Does High Cholesterol REALLY Cause Heart Disease?

Another long article for your consideration. :)

Does High Cholesterol REALLY Cause Heart Disease?

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 05 2009

An Interview with Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD

When did you begin to suspect that the cholesterol theory of atherosclerosis might be wrong? What led you to this conclusion? Before then, had you believed in the cholesterol theory? Was this part of your training?

I have never thought that it was true. I heard about it for the first time in 1962 shortly after getting my MD. My biochemical knowledge was still intact at that time and I knew that cholesterol was one of the most important molecules in your body, indispensable for the building of your cells and for producing stress and sex hormones as well as vitamin D.

The idea that cholesterol in the blood should kill us if its concentration is a little higher than normal, as they wrote in the Framingham paper, seemed to me just as silly as to claim that yellow fingers cause lung cancer.

Would you tell my readers about your training, publications, university appointments, other professional activities?

The first seven years as a doctor I worked in different medical departments in Denmark and Sweden. In 1968 I started my academic career at the Department of Nephrology, University Hospital in Lund, where I got my PhD. After a few years I organized a research team to investigate the association between hydrocarbon exposure and glomerulonephritis

Unfortunately I caught one of my coworkers in producing a fraudulent paper. It was unfortunate, because it is risky to be a whistleblower in the academic world. Instead of excluding the fraudulent researcher it was my research that was questioned. The resistance against my research from my superiors became intolerable, and I therefore decided to go into private practice.

Nevertheless I succeeded in publishing the main part of my research in major medical journals after having left the department. I have summarized my findings and conclusions on the web as well.

In the late eighties the cholesterol campaign was started in Sweden. I was very surprised because I couldn’t recall anything in the scientific literature in support of it. I started reading it systematically, and I soon realized that I was right.

Since then I have published about eighty papers and letter, and also books, translated into five languages, where I present my arguments and criticism.

How has your work been received by your colleagues; by healthcare professionals and consumers around the world?

In the beginning nobody took notice. To ignore criticism is the most effective way to maintain a false idea. My first book was published in Sweden in 1991 with a Finnish edition shortly afterwards. The Swedish one made no impact whatsoever, and the Finnish one was put on fire in a television show.

Ridicule and slander have been used as well, as a means to muffle me

After I had aired my warnings against statin treatment in Dutch television, for instance, Dutch researchers described me in a following show as a crackpot who had been kicked from the universities of Copenhagen and Lund. The directors of the show offered my critics a possibility to discuss the issue with me on television, but all of them declined. On his blog, Michael Eades has described how one of them later on belittled me in a scientific paper.

But I have also realized that I am not alone.

Seven years ago I started THINCS, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (www.thincs.org ), which by now includes about eighty doctors, professors and other researchers from all over the world, who share my skepticism, and I have received two international awards for my contributions.

Also encouraging is the hundreds of emails that I receive every year from patients, who have regained their health after having stopped their cholesterol-lowering treatment.

Your work seems to validate what many integrative health care professionals have been saying for decades. How does the alternative community respond to you?

There is a much more open attitude from these people.

If the cholesterol hypothesis is an error, does this mean that all of its therapies – low cholesterol diet, cholesterol lowering natural therapies and medications -- are wrong?

Absolutely. This kind of treatment is meaningless, costly, and has transformed millions of healthy people into patients.

Specifically, what are your views on statins?

Their benefit is trivial, and has been seen only in male patients who already have heart disease.

Worse is that their many adverse effects are ignored or cleverly belittled by the trial directors. Independent researchers have found many more and in much higher numbers. If they are true it means that today millions of previously healthy people probably consider their weak and painful muscles, their bad memory, their sexual failure, and their cancer to be a consequence of increasing age, and so do their doctors.

The risk of cancer is most alarming. Both animal experiments, epidemiological studies and several of the statin trials have shown that low cholesterol predisposes to cancer.

The widespread use of statin treatment probably explains why the decrease of the smoking habit that has been going on in many countries hasn’t been followed by a decrease of cancer mortality. We should have seen a decrease because smoking predispose not only to bronchial cancer, but to all kinds of cancer.

Drug companies market vigorously the highest, strongest doses of statins. Lipitor is pushed at the highest dosage, 80 mg. This dosage is the most powerful for lowering cholesterol and LDL, but it also causes more adverse effects and costs more than lower doses. What are your thoughts about this?

The outcome from these trials is a further demonstration that the small benefit from statin treatment has nothing to do with cholesterol.

For instance, although cholesterol plummeted and remained at about 50 percent below the initial value during the whole SEAS trial, it did not change mortality, but it increased the number of cancer with statistical significance.

Even worse was the result of the ENHANCE trial, where atherosclerosis in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia progressed the most among those whose cholesterol was lowered the most.

If statins can be helpful in reducing the incidence of heart attacks, who should take them?

In my view, nobody.

When I was practicing, I used to describe the benefit in this way: Considering your age and your previous heart attack, your chance to be alive in five years is about 90 percent. You can increase that chance to 92 percent if you take a statin pill every day, but then you may also expose yourself to its many adverse effects.

From the data I have seen, statins have not produced a reduction in overall cardiac deaths. Do you have any idea of why this is?

You are right. Heart mortality in Sweden is going downwards, but the reduction started already in the 1960’s. The cause is most probably that treatment of acute myocardial infarction has improved, because the mortality curve has not changed after the introduction of the statins.

The reason may be that their small benefit is counteracted by an increasing frequency of heart failure.

As you know, the statins block not only the synthesis of cholesterol, but also of other vital molecules, for instance coenzyme Q10, and muscle cells, including those of the heart, can’t function properly without Q10.

Do you think mainstream medicine will ever relinquish its view that elevated cholesterol causes heart disease, and that statins are the magic bullet?

I hope so. The failures of the most recent statin trials have been commented on by several journalists in the major U.S. newspapers. In Sweden a revolution is going on. Here, a general practitioner treated her own obesity successfully by eating a low-carbohydrate diet with a high content of animal fat. When she advised her obese and diabetic patients to do the same, she was reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare for malpractice.

After a two-year-long investigation she was acquitted, as her treatment was considered to be in accord with scientific evidence.

At the same time, the Board dismissed two experts, who had been appointed for updating the dietary recommendations for diabetics, because it came up that they were sponsored by the food industry. Instead the Board has asked independent researchers to review the scientific literature.

The subject has gained general attention due to a number of radio and television shows, where critical experts including myself have discussed the issue with representatives of the official view.

Most important, thousands of patients have experienced themselves that by doing the opposite as recommended by the current guidelines they have regained their health!

The effect has been that the sales of butter, cream, and full-fat milk are increasing in Sweden after many years of decline, and a recent poll showed that a majority of Swedish people today think that the best way of losing weight is by a low-carbohydrate, fat-rich diet.

Further progress was achieved this spring. Several times, colleagues of mine and also I, have asked the Swedish Food Administration for the scientific basis of their warnings against saturated fat. We have been met with the argument that there are thousands of such studies, or by referrals to the WHO guidelines or the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations.

As the main argument in the latter two -- that saturated fat raises cholesterol -- we were not satisfied with their answer, and finally the Food Administration published a list with 72 studies that they claimed were in support of their view on saturated fat, and twelve that were not.

We scrutinized the lists and found that only two of the 72 studies supported their standpoint; eleven studies did not concern saturated fat at all, and the unsupportive list was incomplete, to put it mildly.

We published a short report with our comments to these lists in the Swedish medical journal Dagens Medicin. A response from the Food Administration appeared seven weeks later in which they pointed out that their recommendations were directed to healthy people, not to patients. They maintained that they were based on solid scientific evidence, without mentioning anything about saturated fat, and without answering our critical comments.

But this is not all. Earlier this year Sachdeva et al reported that the mean cholesterol in 137,000 patients with acute myocardial infarction was lower than normal.

As usual, the authors didn’t understand their own findings, but concluded that cholesterol should be lowered even more. A few months later Al-Mallah et al. came up with the same result and conclusion, although they also reported that three years later, mortality was twice as high among those who had been admitted with the lowest cholesterol.

These results created a fierce debate in one of the major Swedish newspapers. It was opened by ninety-one-year old Lars Werkö, the ‘Grand Old Man’ in Swedish medical science, retired professor in internal medicine and former head of The Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care, together with Tore Scherstén, retired professor in surgery and former secretary of the Swedish Medical Research Council.

“Now it is time to sack the cholesterol hypothesis and to investigate the reason of this scientific breakdown” they wrote.

They also criticized American researchers in AHA and NHLBI and their followers for sloppy and fraudulent science.

They were of course attacked by two professors and representatives of the current view, but none of them came up with any substantial evidence, only with personalities.

Are there other risk factors that should be followed? Such as: C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, homocysteine, lipoprotein A... Any other factors?

Such analyses may be helpful for doctors to put the right diagnosis in patients with a disease of unknown origin.

But to check healthy people’s blood to find deviations from normal is the freeway to unnecessary medication.

Are there other alternative therapies besides statins that people might consider?

There is no reason for healthy people to take drugs, or anything else to prevent heart disease, as long as we do not know the very cause.

Don’t forget that people who die from a myocardial infarction have on average lived just as long as other people. In my talks I used to ask people, who put the same question to me, if they know a better way of dying?

What diet do you recommend people follow?

I do not give medical advice to people I haven’t seen and examined myself, and as I am retired, it means that I give no advice at all except to my family and nearest friends. I inform people by writing and lecturing. Then they have to decide themselves what to do.

In 20 years, do you expect changes in how we view heart disease, its causes and treatments?

I am confident that we will see a change in the next few years. There is a growing skepticism among medical scientists. What is happening in Sweden these days may hopefully inspire researchers in other countries to air their skepticism openly.

Recently, experts selected by WHO and FAO published a new report . Here the authors concluded that there was no satisfactory or reliable evidence to support the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease, or diabetes or obesity.

A revolutionary change of direction, you may say. However, they did not change their recommendations!

Together with Kilmer McCully, the discoverer of the association between homocysteine and atherosclerosis, I have presented another hypothesis (You can read that paper in its entirety at this link.)

We think this hypothesis is much more likely because we are able to explain the many observations that do not fit with the present one.

Finally, I assume that much of what I have mentioned here may seem incredible, but all the facts, including references to the scientific literature, are available in my new book Fat And Cholesterol Are GOOD For You!

About Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD:

Dr. Ravnskov graduated from the University of Copenhagen with an M.D in 1961.

1961-1967: Various appointments at surgical, roentgenological, neurological, pediatric and medical departments in Denmark and Sweden.

1968-1979: Various appointments at the Department of Nephrology, and the Department of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.

1979-2000: A private practitioner and independent researcher, specializing in internal medicine and nephrology. Honored with the Skrabanek Award 1998, and author of: The Cholesterol Myths.

For more information, see Dr. Ravnskov's Web site.

Sustainability: An Assault on Economics

Click on the title to go to the original article.

Mises Daily: Friday, December 04, 2009 by Tyler A. Watts

Ah, the greens. They're not just treehuggers anymore. They've been browbeating us to recycle, eat soy, save energy, drive less, ride the bus, and a thousand other ways to "act local" for many years now. Now they've even got a hip new huckster on the big screen: "No Impact Man," your conductor on a first-class guilt trip to ecoland. Despite the massive popularity of their cause, I don't think they're satisfied. They want to control us. If we don't watch out, these people hell-bent on saving the planet are going to end up micromanaging our daily lives.

The idea of sustainability itself sounds pretty benign — it merely implies that people ought to be forward thinking, prudent, and thrifty in their use of economic resources. And I'm OK with this basic idea — on the surface, it sounds like simple wisdom, in league with similarly bland and benevolent values like responsibility and generosity.

But deep down, there's something unsettling about the basic premise of sustainability. Sustainability advocates — let's call them "sustainists" — are damning in their fervor, poise, and rhetoric. Their ideology is pregnant with an accusation that the way things currently are is somehow unsustainable. There's an alarmism here which essentially claims, "there's a crisis, it's your fault for being ignorant, irrational, and greedy. You must do as we say to fix it, or we'll all die."

This alarmist crusade, which underlies the sustainability movement, should rankle people with an economic understanding of the world. A basic tenet of economics is that markets are self-correcting and orderly; prices indicate resource constraints and guide people in economizing on their use. Prices change as underlying supply and demand conditions change, inducing appropriate adjustments in consumption and production patterns. Prices channel the profit motive — a natural aspect of the human condition — into productive and innovative activities. In short, prices work.

Sustainists are either ignorant or in denial of this basic lesson. Either way, we economists have our work cut out for us.

The Sustainists' Lament

The gist of the problem, as the sustainists see it, is that people are using resources irresponsibly — either using them up too fast, using too much of them, or using them in a way that will have negative long-term ramifications. In brief, sustainists disapprove of other peoples' actions, and are taking steps to correct their wayward brethren.

Because these wasteful others, through either ignorance, laziness, or stubbornness, will not wake up and adopt sustainable practices on their own, sustainists see the need for a self-conscious effort — organized campaigns, eco–guilt trips, and yes, even laws — to correct this misuse of resources. We need to change our patterns of action; we need a motivating force beyond mere "economic self-interest" (i.e., the profit motive). Sustainability, then, has become a full-fledged crusade to "save the planet," and if you're not part of the solution, you're surely part of the problem.

Let's interpret this through the lens of economics. Sustainability arguments fall under one of two broad categories: (1) the nonrenewable resources argument that the supplies of certain important resources are shrinking; by the time people realize this it will be "too late" — resource shortages will strain the capitalist economies to the breaking point; (2) the climate-change argument that there are large, though delayed, negative externalities to current patterns of resource use.[1]

Whatever their type, sustainability arguments invoke market failure. Indeed, the very practices cited as unsustainable arise on the free market. Therefore some outside corrective, whether aggressive moral suasion or economic regulation, is needed to prevent the impending catastrophe of unsustainable resource use.

Are Prices Not Sufficient?

I don't want to dwell on the particulars of the sustainability movement. There are dozens of manifestations, from green building to organic farming to mandatory recycling to decarbonization — indeed, the sustainability bandwagon (which of course is painted green and powered by renewable energy) seems infinitely expandable to include every industry and interest group under the sun. Instead, I want to draw out the essential implications of the sustainability movement.

The sustainability movement is an assault on economics. It claims at its core that prices don't operate through time to direct consumption and production decisions in a sustainable way. A lesson in basic economics should suffice to defend against the sustainists' attack.

Prices arise in the market economy as a concomitant of mutually beneficial exchange. People want things that improve their lives — we call this value. Some valuable things are more scarce than others; take the classic case of water and diamonds. In absolute terms, water is more valuable than diamonds: you don't need diamonds to live.

Yet water is, pound for pound, far cheaper. Why? Although it's valuable, it is also relatively abundant; in many parts of the world, it literally does fall from the sky. The price of any good reflects this combination of value and scarcity. We're willing to pay more for valuable things as they become relatively scarce (e.g., oil); and we needn't pay as much for valuable things as they become more abundant (e.g., grain).

Likewise, as scarce things lose their value, people are no longer willing to pay for them (e.g., typewriters), and people must pay more for scarce things that suddenly become sought after (e.g., vintage Michael Jackson records). The awesome thing about prices is that they seamlessly convey this combination of facts about an item's value (demand) and it's scarcity (supply). Prices, of course, are subject to change — prices of certain goods fluctuate every day. But this is a good thing; discernable trends in prices over time indicate relative changes in the "market fundamentals" of supply and demand.

In this sense, prices reliably guide individuals, both consumers and producers, toward a rational use of resources. Savvy consumers listen to the prices; a rising price trend tells them to cut back on that particular item, and a falling price tells them to go ahead and use a little more of it. The same basic logic applies on the production side.

Entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are like bloodhounds sniffing out these price trends in search of profit opportunities — chances to create value through exchange. If the price of a good trends strongly upwards over time (indicating it has become scarcer and/or more valuable), they rush to find cheaper substitutes. The cheaper the substitutes, the higher the profits to be had, especially if you're the first to market. If prices trend downwards over time (indicating that the resource is becoming more abundant relative to its usefulness), entrepreneurs devote their efforts elsewhere.

The general outcome of these economic processes is captured by the statement "prices coordinate."[2] In other words, the price system acts as an "invisible hand,"[3] guiding people — both consumers and producers — in their economic actions. The real beauty of this free-market price system is that it brings about its own kind of sustainability. This is not so much sustainability in the use of particular resources — for particular goods fall in and out of favor according to supply and demand factors — but sustainability of high economic growth and high standards of living in the economically developed, capitalist economies.

Take, as an example, the transition in the market for interior illumination: tallow candles were replaced by whale-oil lamps, which were replaced by kerosene lamps, which were replaced by incandescent bulbs powered by electricity. There was no social or political pressure needed to accomplish this evolution; there was no "peak whale oil" movement, no kerosene conservationists, no sustainability crusade of yore. All it took was a functional price system, combined with the ever-present entrepreneurial drive for profits under a competitive, free-market order.

Likewise, in our time as sustainists and other worrywarts fret about resource depletion, the price system remains functional, quietly yet assuredly guiding individuals to economize on resources, search out profitable substitutes, and anticipate future trends. All this happens without preaching, without crusades, and without activism.

Is the Sustainability Crusade Sustainable?

How long will sustainists be able to beat their drum, simultaneously trumpeting their greener-than-thou self-image and attempting, with varying degrees of coercion, to make the rest of us act "sustainable" too? With the global warming scare losing credibility by the day, the likelihood of sustainists being able to claim even a moral victory is fading.[4] Barring the earth melting down from a little bit of smoke, I'm not too worried about sustainists having much of a long-run impact.

Hardcore sustainists are asking for a radically disruptive change from the natural order of the free-market economy. They're asking us to forego wealth and embrace privation in the name of their cause.[5] Although citizens of the Western democracies have seemingly become easy marks for anything green, we will only go so far toward saving the planet, especially when it becomes apparent that sustainability requires a march toward poverty and a deeply regimented and regulated society (and that the planet's not really in peril, after all).

"A lesson in basic economics should suffice to defend against the sustainists' attack."

Also, and perhaps more importantly, people in developing countries will be increasingly turned off by the sustainists' demands for sacrifice. Having just arrived at the high living standards that long-term capitalist development yields, my sense is that they will turn a cold shoulder to the idea of ratcheting down their development.

The current resurgence of the classical-liberal tradition in economics will also reduce the appeal of sustainability. The idea of imposed or centrally planned sustainability will crumble under the realization that the spontaneous order wrought by the invisible hand of the free-market price system is amazingly sustainable in and of itself. Add to the mix the hardships of the current recession, and it won't be long before enough people, even sustainist crusaders come crawling back, box of chocolates in hand, to the free-market economy.

Tyler Watts is a PhD candidate in economics at George Mason University.

Charlie Brown Tree

Per Amy's request, here's a picture of the Christmas tree they wouldn't let me get.

Raw milk article

Trafficking in Raw Milk

After illegal drugs, raw milk -- milk that’s unpasteurized and unhomogenized, just as it comes out of the cow -- may be the most briskly traded underground commodity in America.

By Ann Monroe

It's early Saturday morning, and the Brooklyn street is almost empty. Except at one half-open store, where about 30 people are lined up in the narrow aisle clutching empty backpacks, shopping bags and suitcases. At the door, a man checks each entrant, asking "Are you here for the...pickup?"

Someone shouts "The van's coming!" and the place burst into action. People run into the street and come back hauling heavy cartons and cooler chests. Then the store empties as quickly as it filled, as everyone lugs their contraband purchase home.

And "lug" is the word. What's being distributed at this store -- and in countless offices, backyards, homes, churches and parking lots across the country -- is milk. Raw milk.

Apart from illegal drugs, raw milk -- milk that's unpasteurized and unhomogenized, just as it comes out of the cow -- may be the most briskly traded underground commodity in the United States. By a conservative estimate, some 500,000 people in the U.S. drink the stuff, says Sally Fallon, president of the Weston Price Foundation, which is dedicated to spreading the word about raw milk -- and making it legal. Her guess is that the true total is closer to a million. Even the Food and Drug Administration, which is doing its best to keep raw milk out of the mouths of citizens, has acknowledged that about 3 percent of U.S. milk drinkers drink it raw.

It's not that those Brooklyn milk-buyers were doing anything illegal -- drinking raw milk is legal in every state. So is buying it. What's not legal, except in eight states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico and Washington), is selling it to the general public. The other 42 states have a variety of bans. In some, it can be sold only on the farm. In others, it can be sold only as pet food. Some outlaw its sale altogether. Federal law prohibits transporting it for sale -- even from a state where it's legally sold -- across state lines.

Skirting the law

That hasn't stopped ingenious raw milk drinkers from finding ways around the rules. Some buy the milk in states where it is legal and carry it across state lines themselves. (Milky Way Farm, in Starr, S.C., does a brisk business selling raw milk in parking lots right on the state line to buyers from neighboring states where it's illegal). Others form milk-buying clubs, which purchase the milk from a farm that's allowed to sell it and bring it back to a central distribution point. In states where selling raw milk isn't allowed at all, clever lawyers have taken advantage of old-time laws that let a farmer board and feed a neighbor's cow to set up cow-share programs. Members legally own the cattle the dairy farmer is raising and milking, and -- as owners -- get the milk.

These arrangements may fall within the letter of the law, but they clearly skirt its intent, so raw milk drinkers keep very, very quiet about their sources. A raw milk club in New York demands a reference from a current member before it will let you join. Joining one New Jersey club takes weeks because the club checks out each potential member (to make sure they're not a government agent in disguise) before letting them in.

The complicated legal arrangements make buying raw milk something of an ordeal. No running down to the corner for a quick quart: in most cases, buyers must order their raw milk online, usually by the gallon, several days before the pickup. (If you miss the deadline, you have to wait for the next one.) Deliveries are rarely made more than once a week and many are two or more weeks apart. Some buyers have to drive several hours to get to the pickup site, which is often in a hard-to find spot. "I've gotten lost so many times," says Valerie Scott Massimo, a New Jersey raw milk drinker. "The house is un-findable, and they have a wooden fence six feet tall."

There's good reason for these clubs to be cautious. While state authorities rarely go after raw milk buyers, distributors have gotten in trouble -- late last year an Ohio raw milk co-op was raided at gunpoint by sheriffs' deputies. And state officials regularly try to shut down dairies that sell raw milk. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which defends farmers' right to sell raw milk, has a dozen cases on its docket right now. "People have the legal right to drink it," says Pete Kennedy, interim president. "The problem is finding ways to enable them to exercise their right."

If many state officials get their way, exercising that right will get harder, not easier. State officials try continually to tighten the laws governing the sale of raw milk. About a year and a half ago, agriculture authorities in Georgia, where it can only be sold as pet food, proposed requiring all raw milk to be dyed charcoal gray, to make it less attractive to drinkers. (Activists beat that one back). In California, state authorities have tightened the requirements for raw milk testing, says Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the state's biggest raw milk producer, demanding that the milk be free not just of harmful bacteria, but of almost any bacteria at all.

A government conspiracy?

Many raw milk enthusiasts see a deep conspiracy behind governmental attempts to prevent the sale of raw milk. McAfee, who's managed to get into trouble with the law even in a state where raw milk is legal (by insisting on shipping it across state lines), blames it on the drug companies. They don't want people discovering that food can cure what they're selling pills for, he says. "They don't want any encroachment."

But a quick look at the past makes it clear why so many governmental officials hold to the need for pasteurization. B.P. (before pasteurization), many dairies, especially in cities, fed their cattle on -- to put it bluntly -- garbage, and their milk was rife with dangerous bacteria. Pasteurizing it was the only way to make it safely drinkable. After many years of pasteurization, just about everyone simply assumes that raw milk is dangerous stuff. Amy Osborne, a dancer, got a panicked letter from a relative -- a dietician -- when she heard Osborne was feeding her baby raw milk. "It made my husband really nervous," she says. Another mother, reluctant even to have her name used, though raw milk is legal in her state, worries about whether to let her children's friends drink it. "God forbid they get sick and blame it on raw milk, "she says.

When a raw milk drinker gets sick, that's generally what happens -- whatever the evidence. Years ago, Massimo got sick a few months after starting to drink raw milk from a nearby dairy. Her doctor immediately blamed the milk -- even though tests showed no harmful bacteria and nobody else who had drunk the milk had gotten sick. "He was totally convinced," she says, "and he was a doctor and I wasn't." So she stopped drinking it.

She started again 20 years later when -- after moving to New Jersey -- she developed diverticulitis and became very weak on the liquid diet that was all she could digest. Her chiropractor, Steven Lavitan, put her on raw milk, and she says she immediately began to feel better. Lavitan, who recommends raw dairy products to many of his clients, says he has even seen cataracts improved by drinking raw milk. He and others claim that raw milk can cure a host of ailments, including asthma, allergies, lactose intolerance and other digestive problems, many of which, they argue, are caused in the first place by drinking pasteurized milk. "Anything that regular milk can cause, raw milk can cure," Lavitan says.

It does a body good

Raw milk lovers advance two basic health arguments. The first (flatly denied by regulators and most nutritional scientists) is that pasteurization destroys or damages many of milk's most valuable nutrients. The second is that while it may kill dangerous bacteria, pasteurization also kills off all the good bacteria in raw milk -- some of the same ones that big dairy companies are now selling as "probiotics" in pricey new yogurt and drink concoctions.

In fact, supporters argue, raw milk is just as safe as the dairy it comes from. If the cows are healthy and the dairy is spotless, they say, raw milk is safer by far than pasteurized milk, because the beneficial bacteria naturally found in raw milk make it harder for harmful bacteria to grow.

It's not just health claims that make raw milk drinkers willing to go to so much trouble to get it. Milk in its natural state simply tastes better, they say -- sweeter, richer and more wholesome. Ellen Whalen, a freelance writer and home-schooling mother on Cape Cod, says raw milk even goes sour more pleasantly than pasteurized milk. "Pasteurized milk rots," she says. "Raw milk doesn't go bad, it just changes."

Help on the way

Some help for raw milk drinkers may be at hand. In late January, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who ran for president in 2008, introduced a bill that would legalize the shipment and distribution of raw milk and milk products for human consumption across state lines. It's an issue of constitutional rights, Paul said in a statement introducing the bill. "Americans have the right to consume these products without having the federal government second-guess their judgment about what products best promote health. "

One raw milk defender goes even further. Max Kane, the owner of a Chicago raw milk co-op who recently finished a cross-country bicycle trip, during which he ate and drank only raw dairy products to publicize the case for raw milk, would like to see massive civil disobedience. "As long as people keep trying these little ways to circumvent the law, this bull---- is going to continue," he says. "I think everyone should come forward and say we're proud to drink raw milk. Otherwise it's always going to be us running, and them chasing us."

If you want to try raw milk...

Raw milk's hard to find, Kane found out on his trip, even when, as he did, you've got a crew of about a dozen friends e-mailing and cold-calling farmers to hunt the stuff down. The difficulty of getting supplies extended the trip by over a week and forced Kane to cross Mississippi and Louisiana by bus, since the few dairies he could find were too far apart to sustain him. He made it across Texas thanks to a farmer who met him regularly on the road with fresh supplies.

To find a source near you, start by asking around, especially at health-food stores and farmers' markets. Unless you're in one of the eight states where selling it in stores is legal, you won't be able to buy it at either place. But you may get some leads from other shoppers.

Keep your eyes out for fundraisers for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, or programs sponsored by the Weston Price Foundation. While neither organization actually distributes raw milk, both fight for it, and their supporters are likely to drink it.

Another way to contact raw milk drinkers is to do a Web search for "raw milk" and your state; there may well be a local organization that fights for it. Start with a search on LocalHarvest.org. Or you can do what Kane did: hunt for local farmers. Check out the Campaign for Real Milk, which lists producers of raw milk and cheese around the country and also provides a useful summary of raw milk's legal status in each state. (Warning: if you're not in a state that allows farmers to sell raw milk to the public, the list will be skimpy. Advertising on a raw milk site is "one of easier ways to get in hot water," notes Kennedy, who says they're regularly monitored by federal and local officials.)

The new toy

The man was downright giddy with excitement! He actually got one of those Black Friday TV deals. He thinks it was meant to be. There were none left on the shelf, but he happened on one in the box on the floor somewhere.





The girl was just about as excited as the man!





This is serious business.



Now I have to admit that I really did enjoy watching the Nebraska game on that new TV. (Do not ask me what I think about the digital signal cutting in and out, in and out!)

The directions on the remote say that fluorescent lights interfere with it. So, of course, I make the connection (or should I say disconnection) with government outlawing incandescent light bulbs and government mandating digital TV. How crazy is that! Perhaps I'm missing something.

No dress, but a tree

I did work on the dress Amy wants for Thanksgiving, but we ended up doing this instead.





And a little of this.





The sun came out briefly while we were getting the tree. It was a chilly, but acceptable 50 degrees or so and not raining. There were hardly any people there the day before Thanksgiving. We decided to take advantage of the day. Friday it's suppose to be colder and there's a possibility of snow showers.





Dh decided to start a new tradition--note the Hawaiian shirt. It's his job to put the lights on the tree. He also puts the hooks on the ornaments. Amy & I do the beads and place the ornaments. The last thing we do (no picture, for some reason) is put the star on the top. That's Amy's job. Dh used to hold her up to reach it, but now she's tall enough to reach it by standing on the stairs. (Children really do grow up so fast.)





The final product just in time for Thanksgiving. ;-) Yes, we're a bit early.

A new doll dress

Here is Joan modeling what I've been working on the last few days. One of my blogging "friends" made the pattern because I asked her to. I think she mentioned she was thinking of making doll clothes patterns to sell, although I don't remember for sure. There are so few Kit-style patterns, so I jokingly asked if she'd make one for me. And she said, "Yes." She sent it to me and asked me to critique it. I made notes as I went along. I'm pleased with the results. :) The fabric is from my stash...

Which just grows. It's very difficult to quit adding to it. You know how that fabric just jumps into the cart. I went to Joann's for this and ended up with more fabric, a remnant that had to have something to go with it for a doll dress and Christmas fabric that was 60% off.

If you clicked on the link you should have seen the Dritz Quick Turn tools. They are amazing at turning those impossible to turn tubes!! You've got to get them if you sew often.

Amy informed me tonight (Tues.) that she wants to wear the dress I'm working for her on Thursday for Thanksgiving. I'll see if I can get to it tomorrow, but since we're going to get our Christmas tree tomorrow, I'm not sure. No promises. It's almost to the half-way point.

My goal is to finish quilting (by machine) the basketweave queen quilt by the end of the year. I just need to start doing it. First, the back isn't together yet, but I did figure out the measurements, so now I need to cut and sew that. Then the quilting, then the binding. If I can get the quilting done the binding can wait until January.