Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne is the President and Founder of MedShadow, and the Executive Director of DES Action USA.  MedShadow’s mission is to preserve quality of life by ensuring everyone has access to the risks, benefits and alternates to using drugs to manage healthcare. Read More

Are you worried about ACE inhibitors and coronavirus? You may be hearing that one of the entry methods for the coronavirus in humans is by attaching to the ACE-2 enzyme. This has raised alarms among those with heart disease who use ACE inhibitors (with names ending in -pril, such as lisinopril), and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs, with names ending in -sartan, such as valsartan). Those having severe cases of COVID-19 are often those with hypertension and either type 1 or Type II diabetes and those patients are often taking ACE-1 inhibitors and ARBs. Both diabetes and these drugs increase…

Read More

Can we use a different endocrine disruptor to predict BPA effects, including cardiovascular problems and heart attack ? Maybe so. Many scientists are working to discover the effect of endocrine disruptors such as BPA (bisphenol A) to predict what that effect might be on people. Some studies have raised concern that exposure to endocrine disruptors may be positively linked with cardiovascular disease. Endocrine disruptors essentially confuse the mechanism in human bodies that tells genes when to turn on (e.g., start puberty) and when to turn off (e.g., stop growing hair). Because BPA is ubiquitous in our environment, it is nearly…

Read More

Is your cholesterol high? Has your doctor suggested you might be at risk for heart disease? If so, you have some decisions to make. You need to know that you can likely improve your health and lower your cholesterol by simple lifestyle changes like exercise and changing your diet. You also will likely have the option of taking a statin. The fact that people have choices in their health care is very important and something we explore at MedShadow, an online nonprofit I founded to inform the public about the side effects, risks and benefits of medicine, both prescription and…

Read More

Does it really make sense to put a large group of people on a drug whose effectiveness hasn’t been proven for that group? What at first looked like a creeping increase in statin prescriptions is turning into a gallop. Despite the significant and life-altering side effects that this class of cholesterol-lowering drugs can cause, the USPSTF (US Preventative Services Task Force) is likely to approve a broadening of the group of adults for whom statins are recommended — without including a recommendation to try lifestyle changes to lower cholesterol first. The USPSTF is proposing that any healthy adult between the ages…

Read More

Studies Link Regular Use of Aspirin to Macular Degeneration Two observational studies link regular use (three months) of aspirin to macular degeneration even if that use was TEN YEARS ago. Reported on NYTimes Well Blog, “Aspirin Use Tied to Rare Eye Disorder,” 12/18/2012. “It may be like smoking and cancer, where some people who have stopped years and years ago then get cancer,” Dr. Klein said. “It may seem out of the blue, but there’s something about latent exposure that carries forward.” A correlation such as this does not definitively prove causation. I can’t tell from the article how much aspirin…

Read More