In an article on beta-blockers Dr Mercola says:
"European doctors may have caused as many as 800,000 deaths in five years by following a guideline to use beta-blockers in non-cardiac surgery patients—a guideline based largely on discredited science. Ironically, the discredited researcher, who was fired for scientific misconduct in 2011, was also the chairman of the committee that drafted the European treatment guideline."



The above quote was from a 2014 article. However the use of beta-blockers is much more rampant. They are routinely used for surgical and nonsurgical heart cases and for blood pressure control. Common types include propranolol, atenolol, bisoprolol and carvidolol - the last two which are heavily prescribed are the worst culprits bringing about untold misery. They are also used in a huge variety of other "disease" conditions such as migraines, anxiety and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome).

Calling a condition a "disease" gives clinicians a free hand to prescribe some of these very dangerous concoctions. When patients are brain washed into believing they have a "disease" they become more vulnerable and less likely to challenge a doctor's advice..

Migraine headaches occur due to physical asymmetries and cannot be classed as a disease and yet patients are often prescribed a beta-blocker with a name ending in a "lol". Anxiety is often caused by a patients inability to breathe deeply due to a TMJ dysfunction which does not require either propranolol or any deceptive anti-depressants. A blocked artery in the heart is a physical obstruction. Apart from measures to avoid a stent placed in a coronary artery from getting blocked by the use of a well established blood thinner (not the new dangerous blood thinner Rivaroxaban) it does not always require the patient to take anywhere from 3 to 5 different additional dangerous drugs.

The excessive use of drugs by cardiologists is not only mind boggling but criminal. What worries me is that when a patient returns with symptoms such as a very fast heart rate the beta-blocker, often sheepishly prescribed by cardiologists following a "golden rule" by the medical council, is never blamed. Instead further drugs are often prescribed to lower the very fast heart rate. It does not even occur to the cardiologist, by design, ignorance, incompetence or pure stupidity, that the "golden rule" beta-blocker already being taken by the patient may be or is ACTUALLY at the 'heart' of the racing heart problem. To the best of my knowledge they never attempt to discover the true cause of the patients' racing heart rate. Numerous blood tests, scans, radiographs often show no cause and the patient is fobbed off with the advice that he or she may have to raise the dosage of the beta-blocker if the racing heart 'phenomenon' occurs again!

This leads to further increases in heart rate with atrial fibrillation which soon starts occuring in such patients. Repeated episodes can often result in clot formation, stroke and a serious possibility of death.

Many patients suffering from "Myalgic Encephalomyelitis" (ME), "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (CFS) or "Fibromyalgia" also suffer from a very fast heart rate on standing up. This is called 'Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome' (POTS). Please note the word "syndrome" which essentially means that the clinician has no idea what is causing it. He however readily and "expertly" often prescribes a beta-blocker.

It is amazing that almost every hospital has an ME/CFS/POTS/Fibromyalgia expert - a consultant, in cooked up and fabricated conditions that he knows little about. He is busy putting patients through numerous totally futile investigations bankrupting the NHS hospital he works in. He subsequently dishes out other dangerous pills also apart from prescribing beta-blockers. The victims have to contend with the extraordinarily terrible ramifications of these extraneous medications apart from contending with their extreme fatigue. The deterioration of their health continues unabated into the abyss.

Apart from beta-blockers, Amytriptylline, Gabapentin and Morphine are the usual prescription fashion drugs of choice for such patients but one patient that I have come across has 'graduated' to having been prescribed Oxycodone, Morphine, Buscopan, Chlorpheniramine, Paracetamol, Ranitidine, Omeprazole, Lorazepam, Cyclizine, Tramadol, Ondansatron, Fragmin and Se, Fe, Mg, K. - all being taken concomitantly. She is bed bound, in extreme pain requiring 24 hour care and is costing the NHS hospital upwards of half a million pounds annually. She is under the care of 6 such consultants in 4 different hospitals. Many of these drugs have synergistic effects multiplying her symptoms and causing new symptoms. The doctors, instead of withdrawing any medication, prescribe further drugs to overcome the newer symptoms caused by the previous medication. No wonder the NHS is going bust and the patients chronically sick.

This is what we call medical terrorism. It's activities far exceed any other form of terrorism by a factor of many thousands.

We have proven time and again that ME/CFS is caused by Cranio-dental and skeletal asymmetries 99% of the time. POTS probably stems from the fact that these patients cannot breathe adequately, their oxygen tension is already low and on standing up it gets worse. The heart responds by increasing the frequency of its beat. POTS goes away a year or so into treatment without the use of any beta-blocker poison.

To best illustrate the calamitous workings of cardiology I have gathered together some interesting conversations with cardiologists. Some conversations have been contributed by patients who actually were the victims of beta-blocker use:

This first conversation is with a cardiologist in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Patient: Dr., Can beta-blockers raise the heart rate as well as lower it?
Cardiologist: I have never heard that before , Where did you get that from?
Patient: My previous cardiologist told me that beta-blockers are anti-arrhythmic but they can also be arrhythmic.
Cardiologist: Oh yes, I have heard that before!

Comment: When the patient tackles the cardiologist with some medical language the cardiologist owns up. I wonder what chance ordinary Joe has with such deception from these pharma agents also drumming up business for the private hospital and bulging their own pockets. No wonder some 200,000 people die in Europe alone and perhaps a million worldwide from beta-blocker use each year.

Patient: Doctor, do beta-blockers lower the heart rate?
Cardiologist: Yes they do.
Patient: But doctor my heart is racing at 150 beats a minute since I started taking this drug. That is why I have been brought here by ambulance today.
Cardiologist: Well, while intending to lower the heart rate the beta-blockers can raise the heart rate also.
Patient: How do they lower the blood pressure?
Cardiologist: By opening up your blood vessels in the legs the β-blockers pool the blood there so the blood pressure drops.
Patient: But doctor, I cannot walk, my legs are freezing, nothing warms them up at night, there appears to be no blood flow in them, they turn blue sometimes.
Cardiologist: Unfortunately, while these drugs are meant to expand your blood vessels these drugs can constrict them also.
Patient: Are you trying to tell me that the beta-blockers can actually make the heart rate and blood pressure worse?
Cardiologist: Yes they can.

Comment:With this the cardiologist walks away leaving the patient on this hit and miss poison and in an even bigger limbo. He displays no shame about what he just said. Suddenly coming off the drug causes serious immediate life threatening problems. The mechanism is ill understood by the cardiologist and he would rather leave the patient on the life threatening beta-blocker.

It is alarming to note that one can have a normal heart rate of say 64 beats a minute. If one is then prescribed a beta-blocker and one inadvertently misses a dose the heart rate can shoot up to more than a 150 beats a minute and even go into fibrillation. Somehow the heart loses its ability to maintain the original 64 beats a minute status. The patient thus becomes dependent on the beta-blocker and its dire consequence of regular hospitalisations due to the complications it causes.

I refuse to accept that thousands of cardiologists are not aware of this phenomenon. It sounds as if, by design, the patients are hooked onto the beta-blocker to generate business, just like an illegal drug pedlar getting clients hooked on illegal drugs. What perpetuates this iniquity? I think I have the answers. Please read on.

Patient: Doctor Is there anything else that can stop my fast heart rate and the atrial fibrillations.
Cardiologist: It is not a problem. We may have to do a procedure called heart catheter ablation which will stop the fibrillations.
Patient: Would coming off the beta-blocker help? I never had this problem before I took the beta-blocker.
Cardiologist: Oh no, The drug has nothing to do with it. Your heart is just too sensitive and needs the ablation procedure! Also after the ablation you can be taken off the drug!

Comment: Heart catheter ablation is a procedure used to remove or terminate a "faulty electrical pathway" (as per the cardiologists) from sections of the hearts of those who repeatedly develop cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, supraventricular tachycardias (SVT). (The cause may be entirely the use of beta-blockers which the patient is never warned about).

Repeated atrial arrhythmias increase the risk of ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac arrest and the patient tragically loses his or her life.

Joseph Stalin purportedly said that "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are just a statistic. A million deaths from beta-blocker use probably occur in the world on an annual basis. Such statistics, such terrorism, indeed does not feature in our collaborative news media!

To illustrate the point I have a patient who is back in hospital after his internally implanted defibrillator (ICD) shocked him again, for the umpteenth time, to stop his latest episode of a racing heart which had developed into atrial fibrillation. He had just come out of the hospital 2 days earlier after his ICD had shocked him twice the previous week.

He has been put through the rigmarole of taking all the normal blood tests, ECG's, ultrasounds, echocardiographs, chest x-rays, interrogations of his ICD and nothing significant has ever been found which could be causing the fibrillations. The beta-blocker - bisoprolol, has never been suspected and consequently he has not been taken off it. He was discharged again from the hospital with no alteration of his drug regimen.

He has had 2 ablation procedures which are supposed to prevent the heart from fibrillating. When the first procedure was undertaken he had been promised that "within a few weeks of the ablation procedure he will be off most of his medication" - including the beta-blocker.

Well they did not take him off the beta-blocker following the ablation procedure. The ICD continued to give his heart an electrical shock regularly to stop the recurrent atrial fibrillations. He was repeatedly hospitalised. All the usual tests were undertaken each time which were normal. In the USA such hospitalisations can set a patient back some $15,000 for just one night's stay in hospital. He was kept in hospital in the UK for many days at a time. Just try and imagine the cost to the NHS when this drama is played out thousands of times around the country on a daily basis.

This patient was then made to undergo a second ablation procedure because "the first one was not entirely successful". They still did not take him off the beta-blocker.

He was hospitalised again with his ICD continuing to fire. He was then told that he needs a newer more specific beta blocker. He was taken off Bisoperol and prescribed Nebivolol - a "newer" beta-blocker. His symptoms worsened considerably and he was then been informed that Nebivolol is not working for him and he needs an emergency third ablation and then they "will be able to take him off most of his drugs"! After a day or so they changed their mind about carrying out a third ablation and put him back on the usual poison - bisoperol.

Nebivolol is primarily indicated for high blood pressure control. It is claimed that it is cardio selective as opposed to other beta-blockers which are not. Numerous claims of Nebivolol superiority are made in the literature but at doses above 10 mg, nebivolol loses its cardio selectivity and blocks both β1 and β2 receptors. (While the recommended starting dose of nebivolol is 5 mg, a dose of 2.5 mg caused this patient serious problems. Sufficient control of blood pressure may require doses up to 40 mg). So it is a pretty useless and dangerous addition considering the adverse reactions. A dose of 2.5 mg causes serious problems. I reckon a dose of 40 mg to "control blood pressure" is a scam and would be rapidly fatal.

Treating the heart rate to control blood pressure is the height of absurdity and plain lunacy. The high blood pressure causes the oxygen saturation in the blood to drop which in turn causes the correct response from the heart which increases the heart rate. Damping this response instead of purely controlling the blood pressure and oxygen saturation is criminal. The medical profession needs to be seriously challenged on this issue. The current treatment protocols generate a great deal of business and as such are allowed to continue and perpetuated by the medical governing bodies.


These are actual records of a patient. Please note that the patients blood pressure suddenly jumped from 155/93 to 189/112 within 7 minutes of recording. The patient reports that he felt a sudden surge during this period. The HR has however only marginally risen. During this hypertensive crisis the BP rose from 155/93 to 214/124 i.e. a rise of 59/31 points over 2 hours and 17 minutes. The HR had risen by only 19 points from 55 bpm to 77 bpm and is in no way indicative of palpitations or tachycardia. It does not appear to be a contributory factor in the rising blood pressure.

The medical profession admits that they do not really know the cause of high blood pressure. From my observations the blood pressure appears to act quite independent of the heart rate only influencing the heart in some other way. I suspect that it probably causes a slight fall in the ability of the lungs to concentrate the oxygen causing the oxygen saturation to fall. The heart responds correctly by increasing the heart rate.

If however, the patients BP is not treated for a prolonged period after the onset of a crisis the heart does get sensitised and may become tachycardic and may even go into fibrillation. Unfortunately most patients present with palpitations, tachycardia or atrial fibrillation long after the onset of the BP symptoms. The cardiologists assume that the high heart rate is causing the rise in blood pressure and start treating the heart to suppress it with unpredictable drugs like beta blockers and a host of other drugs. This leads to repeated hospital visits and often dire outcomes for the patient.

In conclusion and in my opinion, the treatment should address the high blood pressure and measures should be in place to actively restore the oxygen concentration in the blood - not an outright assault on the heart with unnecessary and useless drugs which grossly interfere with the natural homeostasis of the body.

The FDA also issued a warning letter to the makers of Nebivolol about advertising claims. In late August 2008, the FDA issued a warning letter to Forest Laboratories citing exaggerated and misleading claims in their launch journal ad, in particular over claims of superiority and novelty of action.

This patient was also a lifelong smoker and had episodes of chronic lung infection and pneumonia. Any lung disease is a contraindication for beta-blocker use because of their inherent ability to cause bronchospasm reducing the oxygen saturation in the blood which is the actual trigger of a racing heart rate. Such matters are of little concern to his carers.

Getting shocked by an internally implanted defibrillator is a terrifying ordeal. This mercenary cardiology enterprise is not only causing serious harm, unparalleled suffering and death but also bankrupting the NHS in this country. This, I am sorry to say, is a common theme through countless departments in the hospital services as demonstrated in numerous articles on this website.

Not having the implanted defibrillating device, in the presence of the unpredictable beta-blocker, would mean instant death for many patients through either bradycardia when the heart rate falls well below what is required to sustain life OR increase unpredictably, to cause atrial fibrillations, blood clot formation, pulmonary embolism, stroke and/or death.

Ironically, coming off the beta-blocker is what actually stops the fibrillations - not the procedure!
I wonder what would be the outcome of an investigation into all heart ablation procedures and their correlation to beta-blocker use.

The highly influential academic cardiologist Sanjay Kaul said he wouldn’t be surprised if AF ablation turned out to be no better than a sham procedure. He is not likely to say that it IS a sham procedure as it could lead to serious litigation against thousands of his colleagues.

Medscape in an article on ablation titled "Could Ablation for AF Be an Elaborate Placebo?" goes on to say:
"Not only are the results of surgery poor, but the procedure is big—ablation lesions in the left atrium, often millimetres away from the oesophagus or phrenic nerve, general anaesthesia, trans septal puncture, multiple vascular entries, and hours of bed rest put patients at significant risk. Creating scar to treat a disease that is often caused by scar hardly seems elegant."

Patients are offered ablation procedures and routinely promised that they would be able to come off their beta-blockers. Patients are routinely put on beta blockers even when their blood pressure is slightly above normal. They soon start developing tachycardia and atrial fibrillation. This fails to heal unless the patient is taken off the drug but they are instead offered a sham procedure at considerable expense, taken off the drug and success claimed - what a scam!.

It appears that if there were no beta blockers there would be no jobs for the cardiologists. When cuts are made in hospital services cardiology should be the first in the queue! It may save billions of pounds, save patients from unbelievable suffering, save hundreds of lives and save the hospitals from some serious litigation.

Patient: Doctor, Why are my legs freezing all the time ever since I started these beta-blockers? They cramp up all the time. I cannot get a decent night's sleep.
Cardiologist: Do you or did you ever smoke?
Patient: Yes, some 7 years ago.
Cardiologist: Well, we shall have to refer you to the vascular surgeons. You may have to have leg amputations because smoking severely damages the blood vessels in the legs and hence the cramps.

The cardiologist then walks away leaving the patient bewildered. It has not occurred to the cardiologist that the the beta-blockers are a cause a great deal of cramping in the patients legs. That he should consider removing the patient from the beta-blocker and see if his legs improve. He would rather have the patients legs chopped off. What callousness. I am not making this up. This happens daily in cardiology many times a day. The nurses in cardiology are a witness to these excesses and I also have firsthand experience of this and so do many of my patients.

Comment:The drugs are a miniscule amount of income for big pharma. The real money is generated by private hospitals where these scam treatments are undertaken. In our NHS it keeps this gang employed at exorbitant remunerations. Can you imagine the cost of hospitalisations, ECG's or EKGs as they are called in the USA, the blood tests, the fees of numerous "expert cardiologists" who can easily charge $1800.00 for simply showing their face, the radiographs, the ultra sounds, the MRI and CT scans, the ICD's and defibrillators implanted, regular reviews of the ICD's, hormone level checks, catheter ablations, the numerous visits because of atrial fibrillations perpetuated by beta-blockers, the leg amputations, artificial legs, rehabilitation costs, the emergency ambulance transfers to the hospital - until the patient has been crippled, bled dry, or killed off.

It appears that the private hospital and the cardiologist are in cahoots to line each other's pockets - to hell with the patients. In the public sector it is much easier. To hell with the hospital and the patient, I need to keep generating patients to keep my job.

I have only spoken about two adverse effects. There are countless other serious adverse effects caused by β-blockers.
These include: nausea, diarrhoea, bronchospasm, dyspnoea, cold extremities, exacerbation of Reynaud's syndrome, bradycardia, hypotension, heart failure, heart block, fatigue, extreme and debilitating dizziness, alopecia (hair loss), abnormal vision, extreme back pain, extreme itchiness, hallucinations, insomnia, nightmares, sexual dysfunction, impotence, erectile dysfunction and/or alteration of glucose and lipid metabolism - and many more.

A word of caution:

Please do not come off your beta-blocker without the proper supervision of an honest medical doctor and without getting a complete control of your high blood pressure. High blood pressure control DOES NOT NEED a beta-blocker but different drugs and preferably substantial life style changes. Using beta-blockers to control the heart rate to effect blood pressure control is plain idiotic. Suddenly coming off the beta-blocker can cause serious life threatening and unpredictable complications. Also keep these drugs well away from any other person. Just a quarter of a 2.5 mg tablet can dangerously lower or increase the heart rate to bring about a serious life threatening arrhythmia and may prove fatal in a young child.

Further notes and comments:

A medical doctor after reading this article:
"Sharp but true!"

A very senior hospital nurse writes:
"Really scary. Every time they start my father on these he lasts about 3 days and we have to stop them”!!!

A posting on a forum I came across showing the dastardly cardiac care of a patient taking 7 different drugs:
"The cocktail of drugs prescribed for me were Nicorandol - relieves chest pain opening the arteries, also lowers blood pressure, Ramipril - lowers blood pressure, Isosorbidemononitrate - a form of GTN and opens arteries and lowers blood pressure, Bisoprolol [β-blockers], Sotolol [β-blockers]and Dronederone - all designed to slow the rate and your blood pressure, there was also another heart med I can't remember that acted the same way.
After three days on these meds I went to use the bathroom, on the way back I felt really dizzy and sick and almost passed out next to my bed.
The cardiac nurse, just came on duty, took my OBS and I had a BP of 65/45 and a Heart Rate of 22bpm...............I almost died" [but was rescued by a quick thinking doctor].

A documentary on Russian Television shows the workings of those who pretend to care about your heart but in fact have created a great deal of heart disease under whose auspices the cardiologists work.


Does all this sound familiar to any other patients?
Please email me about your experiences.
amir@dramir.com