You have bad luck with doctors. Are you on the Snake Oil HMO?
Eat a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast!
I think that it is completely unethical of any doctor to sell medications directly to their patients. It puts the doctor in the position of choosing to make a boat payment or give the patient objective advice. It puts the patient in the awkward position of accepting or refusing a treatment in which their doctor has a financial stake.
As far as research into Biolife, here is a paper from the manufacturer’s web site:
Cleveland Clinic Trial by Dr. Dennis Sprecher Published in Sprecher DL, Pearce GL (2002) Fiber-multivitamin combination therapy: a beneficial influence on low density lipoprotein and homocysteine Metabolism 51, 1166-70.
.unicityscience.org/images/Clinical%20Studies/Metabolism.pdf
(Add www to the link)
It appears that Bio Life 2 is a combination of fiber, B vitamins, and folate. The one study shows a modest reduction of LDL-C with Bio Life (7.9 +/- 11%) vs placebo (+2.4 +/- 11%). What this study doesn’t do is determine if this change results in any cardiovascular benefit.
I think it’s worth noting that statins are $10 for 3 months at Walmart.
Um, no. That is a terrible breakfast choice for a diabetic. He’d be much better off with bacon and eggs.
Tim Minchin? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw&feature=youtu.be&t=3m22s
Link goes to the relevant part but for people who haven’t heard it before if you got 9 minutes listen from the start.
Indeed. Thanks.
From the AMA’s website-
In-office sale of health-related products by physicians presents a financial conflict of interest, risks placing undue pressure on the patient, and threatens to erode patient trust and undermine the primary obligation of physicians to serve the interests of their patients before their own.
That’s a really, really sleazy thing for a doctor to do.
I’ve always thought they should extend the Stark Laws* beyond Medicare and Medicaid. Some states do have their own version of Stark type laws, but for the most part the prohibition against self referrals is an ethical duty, not a legal one.
*These laws do not prohibit the creation of powered armor suits.
Have you tried pot?
I’ve heard you should smoke pot.
I would be stoned right now if it were legal, but, alack, I am far too much of a pussy to do it otherwise.
I think that I’ve learned, however, that I should just grab a soluble fiber supplement and go with it. Eating oatmeal would be great, but doesn’t really fit with my day plan. Maybe if I ever get that tiny crock pot that’s been on my list and I can make the real oatmeal with the pinhead oats overnight.
Eat a plum…or a prune, if you don’t want the liquid. Oh, you have diabetes? Ummm…shredded wheat, maybe?
Dude. Prunes and plums nothing. Dinner every night is a hand fruit (usually apple or pear, because the plums I like are only available like three weeks out of the year down here), lunch every day is a banana and trail mix, and breakfast is a formulated trail mix bar full of whatever the crap they use to glue it together. And night snack that keeps me from dying in my sleep is currently lots and lots of berries and cheese and crackers. I’m not sure that there’s any fruit I can eat that will make a significant fiber dent.
Most likely, what happens when I take a fiber supplement is I fart a whole bunch, crap three times a day, and re-rupture that gargantuan hemorrhoid (which I would think qualifies as a fissure, but either I’m a lot tougher than Kevin Smith or it wasn’t even in the ballpark, because it hardly laid me out on my back the last time it popped), so the chances of me even keeping up with that until my next lipids panel are pretty slim.
…aaand I’m out. Good luck with everything!