Introduction

 

If you look at the medical literature of the past 20 to 40 years, big Pharma has been abandoning research into short course medications like antibiotics that might really help us because of growing resistance from their abuse (but that’s another story). Instead, they have moved into diseases with longer courses of pathophysiology and search for and create statistical contortions that support the use of drugs that you will be on for decades so that they might help lower the risk of life-threatening events at some point or another.

 

They’re doing this with vitamin D and bone metabolism, most of it is nonsense. Other vitamins to help us grow (and grow and grow) was a campaign they started in the 30s and 40s. Overweight as we have all become, we are all starting to figure out the downsides there. Fear is usually a big force in most of their campaigns. So, they use fear tactics to get you to do things. Does that sound familiar?

 

Anyway they’ve been doing it for a while with lipid metabolism, too. And if I can avoid getting too angry, today’s subject focus is statins.

 

Disclaimer

 

I am not a scholarly source. This is a compilation of opinions, but is based on growing sentiment in the medical community today. Don’t discontinue your statin if your physician really feels you should be on it. Discontinue your physician instead. Just kidding. Get a second opinion.

 

Discussion

 

The long and the short of it, big Pharma continues to report that Statin drugs must be consumed by essentially every American with a cholesterol in the 200s.

 

Truth of the matter, the correlation between their use and us living longer or healthier because they lowered our cholesterol and that lowered cardiac morbidity and mortality is really soft.

 

Truth of the matter, you can be on a statin for decades, get your cholesterol into the magical range of something under 190s I guess, and still have a heart attack the next day. It’s worse than that. There’s plenty of stories of cardiologists, in Texas mostly, exhaustively getting peoples cholesterols into the 140s, only to lose them to a cardiac event a week later.

 

It’s a little bit like the drugs that you’re on for decades to prevent osteoporosis or help you with calcium or bone metabolism. Then, Mrs. Smith is in her garden pulling weeds in her 80s, and she takes a tumble sustaining a fracture to her wrist. Decades of the medicine to avoid fractures, and still she gets one? More important, above all, you must remember that, whether or not it helped her, her body had definitely been subjected to all the poisonous effects of the medications times those many decades. And all of this goes down with little benefit if any at all. Well, of course, not counting the benefit to big Pharma and their stockholders. Strong worth there, I’m certain.

 

Statins are the same. Yes, they lower cholesterol. And yes, cholesterol is associated with a plaque process that leads to cardiac injury and death. But does a low cholesterol level lowered by a statin lead to less problems from a heart attack that occurs whether your cholesterol is 140 or 240. That is the long string of correlations that is highly arguable. Pick your debate in that long chain of correlations. They’re all fun to argue. But you add them up, and point A really can easily get to point Z whether or not you use a statin. And what’s more important, whether or not it lowers your risk for heart attack, it DEFINITELY increased your risk for liver damage, kidney failure, ophthalmologic problems like cataracts, rashes, and extreme muscle compromise. Not to mention other leaky gut syndromes that lead to intolerances with certain healthy foods. Thanks statins. Thanks a lot.

 

Conclusion

When it comes to cardiovascular risk, stress, and lipid metabolism, I choose daily fish oil, regular exercise, a balanced diet, and no statin if my weight is OK, which it is. If my patient is overweight, I strong-arm them into weight loss. We do whatever it takes. No, I don’t fire them if they don’t lose weight and continue to get larger and larger and larger. Instead, I make their life and presence at my practice so miserable for them if they don’t lose weight that I suppose it annoys them enough to quit… Me.