My goal is to be drug free when I die. But I probably won’t be – not if my doctor or pharmacist has anything to do with it. It is far more likely that I will be taking several daily medications – at least a pill for high blood pressure, perhaps a drug to counteract a heart arrhythmia, certainly a small dose of aspirin, and very likely they’ll throw in an antidepressant plus a mandatory statin to lower my cholesterol level – that’s if I let them test my levels.
Once again big pharma is spruiking the cholesterol-lowering drugs – the statins – this time for healthy or low risk adults. Researchers from the University of Sydney say they have found that drugs to lower cholesterol should be prescribed far more widely because they significantly cut the rate of heart attacks and strokes even in low-risk patients. According to the report, the benefits of the statins are to reduce the risks of heart attack and stroke. The report claims that the drug is effective in patients who are classed as not being high risk, but may be smokers, have high blood pressure or are overweight. That criteria may well cover most of us and already there are around two million Australians prescribed statins.
Statins have serious side effects ranging from cataracts, constipation, sexual dysfunction, memory loss, headaches and loss of appetite, to depression, loss of feeling in hands and feet and myopathy. Myopathy is a side effect that affects approximately 1 in every 1,000 users, resulting in pain and tenderness in muscle tissue. This leads to rhabdomyolysis, the breakdown of muscle cells, kidney failure and in some cases death.
According to Naturalnews.com to prescribe statins for every person over the age of 50 in the UK would mean in excess of 20 million people taking these drugs resulting in 20,000 people with myopathy and becoming disabled or dying. This compared to the current number of heart attacks, means that twice the number of people will require hospital treatment. But the pharmaceutical companies will stand to make in excess of 320 million GBP from the UK alone. It is easy to see why this report has been published.
Cholesterol lowering drugs do lower cholesterol but the reality is that every cell membrane contains cholesterol, vital for the production of hormones, cellular repair and overall good health including that of the brain. Medication with statins such as Lipitor, Zocor and Pravachol rob our bodies of cholesterol.
Do we really have to worry so much about our cholesterol levels anyway? Where did this collective anxiety about cholesterol come from?
Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, author of The Cholesterol Myths explains that it all began with the landmark Framingham Heart Study, which followed healthy people in the early 1950s to see who had a heart attack and what distinguished them from the people who did not. High cholesterol was one risk factor–but it was only one of more than 240 others. Ravnskov said that the public health officials and cardiologists, confused a statistical association with causation resulting in a new disease called hypercholesterolemia, the health issue of the 21st century.
According to researchers Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, many people who feel perfectly healthy suffer from high cholesterol– in fact feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol. Living longer is an effect of high cholesterol with Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, reporting in 1994 that twice as many old people with low cholesterol died from a heart attack than did old people with high cholesterol.
Only a few months ago another study found that clinical and public health recommendations regarding the ‘dangers’ of cholesterol should be revised. This is especially true for women, for whom moderately elevated cholesterol may prove to be not only harmless but even beneficial. ‘High Cholesterol is not a risk factor for women’, says Dr Uffe Ravnskov but inspite of this women are being treated for high cholesterol.
Ravnskov’s book, The Cholesterol Myths begins with a story about Karla. She was a fit and healthy 62 year old cleaner when she learned she had an elevated cholesterol reading. She was instructed to change her diet and lose weight. ‘I was as fit as a fiddle’, Karla told Ravnskov. Even so she followed her doctor’s orders changing her diet to one of high fibre, making use of vegetable oils instead of butter and cream. Failing to lose the prescribed weight and unable to lower her cholesterol she was put on medication. In no time her ravenous appetite had disappeared, her positive demeanour gone, but her cholesterol was way down.
Karla is not alone. Mary Adams began to notice slurred speech, balance problems and severe fatigue after she had been taking a commonly prescribed statin drug for three years. Her problems included loss of sleep due to restless and twitching limbs. And that wasn’t all. Very soon she began to suffer loss of balance and problems with her gait and her fine motor skills were not what they had been. Once Mary took the next step and ceased taking her regular cholesterol-lowering pill she recovered her previous health.
So if cholesterol isn’t the villain what does cause heart disease? According to researchers Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, heart disease was very rare in 1900 responsible for about 8% of all deaths in the US compared with today’s figures of approximately 45%. The type of heart disease prevalent today is a myocardial infarction or a heart attack where a blood clot obstructs the coronary arteries with the subsequent death of the heart muscle and is a form of heart disease that was almost unheard of before 1910. By 1950, coronary heart disease was the leading cause of death in the US.
We do need to counteract the high rates of heart disease. But rather than swallowing drugs that interfere with vital cholesterol function we need to adopt healthy lifestyles such as eating fresh foods, not smoking, avoiding pesticides and chemicals, and taking up daily exercise.
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Categories: health, Media and health, news
Tags: cholesterol, heart disease, lipitor, Mary Enig, myths, pravachol, Ravnskov, Sally Fallon, statins, stroke
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helenlobato.com 
Nice. I am beginning to lose confidence in my doctors (as well as the governmental systems in the world) Sudden death as a side affect is a non-option when compared with a 90% chance of recovery from a heart attack. Yet my travel insurance premium was doubled as a result of being diagnosed with ‘high cholesterol’
The pharma’s seem to be running the health systems. Maybe we should turn the world upside down to restore some semblance of a balance.
I’m 68 live alone, do all my own cooking, have a younger woman friend, go ‘walkies’ alone in the hills, this weekend I’m off up a canyon in Alicante area of southern Spain followed by a trek to a secluded bay in the southern area of the desert region of Almeria. Backpack, hammock, tent and the occasional hostel. My outlook is that if I die doing this at least I am doing something I want to do.
Oh! and I had a cholesterol reading of 7.1 apparently it was a blip now try telling that to the insurers.