +0000

[...] statins, based not on evidence, but handouts from Big Pharma. Patrick it seems has both an aversion to statins and a strong belief that drug companies are distorting evidence to promote their own products. Of [...]

By: Patrick Holford on Statins and Why You Should Spend Money on His Supplements As Well or Instead « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Thu, 29 May 2008 03:01:29 +0000

[...] Head of Science and Education at Biocare has an odd relationship with statins. Who can forget his straight-to-camera overview of Big Pharma’s “full spectrum dominance” and the industrial complex that enforces mass-medication with prescription drugs such as statins. [...]

By: Prof. David Colquhoun FRS Vs. Patrick Holford DipION (Hon) « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:14:02 +0000

[...] recently signed a £400k+ deal with Biocare. Although Holford has had some serious problems with statistics, maths and interpreting scientific research, we believe that he did graduate with a BSc from York [...]

By: Shinga

Shinga — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:52:51 +0000

You can have no idea how much I agree with you, Persiflage. I think that we have a very distorted marketplace in the UK. E.g., you look at the label of a tuna mayonnaise and it will warn you that the contents may be hot, that it contains potential allergens of fish, egg, dairy, wheat etc.

So - when you are reading all of this stuff about the safety and efficacy of supplements, it is not surprising that people think that it is true. There was a recent, very depressing, survey of medical students and physicians in the US and it was astonishing just how many of them believed that the claims made by supplements had been made with the imprimatur of the FDA (no actual FDA involvement required, of course).

Apart from hope, the reason that hokey weight-loss supplements have such a thriving market is because people believe that there is scientific proof for the claims (another, deeply depressing survey and a journal paper that I must try to locate).

So, on the one hand, food manufacturers may be obliged to tell you the stunningly obvious about your packet of peanuts (contains nuts) yet the supplement entrepreneurs who imply that they can transform your health, prevent disease (Say No to Cancer, Say No to Alzheimer's, How to Eliminate Your Risk of Ever Having a Heart Attack) don't have to prove efficacy, bioavailability, biological plausibility etc.

Coming up, in part 2, precisely what is wrong with the claim of almost 20,000 as the NNT to prevent one heart attack. Despite the fact that I've had to work off the defunct URL cited in the book...

Regards - Shinga