Dear Healthy Friend,

Is it possible that quitting smoking is more dangerous for you (and the people around you) than smoking itself? The very scary answer is "Oh yes!"

If you know someone who's using a drug that contains varenicline to stop smoking, do them a favour and give them a heads-up about this very frightening side effect that hasn't been well-documented.

Until now...

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

Stop-smoking drug doing more harm than good
Jenny Thompson
Director, Health Sciences Institute

If you've had any experience at all with varenicline, you're probably aware of the notorious adverse effects.

For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration banned its use for pilots and air traffic controllers after a 2008 report that listed potential side effects such as "seizures, loss of consciousness, heart attacks, vision problems and various psychiatric instabilities".

On the drug manufacturer's website, the list of side effects gets even scarier: Hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, depression and paranoia.

With a dramatic list like that, these other side effects don't really pop out quite as vividly: Anger, and aggressive or violent behaviour.

So researchers did some digging and came up with dozens of adverse event reports that involved acts or thoughts of aggression or violence.

Here's what they came up with...

    * A young woman using varenicline attempted suicide after she began beating her boyfriend because she said he looked "peaceful".
    * Another young woman had nightmares and attacked her fiancé with a knife.
    * A middle-aged man punched a stranger in a bowling alley.
    * A woman became enraged while driving and struck her daughter in the mouth.
    * In three cases, subjects committed suicide. Several others attempted suicide.

What's most disturbing is that almost all of these people had never displayed extreme moods or behaviour like this before.

One subject, who had nightmares, anger, depression and homicidal thoughts, reported: "It wasn't me at all during the time I was taking the drug."

A nicotine thing?

Are you wondering if nicotine withdrawal might have played a part in these events? I wondered that too. Could the well-known irritability from smoking cessation simply spill over into very aggressive behaviour?

Well, here's the kicker: Nearly all of the adverse events took place soon after medication had started - but BEFORE most of the subjects had actually stopped smoking.

For the moment, it looks like only a small percentage of the drug users will fly off the handle and try to hurt themselves or others. But you know somewhere out there, right now, someone could be starting to feel the slow burn of an uncontrollable rage after just a few days of varenicline  use.

And if he didn't read the drug's medication guide closely enough, he'll never know what hit him (or why he hit that innocent stranger!).

So please warn anyone you know who's trying to quit smoking about the dangers of using these drugs (or, if you don't want to nag them, pass along this email and I'll do it).

Click here for another article on smoking that may be of interest!

Are low-fat diets bad for you?

Q: Are low-fat diets bad for you?

Dr. Wright: I'm not a big fan of low-fat diets since most of our ancestors never ate that way. Even so, there are researchers who have shown that low-fat diets can be beneficial in some circumstances. But the media makes it sound otherwise with headlines like this one: "Low-fat diets do not protect women against heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer or colon cancer."

No one bothered to mention (or didn't notice) that none of the low-fat studies measured the amount of trans fatty acids in the overall fat intake. Even the FDA knows that trans fatty acids are bad and can actually promote chronic inflammation, atherosclerosis and cancer. In fact, the law requires that labels state the amount of trans fatty acids in food products. The researchers also didn't report the proportions of monounsaturated fats (generally health-promoting), nor did they check the balance of omega-3 (anti-inflammatory) to omega-6 (generally pro-inflammatory) fatty acids.

And it gets worse: Only 14.4% of the women in these studies met the researchers' own criteria for a low-fat diet and the average fat reduction (whatever type it was) was only 8.2%.

In contrast, the studies done by Dean Ornish that indicated the benefits of low-fat diets reduced total fat consumption considerably more than that. And he paid attention to both "good" and "bad" fats.

Even though the mainstream research discussed in the articles you've seen cost multiple millions of randss, it shows no sign of intelligent design of any sort and should be consigned to the trashcan.