Posts Tagged ‘statins’

New research published in the American Journal of cardiology claims that fast food restaurants should give out statins to counter the effects of fatty foods. Fast food and statins are the new proposed combination plate.

Statin dangers

The statin pill can be as risky as the cheeseburger. Statins deplete your body of nutrients that you need to help the heart function. Statins have serious side effects. It can damage the liver, pancreas and muscles.

However, the reason some doctors give for not endorsing this idea, is that it would encourage people to lead unhealthy lives. This would mean that they would be at a higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.

This is the case of dumb and dumber. The logic from each side can only be understood from a medical perspective. The issue here; treat everything with a pharmaceutical. In other words mask the problem.

When the cholesterol numbers are lower and the diet is the same junk, you wind up without any benefit from the pills. The drugs don’t cut the rate of adverse events; it just makes the numbers look better. The second part of the problem isn’t the fat, but the carbs in the form or processed flour, and sugar. Diabetes risk is manly a processed food problem, not a fat one.

Junk Food Junky

People are hooked on the taste of fast food. Giving them drugs with the meal isn’t going to solve anything. It would compound the problem, there would be two dangers, instead of one. Only the medical community with a drug company’s education could come up with anything this ridiculous.

According to one drug giant normal cholesterol can be treated. For this we can all be thankful.

Cholesterol Myth

Since we are not sure of the dangers of higher than normal cholesterol, then why not treat normal cholesterol. This makes perfect sense in a way. We have a science based on the fact than cholesterol is bad.

Dr. R. Trattler and Dr. A. Jones, in their book “Better Health trough Natural Healing,” have 4 pages on the topic of bad cholesterol, that support the notion that the idea of high cholesterol being bad cholesterol, is an unfounded dogma (unsupported by scientific proof), a myth that makes doctors, laboratories and drug companies rich.

These two doctors point to a few facts that support their view. Using the most expensive effective lowering cholesterol drugs, the incidence of heart attack is reduced by at the very most a tiny 2%.

Cholesterol-Another Point Of View

There are about 9 scientific studies on cholesterol that backup another point of view.. Italian Americans with high bad cholesterol actually had 50% less deaths from heart attack that the rest of the USA. Either this makes a good case for being Italian or it is a flaw in the medical thinking.

Another point well taken is that diet particularly the use of margarine was likely more important in the production of coronary vascular disease.

These authors mention that there exists a strong association between sugar consumption and coronary heart disease, when comparing different societies. In these doctors opinion the cholesterol myth has kept doctors from seeing the real culprit.

According to Dr. Ron Rosedale, a nutrition and metabolic medicine expert, there are excellent scientific articles that have linked insulin resistance and leptin resistance to cardiovascular disease.  The association of insulin and leptin resistance to heart disease is stronger than the association of cholesterol to cardiovascular disease. Insulin and leptin resistance causes your body to produce many smaller dense LDL particles that are easily transported to your arteries where they cause inflammation and plaque buildup.  

Statins-New Guidelines

The new statin guidelines continued a steady expansion of the number of people considered candidates for statins over the last decade. The recommendations and guidelines by the FDA advisory committee have voted in favor of expanding the usage of statins. Many of whose members have been paid consultants for the drug industry.

The clinical trial on which the FDA approved the new Crestor use was a global study of nearly 18,000 people. It took the patients who had low cholesterol and an elevated level of inflammation in the body as measured by a test called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or CRP.

CRP Test

The CRP test is not disease specific. It is a general marker for infection and inflammation. Low levels of B-6 have been linked to elevated CRP levels. Nutritional treatments include Vitamin D and fish oil. A diet high in fruits and vegetables lower the levels of inflammation.

Now statins can be taken as a preventative for those with higher CPR test result.

Statin Risks 

There is no consensus in the medical community that cholesterol is a direct cause of cardiovascular problems.

There are risks, recently published evidence indicates that statins could raise the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 9 percent. “It’s a good thing to be skeptical about whether there may be long-term harm from healthy people taking a drug like this,” said Dr. Mark A. Hlatky, a professor of health research and cardiovascular medicine at the Stanford University medical school.

Statin-New Label

With the new guidelines an estimated 6.5 million plus people who have no cholesterol problems and no sign of heart problems will be candidates for statins. This will be in addition to the 80 million who meet the current cholesterol-based guidelines. Half that number are now on statins.

The new and improved label says it may be prescribed for apparently healthy people if they are older-men over 50, and women over 60-and have one risk factor like smoking or high blood pressure, in addition to elevated inflammation in the body.

Statin Claims

The study claimed that it cut heart disease cases, however the patients were so healthy that they had little risk to begin with.

The statin drug Crestor helps the bottom line of the parent company. Crestor, which had sales of 4.5 billion, last year, will not have generic competition until 2016, and each pill sells for at least $3.50 a day, compared with only pennies a day for the generic version.

Conclusion You can turn healthy people into patients, while turning them into lifetime customers.

Cholesterol is not an accurate predictor of heart attacks. That unhappy outcome is from a poor lifestyle, and related to the amount of processed food. Just because you have a presumably higher overall reading doesn’t mean you should go on a low-fat kick.

HEART DISEASE

Your heart is a workhorse, when given the proper nutrition. While the doctors are on patrol to see if your cholesterol is too high, they ignore the true cause of heart disease, nutritional deficiencies. It is heartbreaking in the literal, as well as figural, the miscalculations made on the part of the medical community.

The cholesterol lowing drugs cause nutrient deficiencies. The common assumption is that high cholesterol will cause clogged arteries.

INJURY NOT CHOLESTEROL

The studies to pay attention to are the ones that show atherosclerosis is the response to injury. The body uses cholesterol to respond to injury of the cells lining the inside of the arteries. It is injury to the lining of the blood vessel, not cholesterol that is the cause of heart disease.

Cholesterol is the innocent bystander who happens to be arround when there is a heart blockage. Fireman are around when there is a fire, and they don’t usually get blamed for the destruction. Vascular injury can occur from mechanical stress, tobacco fumes, metabolic consequences of diabetes, deficiencies of vitamins A and D, consumption of trans fatty acids, and microorganisms.

Sounds to me like a lifestyle problem. Omega 6s in our diet causes inflammation. Since this is in most processed food we know the solution, and it isn’t in a pill.

DIET AND EXERCISE

When diet and exercise doesn’t help who do we call, the doctor of course. What is wrong with this picture is that there isn’t a single culture that eats their natural diet that doesn’t find diet and exercise enough.

From the early Eskimos who ate a diet of whale blubber and other good fats to the native America’s who hunted on the Great Plains cholesterol wasn’t problematic.

Now, when they followed the path of civilization they now have to call the doctor.

HOW LOW

Physicians are so engaged in driving cholesterol to new lows, they never look at is the primary goal of health, which is to have individuals function at the best level possible.

As a result of cholesterol lowing medicine the persons has a higher risk of harm. The irony is that the hypothesis that cholesterol is harmful at a certain number is not only unproven, but false.

MYTH

One reason for the high cholesterol myth was the observation; mortality rates for heart attacks dropped in areas with a low food supply in World War ll. This phenomenon was noticed by Dr. Ansel Keys in the 1950”s.

Dr. Keys’ findings were eagerly endorsed by “cholesterol is harmful” advocates, but he himself did not state that cholesterol was the direct cause of heart disease or atherosclerosis. He pointed out that just because cholesterol is present in arterial plaque does not mean that cholesterol is the cause of arterial plaque.

What is wrong with the conclusions, most of the people were following an American diet that had sugar, and refined flour. They were on an inflammatory diet, which produces inflammation. Calorie restrictive diets are known to be anti-inflammatory.

Again wrong assumptions based on the wrong hypothesis. That is the Achilles heel of modern medicine.

DANGEROUS SCIENCE

The fist drug approved for the lowering of cholesterol appeared in 1967 called Atromid-S and was withdrawn from the market in 2000. The drug didn’t prove to lower mortality. However, it was found to increase the incidence of gallstones, cancer, liver disease, and inflammation of the pancreas producing pancreatitis.

The side effects included nausea, diarrhea, loss of sexual performance, weakness, abdominal pain, muscle pain and other discomforts. The newer drugs available for this bring some of the same risks and side effects. This is dangerous science.

CONSIDERATIONS

The biggest consideration is that most cardiovascular disease is seen in people over 60. Fact, higher cholesterol in the elderly is protective. Seniors with higher cholesterol levels tend to live longer than their peers with low cholesterol.

The two reasons for this, first cholesterol is protective, and second those with lower levels are on the dangerous medications. 

First and foremost take the prudent path with a healthy and active lifestyle.