Yep, I was taking statins and quit when I started experiencing the pain and weakness in the muscles. The benefits don’t balance out the bad things in my opinion. Also, there have been studies that say the opposite of what this article states, that lowering cholesterol, with statins, doesn’t actually reduce heart attacks. The study on Vytorin they site actually showed that the combination drug reduced cholesterol but failed to reduce clogged arteries.
Many think the clots are formed when an irritant is attacking the vessel wall. These irritants could be from almost anything, maybe allergies or a genetic inability to fight something off. If most Americans have hight blood pressure and high cholesterol, then maybe its not those reasons that cause the attacks. If you have 100 people with high cholesterol, and a majority of the attacks happen with high cholesterol subjects, they take it for granted that cholesterol levels are the major reason for the attacks. But what they are finding is some of the attack happen with low cholesterol subjects and they can't just say it's stress or some other factor that caused the attacks.
How many of our parents ate eggs and bacon every morning and fought over the fat pieces of meat at the table? My grandmother on my mother's side ate everything she wanted and would rather eat the fat of a pork chop than the actual meat. She cooked most things in bacon grease or lard. She lived to be 96 and was in reasonable health until about 94. She had no strokes or heart attacks until she was 96. She outlived 3 husbands, however, and 2 died of heart attacks before 60, and the other cancer at about 70. My Grandmother on my dads' side died at 85 with a heart attack, and my dad died at 85 with a heart attack. My mom fed him low fat foods and watched his diet. His mother ate what she wanted and never had an attack till she died. He had 2 heart attacks before and got a bypass and a stent. Maybe its more about genetics and hard work than diet.
If you care about your cholesterol, wouldn't it be better just to change your diet than take a pill that may damage your body?
I wasn’t big on statins, but they sure helped my brother-in-law who had 900+ cholesterol due stemming from Downs Syndrome. The statins brought it under control.
I wasn’t big on anti-biotics, either, but when I had Lyme’s Disease, ten dollars worth of anti-biotics saved the day.
All of these things have a place, use your head with medication.
And TGAs and cancer and rhabdomyolysis.
There has never been a direct link made between heart disease and stroke and cholesterol.
There is no such thing as “bad” cholesterol.
Lowering cholesterol generally does more harm than good.
When high-risk lifestyle patients are removed from the sampling (overweight, smoking, sedentary lifestyle), the bulk of those who die of heart attack or stroke actually had LOW cholesterol.
Cholesterol is a very necessary component to your body’s health.
See http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm
Don’t buy into the hype. Cholesterol lowering drugs are a multi-billion dollar business. There’s a reason to keep you in the dark. Mark my words, with the recent Vytorin news, you will see many more studies and articles come out that will question the true effectiveness of Statins.
Here’s another that just came out yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
LEARN and be healthy.
Eat in moderation.
Keep your sugar intake down.
Exercise (real exercise - not a walk around the block once a week).
Get off your butt.
Don’t smoke.
Stop putting chemicals (legal and illegal) in your body. Lower your weight (most folks don’t need to be fat - stop telling yourself your fat butt is genetic).
If you do all of this - and you are fortunate to have a nicely balanced genetic makeup - you’ll live to a nice ripe old age.
I call BS on this statement. Statins are probably THE most studied drug class in history. They have studies with 10's of thousands of participants over a period going back over a decade.
High cholesterol is a marker for heart disease. It's easy to measure, you can buy a home cholesterol meter for a reasonable price. There are people, that have high cholesterol and no heart disease. How do you find them? What is the cost and risk of those tests? Statins are relatively cheap and getting cheaper as more go off patent. It may make more sense to simply treat high cholesterol than go through what you need to to weed out the high cholesterol/non-heart disease folks. Statins overall are very safe and very well known drugs.
It's a judgment call. It's a scientific judgment call. So, if the MSM is opinining on science and on a scientific judgment call: Run away, run away!
Thanks nd. I’ve been prescribed these, and took the first 30 days, experiencing leg cramps; took the next 30 day supply over approximately two months; then stopped. My followup blood test (new doctor, new lab, BTW) showed me all clear.
High cholesterol has never killed anyone.