8 Year Olds on anti-Cholesterol Drugs
There are many dichotomies about diet and health that annoy me, because physical and mental health at its best should NOT be complicated: eat right, exercise enough to keep your organs in fresh oxygen, and live your life. But no. We’re surrounded by a world that tells us something is wrong with us – for our size, our race, daring to think differently, liking chocolate when vanilla is the new black – and now there are entire insidious industries convincing us to drug our kids rather than discipline them, drug ourselves rather than deal with complex feelings about everything we’ve swallowed physically and mentally, eat crap that destroys our bodies because being blitzed out of our minds on some level depresses us so we eat the feelings that surface anyway, and then we take more pills because we have to because our bodies can’t deal with anything but the remaining synthesized chemicals.
If you can’t tell, I’m outraged by a recommendation that children be placed on anti-cholesterol drugs as a “preventative” measure. The drug in question, known as statin, really does do good things for adults in need of it, and has applications in lowering cholesterol and in treatment for breast cancer. These are good things. However, any drug if used for too long can lead to degradation of liver function, and once the liver goes, it all goes. Putting children on any prescription drug is a formula for shortening their lives, a job they should by rights begin at age 21 like those of us in the generations ahead of them.
I know there’s some massive work involved in re-teaching cultural eating habits if it turns out to be factually true that children as young as 8 actually are testing positive for high amounts of cholesterol in their blood stream. But unless the child has had a cardiac arrest or is in definite imminent danger, educating parents and kid about healthy eating along with a cooking class will go a lot further – and not line the pockets of a pharmaceutical company that has taken enough advantage of our collective fears.