Banana fanna fo fanna

Trying to understand my husband’s growing obsession with hitting a little white ball around for 5 hours, I was browsing through Golf Digest this weekend when I came across a banana lifting free-weights in an ad.

The ad touted WelChol, and without question, the manufacturers of WelChol want us to make the connection: anything associated with a fruit or vegetable lifting weights has got to be good for our health.

And what is WelChol? A new brand of banana? A supplement to boost endurance for weight lifters? A revolutionary driver that will keep you from slicing into the rough? No – WelChol is a prescription drug that promises to lower your cholesterol without the use of statin drugs.

Now, I know you’ve heard me ranting about statins. But today there’s a new kid in town, with a new angle on the cholesterol sales pitch – along with a whole new list of unappealing side effects.

At first this looks like familiar territory. Sankyo Pharma, the makers of WelChol, primarily want you to know that their product may lower LDL cholesterol an average of 15-18%. Some conditions do apply, though. For one thing, we’re told that WelChol “works with diet and exercise” to lower LDL. And I’ll bet it does – diet modification and exercise being two of the keys to promoting cardiovascular health in general.

Also, WelChol users will enjoy that average LDL drop of 15-18% “depending on dose.” Ah – and will a higher dosage bump up your chance of side effects? We can only imagine, because neither the advertisement nor the WelChol web site address that question. But the site does list a number of adverse side effects, including (but not limited to) gas, constipation, infection, upset stomach and headache.

Infection? Infection of what? And how much? And should I have an ambulance standing by? These questions go unanswered as well.

Aside from that “infection” item, the side effects that come with WelChol are fairly tame compared to statin side effects (liver damage, nerve damage, sexual dysfunction, etc.). And that brings us to another primary selling point: WelChol is nonsystemic. That is; unlike a statin drug, the body doesn’t absorb it. Sankyo Pharma claims that WelChol works in the intestine where it simply draws LDL cholesterol out of your system and sends it on its way for elimination. On the other hand, a statin drug is absorbed in the liver where it may do damage, which is why statin users need to have their liver functions monitored on a regular basis.

In the end, though, WelChol comes around to the same bottom line as statin drugs. On the web site, we’re told that “WelChol has been widely studied and has been proven to significantly lower cholesterol.” But in the very same paragraph they reveal what we’ve known for some time now: “The effect of WelChol (alone or in combination with other cholesterol-lowering medicines) on heart disease has not been determined.”

So what’s the goal here? Nothing more than simply lowering cholesterol so you can go through your workplace (like the guy in the Cheerios commercial) telling everyone: “I lowered my cholesterol!” And I can’t help but imagine an additional scene added to that commercial: After suffering a heart attack, the guy is rushed out of his workplace on a gurney and says to one of the EMS workers, “I lowered my cholesterol!” Because as I told you last month (“Burst of Inflammation” 11/21/02), contrary to mainstream medicine’s accepted beliefs, people with high LDL levels are not necessarily at high risk of major cardiovascular events, while many with low LDL levels are.

In short – your heart has a number of enemies that are of greater concern than cholesterol.

Looking at the larger picture, this WelChol ad campaign is just another promotion of the fear of cholesterol. Any advertisement that continues to press the message into the consumer public’s mind that “Cholesterol is heart-health enemy #1” is selling the mantra that you need a drug to lower your cholesterol. And it’s working. Sales of statin drugs topped $14 billion last year, and are projected to reach $25 billion within the next four years. That’s a very attractive bottom line. No wonder WelChol wants a piece of that cholesterol-free pie for itself.

So the next time you see a banana pumping iron, the best advice I can give you is this: Get out of the way.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute