Hello everyone.

Surprised to get another Arrow so soon?

Well, you’re doing so because of a lack of attention on my part. The short section below was supposed to be the last section in the last Arrow, but somehow it got erased before I sent it. The only way I found out was through my own subscription.

I subscribe just so I can make sure the Arrow goes out when I hit send. I wait a bit, then check to make sure I received my copy. I waited and waited, but #286 never arrived. I was ready to reach out to customer service, but before I did, I checked my spam folder. And there it was.

I moved it out of the spam folder, and when I did, I gave it a quick run through just to ensure everything looked okay. When I did, I realized an entire section was missing.

The platform on which I write The Arrow has an annoying tendency to delete way more than I want it to delete. When I decide to delete a sentence, I swipe across it, and it turns pink. I then hit delete, and it’s gone. Problem is, for whatever reason, the platform sometimes doesn’t just stop with the sentence or whatever I’m trying to delete. It turns the paragraphs above, or even an entire section, pink. If I’m not careful, I’ll delete a whole lot more than I intended.

I guess I wasn’t careful this time, because it deleted an entire section without my noticing. MD had already run her editorial eye over it (which is almost the last thing done before I hit send). She didn’t mention anything about a section being missing. But she didn’t know there was another section.

I obviously deleted it before I sent it to her.

Having had this happen before a couple of times, which caused me to have to recreate what I had already written, I started writing it all on a Google doc, then copying it over. All I had to do this time was to recopy it, add all the links, and paste in the graphic, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

I contemplated calling this one The Arrow #286 part B or #286-1/2, but decided to just make it the next in the series.

So with that foreword, here you go. The section you didn’t know you missed.

It’s the Metabolism, Stupid

I read an article a day or two ago in the Wall Street Journal that reminded me of James Carville (the Ragin’ Cajun) and his famous admonition to keep all the people working for him on point during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The WSJ article laments the poor pharmaceutical industry losing money by trying to develop drugs to treat cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of people in the United States.

Below is a graphic of three pharmaceutical companies that have seen their stock prices take nose dives.

The three have developed drugs that were hailed as the next new statins. Drugs that, based on their mechanism of action, had tremendous blockbuster potential…until the study results came in.

As the Journal reports it in an article titled “Heart Disease, a Historic Strength for Big Pharma, Becomes a Weakness” things aren’t going too well for the three companies involved.

Alas, these three companies – Amgen, Novo Nordisk, and Novartis – have shed billions of dollars in value as their studies came to naught. Which is surprising (to them, anyway, but not to me) since the drugs did exactly what they were designed to do.

Amgen is down because it drug Repatha,

Novo Nordisk is taking it in the shorts because it’s drug ziltivekimab …

All of these drugs work, and work well at performing their required tasks. So what’s the problem?

The Journal came close to fingering the exact problem, which one would figure these pharmaceutical behemoths should have done themselves before wasting scads of money testing them.

So we’ve got a drug that precipitously drops Lp(a), another that lowers cholesterol better than statins, and one that cools inflammation. All three of these are effective at what they’re designed to do, but failures in terms of treating the actual problem they were hoping to treat — cardiovascular disease.

Inflammation, lipid issues, and Lp(a) are basic markers indicating metabolic problems. The overall metabolic issues are the drivers of cardiovascular disease. Just normalizing the markers doesn't really do anything to fix a disturbed metabolism.

Think about it in terms of battery-operated smoke detectors. When the batteries start to run down, the smoke detectors start to emit an annoying chirp. Usually at the worst time, i.e., in the middle of the night or during a dinner party. It’s a pain to take them down and switch out the batteries.

Many people end up simply removing the battery and not putting a new one in until it’s more convenient. The smoke detectors don’t chirp, but they also don’t let you know your house is on fire.

Inflammation, Lp(a), and lipid issues are like the smoke detectors chirping. They’re telling you something isn’t right. Taking drugs to artificially depress the markers of them is like taking the batteries out of the smoke detector. There are no more annoying chirps, but you’re still at risk of dying in a house fire.

Correct your metabolic issues instead by dropping your insulin and blood sugar levels, losing visceral fat, increasing muscle mass, improving endurance, and getting better sleep. Plus get some sunshine thrown in for good measure.

In my view, the best way to accomplish the above is to go on a quality, whole-food, low-carbohydrate diet, do resistance training, and make an effort to get better sleep. Based on what I’ve just gone through, I finally realized the importance of sleep.

All my life, I’ve gotten very little sleep. Even as a teenager, when all my friends were sleeping till noon on the weekends, I was up at 6 or 7 am at the latest. It almost doesn’t matter when I go to sleep, I always wake up early. I used it as an advantage. I knew it didn’t matter what time I went to sleep, I would wake up early. So I started reading at night and would read until 2 or 3 or even 4 in the morning knowing I would wake up early. It served me well in terms of how much reading I was able to get through, but I think it had a major impact on my health.

I get to bed much earlier now. Maybe 10:30 or 11. I still get up early, but I feel much, much better than I used to. I think I may have been chronically fatigued for years.

Don’t be like the former Mike and sacrifice your sleep. You’ll be much the better for it.

And don’t succumb to the blandishments of Big Pharma. They want you to take a pill that reduces a marker. You can do better on your own with proper diet, exercise, and sleep.

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance. No VOTW or Odds & Ends in this one, because it’s basically a continuation of the last one. I am including the poll so you can love me or castigate me depending upon how you feel about the missing section.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back soon.

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This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Really, thanks. If you got something out of it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you aren’t yet. I would really appreciate it.

Finally, don’t forget to take a look at what our kind sponsors have to offer: HLTH Code, Precision Health Reports, and Jaquish Biomedical.

And don’t forget my newest affiliate sponsor Lumen. Highly recommended to determine whether you’re burning fat or burning carbs.