Cardiac risk of a cancer diagnosis shouldn’t call for risky drugs

Drugs won't de-stress your heart after cancer diagnosis

There’s more than one way that cancer can kill.

As if being told you have a life-threatening cancer isn’t bad enough, now we’re learning more about how it can trigger a deadly cardiac response.

New research out of the University of Missouri has confirmed earlier findings showing a close link between getting a cancer diagnosis… and suffering a heart attack or stroke.

Of course, conventional medicine is using that finding as yet another excuse to pump you full of even more drugs if you’ve got cancer.

And that’s the very last thing you need!

The devil is in the details
The concept that cancer and serious heart issues appear to go hand in hand is not new information. Research going back over a decade has found that a cancer diagnosis can have immediate and often deadly consequences for your heart.

That study out of Sweden looked at the records of over six million people in that country. And it found that within the first week of being told they had cancer, patients were almost six times more likely to die from heart-related problems than those who were cancer free.

At that time many experts weighed in, with the most logical reason they said, being the “psychological impact of that news.”

And while the stress of receiving that devastating news might be the most logical reason that jumps to mind, researchers behind the current University of Missouri study prefer to play the drug card, saying that statins and blood thinners may be the way to prevent this from happening.

Of course, the fact that 7 of the 8 researchers have “relationships” with a long list of drugmakers, including Roche and Sanofi, shouldn’t come as any big surprise, either.

In this new study, they found that during the first six months after a diagnosis of breast, lung, colon, or bladder cancer or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the risk of having a deadly blood clot that could lead directly to a heart attack or stroke didn’t just increase — it doubled.

That certainly sounds alarming — but as these Missouri drug-pushing docs should know, the devil is in the details.

The fact is that drugs, such as the statins they mention, have actually been linked to numerous heart problems. In fact, one big study out of Japan discovered that statins aren’t preventing heart disease… they’re causing it!

That’s because these drugs can inhibit vitamin K2, which protects your arteries, interfere with your body’s production of proteins that shield your heart from damage by free radicals, and deplete CoQ10, a key enzyme that also protects your heart health.

And taking a combo of statins and aspirin, which is one of the drug “treatments” that are being studied to reduce the heart risk in cancer patients, is more likely to put you in jeopardy of a major bleed or hemorrhage, maybe even a stroke, than it is to protect your heart.

Blood thinners, on the other hand, are another matter. But no matter what results come of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s ongoing clinical trial to test how its blood thinner Eliquis can “protect” cancer patients, taking that drug if you’ve got cancer would open up a whole ‘nother can of worms.

An exposé published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentineltwo years ago uncovered the fact that the original clinical trial package that went to the FDA was mysteriously missing data on 300 patients. And that’s something that could have easily turned the tide on whether this risky drug was approved for its original purpose — or not.

As eAlert readers know, your doctor doesn’t even need FDA approval to prescribe drugs such as these to cancer patients.

The bottom line here for anyone diagnosed with cancer — whether it was a week, a month or a year ago — is that while you do need to take some extra precautions where your heart is concerned, that doesn’t mean taking more drugs.

At the beginning of this year, I told you how the idea of the “mind-body connection” is never more relevant than when cancer is in the picture.

That’s why Dr. David Wakefield, a psychologist at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Tulsa, Oklahoma, strongly advises that cancer patients look into such approaches as spiritual counseling, pet therapy, and even music therapy.

And it’s possible those types of interventions can do more than just protect your heart. They might help you overcome the cancer as well.

“Cancer diagnosis boosts risk for MI” Nicole Lou, August 15, 2017, MedpageToday, medpagetoday.com