Statins are the most studied drugs in all of medicine. Hundreds of thousands of patients have been randomized in statin trials. Yet many disagree on their role in preventing heart disease
This just adds to my internal back and forth over starting statins earlier. In my late 20's I found I had high LDL. My doctor recommended I change my diet but I don't think I had any actual guidance. He wanted me to ask my family to check theirs and then....said none of it mattered anyway since the Framingham scale (I didn't know how he calculated it at the time) said I was a low risk. Better advice might have been to tell me it matters and will matter more a I age but off I went to forget about it until I was 40. A year after my dad died of a heart attack I went in for a physical or whatever it's called now. Hight LDL of course, changed diet, lost weight exercise more but never got a straight answer from the new doctor to tell me I have a higher risk or not. I really gave up on her, google was better. Changed doctors again and only because I finally knew enough to ask for my LPa to get checked did he finally recommend a statin as my LDL needs to be treated aggressively! Before knowing my LPa and looking at similar information only a year prior he said this is all fine.
So knowing what I know now should I have started them in my 20's or 30's or waited until now at 48. I suppose it doesn't matter anymore.
On the upside I've stayed lighter than since before I graduated highschool and can still run and cycle faster then ever before I only wish I'd have made the effort in my 20's instead of waiting until I was 40.
Perhaps a naive question: If 97 million people in the United States take statins, why are heart related deaths the most common cause of death in the US?
Overall this essay agrees with what I've read about statins and heart disease in the past two years (and I've read a lot.) Like many I was on statins (and some other preventions) until I started asking questions and found out for myself how nearly worthless these are for primary prevention of heart disease.
I highly recommend the (4) books of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. I'm sure there are many other worthy authors too. Or, if you're cheap, read a lot of the same stuff for free at his web site, although not highly organized.
None of the following are my original ideas but I didn’t see them mentioned in the essay and I believe they are highly relevant:
(1) The medical-industrial complex is motivated mainly by profit. Drugs and other treatments cost enormous amounts of money and time to research. Therefore, it should be obvious that strong incentives exist for Pharma and others to get their product to market and to the widest number of patients possible. Alas, that means there will inevitably be the risk of various ethical lapses, corners being cut, standards sidestepped and outright criminal fraud or other violations of law.
(2) The problem is not only greed. Medicine, as with many disciplines, is hidebound. New discoveries that may invalidate established dogma, often with deeply entrenched career and investment conflicts of interest, always face a difficult battle of being accepted. Some, I suspect remain suppressed and never see the light of day.
(3) Many researchers and doctors who are aware of the limitations or even outright dangers of existing, permitted treatments and/or who might be willing to try newer, cutting-edge treatments, must often decide between toeing the party line and keeping their careers or risk losing all if they dare voice distrust of current treatments or try a newer treatment.
You should give some thought to the known or likely motivations of various entitles you interact with. Of course, one shouldn’t go overboard. In fairness medicine can and does provide treatments and cures for many diseases. Nor do I begrudge Pharma and other industries from making a fair profit. But I’m under no illusion that these all exist solely for the goal of delivering the patient the best health care possible.
What happens when a case of hypertension is cured? Nothing. Nobody cares. Hypertension is an incurable disease. Cured is not medically defined for hypertension. Just like the "there is no cure for the common cold," "there is no cure for hypertension." We know how to cure the common cold and most cases are cured. We know how to cure hypertension, and few cases are cured. Cutes have been documented, but cannot be proven for lack of a definition. Medically, there is no cure. Why not? Because the cure is not an approved medicine, it's an improvement in healthiness.
Partly agree. Although [total] cholesterol and LDL levels are still part of the official dogma, there is increasing awareness that they are not of great diagnostic worth in predicting CVD.
Far more important are total triglycerides (lower the better) and HDL (higher the better). Having "large, fluffy" (bigger particle size) LDL is apparently a good marker, but requires special tests your doctor typically doesn't do, if he even knows about them.
Want to improve your health? Just cut way back on the carbs, especially the refined sugars and flours and you are 90% of the way there. Resistant starch is only one example of many ways to achieve that. Of course there are many other things you can change, but reducing the amount of junk you eat is a huge step to overall better health..
I feel compelled to comment about “a healthy diet” since practically every post mentions diet and exercise as a preferred treatment. I wholeheartedly agree but for the average reader looking for real tangible help it’s not enough. The real question is what is considered a healthy diet? Our medical societies and our government pushes a diet that is not healthy at all, and keeps us exposed to the harms found in our food supply. Then pharmaceuticals come to the rescue to try to heal the damage. The only winners are big ag, the food industry, and pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile our quality of life is awful. I am a walking miracle today after changing my way of eating has literally saved my life. Doctors always encourage a healthy diet, and for decades I followed their definition of what that was: the Standard American Diet (SAD) as lauded by nutritionists everywhere, universities, and our government agencies. To say I was always sick following their advice is an understatement. Our food supply today is riddled with horrible things that are not healthy for the human body to process nor taken into account with these medical studies. I just read a study last week where a sugar substitute they were trying to prove was bad for our hearts was given to the subjects in cookies, sodas, and other prepackaged foods rather than given along with whole foods instead. There was no way to determine if the results could have been caused by the other chemicals and ingredients found in the packaged foods. The SAD favors the financial interests of the food industry and later pharma. Once I started to really learn about food and about everything that you will find in ingredients listings, it was like the Matrix and I started to wake up. 30 years on the medically recommended healthy diet left me as a stroke risk, pre-diabetic, having three tumors, riddled with depression and anxiety, obese at 203lbs (I’m 5-2”) and I developed severe advanced osteoporosis at a severity only ever seen in someone 25-30 years older than me. Medications also led to this development as both diet and meds robbed my bones of calcium. I also developed muscular problems and neurological pain. On top of that I carried the worst case of acne my entire adult life (I’m only 58.) 5 years ago I was diagnosed with high cholesterol too. Now I know my cholesterol wasn’t really that high at all, but I passed some pharmaceutical-developed boundary where their statins should be prescribed. By 2021 I was sick as a dog and had been following the standard “healthy diet” religiously. It was not healthy at all and caused me to continue to decline. Here I sit two years later with better health than ever before and the energy of a 20 year old and clearer skin than a new born baby the entire time. My cholesterol levels are enviable. How? I learned the truth about what’s in our food both in the stores and in restaurants. I have not had a single boxed, prepackaged food in two years, nor any sugar whatsoever or any other over processed, over refined ingredient. I learned to cook again from scratch even making my own condiments and other homemade ingredients where I can control everything that’s in my food. I don’t eat out much anymore but when I do I opt for a grilled steak or fish, and a salad, since I know it can’t be adulterated by our food supply. A healthy diet is using all whole foods and ingredients without any chemicals or lab created ingredients. It’s using butter instead of the recommended margarine. I lost 55 lbs and last week for the first time since I was in my 20s I was doing sprints in the gym. Anyone who saw me up to two years ago would not recognize me. My husband lost all his visceral fat on his belly and outpaces all the young men he works with when doing physical labor. Both of our blood tests over these two years show such a remarkable improvement that our doctors are perking up and finally listening to us. The single change we made that improved our health was to stop trusting our current food supply and anything processed or premade, and to stop following the current nutritional food pyramid. So if you are here wondering about statins and read that what works better is a healthy diet, I agree and disagree. It IS better, but it has to be the right diet, not the nationally and medically prescribed diets of today. If you really want to get healthier, do the hard work of staying away from easy and convenient when making meals, and learn the miracle and convenience of fasting. It can help you afford a truly healthier diet in both time and money.
Good for you! I haven't eliminated as much processed food from my diet as you, but we're working on it. I did change to the "Plate Method" diet in 2018 after being diagnosed with diabetes. (Lower starchy carb diet) Lost 60 lbs over 2 years. (5'3") Began walking regularly. Last summer, my husband and I began buying our eggs from a local farm, meat from another farm (all pasture-raised animals), and produce from local farmers markets, etc. (we do our best with veggies over the winter) My complexion has also vastly improved. I have fibromyalgia, but the pain definitely improved. I tripped over something back in November, had a bad fall, and needed PT. At one point, the therapist must have looked at my age on my record, and said, "You're 63?! You don't look like you're 63!" Best compliment ever. Back in early 2018, I had terrible back spasms every time I walked very far, and I didn't have much hope for my "golden years." Now I do. A healthy diet and a healthy weight make a huge difference!
It’s great to hear of your progress. Yes lower carb can reverse diabetes! It can cure a multitude of other things too, even improve mental health. I don’t do extreme low carb, but I do keep my total carbs below 50-60g/day and it has made a miraculous world of difference. I could probably increase to 75-100 and maintain just fine, but they would all come from really healthy choices, none would be high starch or empty. Interestingly my lipid panel hasn’t been as healthy as it presently is in over 15 years. My new way of eating reversed what was happening as well if not better than what statins did but without any risk of side effects. Shouldn’t that always be the first line of treatment? Rather than drugs?
Exactly! I turned down a medication a Dr. recommended a while back - I told him that meds were like fairy tale magic; there was always a price. (And the potential "price" for this one was diarrhea) He looked at me funny, and then said, "Yes, sometimes." I am a nurse, so I frequently saw the "price," particularly in the older patients. But people definitely should try lifestyle changes first; however most folks want "bandaid" or easy fixes. For example, those new diabetes shots that cause weight loss seem wonderful, but you don't learn lifestyle habits to keep your glucose stable, or to keep the weight off permanently.
Since I changed my diet and began exercising, my y A1C is normal, my cholesterol/triglycerides, (HDL76, Triglycerides 76) etc are the best they have been in decades - yet my nurse practitioner wants me to stay on the statins because I am a diabetic and I am "supposed" to keep the LDH below 70. I dropped my dose down to 10 mg/day, and it's up to 86. She won't be happy when I see her. Especially when I tell her I want to completely stop the statins.
Anyway, with the plate method, I don't count the grams of carbs, but I do limit them, and try to make them quality carbs like brown rice, whole grain bread, oven roasted sweet potatoes, etc. I do love my breakfasts, with the brown eggs from the farm, and a slice of whole wheat bread. Yum!
High cholesterol levels indicate inflammation. They are signs the body is trying to deal with it, LDL, HDL, fluffy, hard whatever the latest goalpost shifting nonsense increasingly spouted is, what is important is the cause or causes, address them (often diet and lifestyle, meds too), lower that inflammation and the levels will fall / drop naturally. Sadly medicine has now become one dimensional in execution and understanding to the degree that now even a primary child could see the failings, the gaps in logic and understanding. Do physicians still actually study biochemistry anymore?? Serious question.
"Goalpost shifting" is a problem yes. But in fairness, it MAY reflect advances in medical theory or technology. For example, relevant to blood lipids, in the beginning they were not able to measure anything beyond total cholesterol. It wasn't until well into the 20th century (around WW II) that tests to measure the fractions (LDL, HDL, etc.) became available at all, much less came into wide use. The medical-industrial complex is slow (decades) to accept new learning. For better (filters out crackpot claims) or worse (threatens established academic fiefdoms and imperils Pharma profits) this is simply a fact of life.
I’m currently reading Gary Taubes, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” which offers a fascinating overview of many of these issues in their historical contexts.
I don’t know if physicians study biochemistry. I suspect they might have had a few weeks’ training in it as part of med school but that’s about it. But even if they just received their MD, the aforementioned problem of time lag all but guarantees that at least some of what they learned was out-of-date and perhaps even proven wrong by later discoveries that had not yet entered the textbooks.
I appreciate you are trying to give a benefit of doubt suggestion on the why and how of changes in medical understanding, but this cholesterol malarkey all goes back to the beginnings and a certain fraudulent/selective study you may have heard of from a certain Ancel Keys, aka the so called 7 countries study which claimed dietary cholesterol was the primary driver of CHD merely by association of dietary habits. In between then and now certain industries and players have been more than keen to promote this unevidenced flawed nonsense, as have numerous physicians and researchers who have lost all integrity in my humble opinion. Many still to this day persist in showing their true ignorance, maybe dishonesty, i am never sure, in continuing to explain a component of CVD as "blocking up your arteries with cholesterol". At that point one should be aghast at the lack of basic medical knowledge/ lack of integrity, either reason is dreadful. Fire your physician or cardiologist immediately is my advice and find one that can actually explain honestly what actually occurs (epithelial damage from inflammation).
The real rub is that none can offer any plausible biochemical way that dietary cholesterol can actually affect bloody cholesterol, let alone how blocking the movalenate pathways lead to reduced CVD events and primary risk reduction, not even in those with the rare familial Hypercholesterolaemia. As you may have guessed by now, I very much align with such as Dr Kendrick's overview and evidence analysis. It is time to reject this paradigm from vested interests obsessed with selling more Statins and PCSK-9's all in the name of so called prevention of which it has roundly shown to have a null affect in various studies.
Thank you. Interesting timing as I recently spent 2 days reading studies to see if Atorvastatin 10mg is the right choice for a family member with high Lp(a). I found small studies that statins might actually be increasing this genetic risk factor. It seems even in higher risk and older people addressing high LDL-C with diets supplements and exercise would be the fist attempt at treatment. Thank you for all of your work. I am hoping your video about your research and experience re being fired (a horrible story particularly since you had to deal with the sickening covid pharma lies soon after) will help my family member as many folks can’t process the data alone.
Yesterday I received a letter from my professor at the royal Brompton hospital London
Saying my LDL levels have spiked high FOLLOWING SARS2 blood test confirmation in 2020 and he wishes to now put me on high dose statins .
I’m having problems with heart rhythm 🙄
And taking 100mg beta blockers.
I think I’ll be sticking to a healthy keto diet, fasting and my cardio miracle, DMG recommendations from Judy mikovits 🙏and a bit of dr zelenco and his zelenco protocol (RIP) god bless and leave the rest in gods hands 🙏
I am the sole survivor of the professor sir magdi Yacoub procedure replacement of the aorta 🫀 re suspended aortic valve and repaired mitral valve.
Thankyou for this article this morning 🌅 I take it as gods sigh to me 🙏
I was on statins from the mid-1990s until about 2008. Within a year of being on Lipitor, I had very sore knees that my doctor dismissed as being from statin side effects. The issue never went away, and I just put up with it. I changed brands a couple times after that point and ended up on simvastatin first. That one gave me sore calves and shoulders so my doctor switched me to pravastatin, which I was on for about four to six years. It got so I was so sore all over my body, not just the knees and calves, so I decided to go off statins completely at that point and have refused to go on them since.
I can't help but wonder if I had gotten side effects from the time I was on Lipitor, as I had suspected, and if my doctor had taken me off it, if things would have been different if I had quit then instead of staying on. It seems that my soreness increased the longer I was on the statins, and nowadays, even being off, the soreness remains. I wish I had never ever gone on a statin. The fancy graph that purports to show the benefit of pravastatin should have an overlaying graph showing the cumulative side effects from it as well.
Although in a different context, your account of how doctors will switch a patient from one drug to another recalls the story from one of the Alcoholics Anonymous books about how many drunks, as part of trying to self-treat the disease, will switch brands or types of alcoholic beverage in the vain hope that it'll fix their problems.
Do you mind my asking the Lipitor dose you were on? A family member was recently started on 10mg which supposedly has less side effects but i remain skeptical.
I was on a low dose (10 mg) of Lipitor for 1-1/2 years only. It caused a severe sharp pain in my left thigh that often also sends an electrocution type pain. Neurology tests ruled out nerve damage and all other potential causes. It was the statin. I started the Keto diet 2 years ago and after 4 months stopped all my prescriptions, including the statins. My health and energy has never been better in 30 years. It has been 2 years since I stopped the statin but I’m still suffering from that severe sharp pain in my left thigh. I believe statins carry the risk to cause irreversible damage. By the way, my cholesterol levels got way better with diet change. My LDL is still a tad high but there is a healthy beneficial LDL that doesn’t get measured separately, and my triglycerides have never been so low. The triglyceride ratio is the real indicator that matters, not the LDL.
Your experience is very much like mine. I never suffered any side effects of the statin, that I am aware of. What convinced me to stop was first reading -- and then verifying through my own research -- how little value statins have as a primary intervention.
Almost never mentioned are the costs of such an intervention, not just time and money to the patient, but potential adverse effects in the future. It’s telling that detailed patient records from drug trials are rarely, if ever, released to outside investigators. Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the product, does it? It’s almost as if they have something to hide.
Your experience is very much like mine. I never suffered any side effects of the statin, that I am aware of. What convinced me to stop was first reading -- and then verifying through my own research -- how little value statins have as a primary intervention.
Almost never mentioned are the costs of such an intervention, not just time and money to the patient, but potential adverse effects in the future. It’s telling that detailed patient records from drug trials are rarely, if ever, released to outside investigators. Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the product, does it? It’s almost as if they have something to hide.
Juju thank you for sharing your information. It is helpful and I very much appreciate it. I don't know if this might help you but I had undiagnosed neurological shooting pains and loss of sensation in my right foot for years after a severe reaction to an antibiotic. An MD I eventually found put me on a supplement called ATP 360 from Researched Nutritionals which acts at the mitochondrial level. It helped immensely. Hard to know if it would help in your case but maybe it is worth trying? Thank you again for your info on statins.
I agree with 1 aspect of this article in its criticism of Dr. Mandrola’s position. As JMM says, the data suggest that the younger you start primary prevention statin, the higher likelihood of more people who stand to reap huge gains (vs fewer people who make more modest gains by starting later). But the current author rightly points out that the “average benefit” of statin in primary prevention, in absolute terms, remains small. So by starting more people younger, the cost of getting more people to reap huge gains is to expose WAY MORE people to minimal benefit, while everyone has the same cost of pill burden and potential long term complications. And of course, we have no idea which category our patient in the office falls into. I disagree with Dr. Mandrola’s emphasis only on the “lucky few”.
OTOH, I disagree with the current author’s criticism of the Mendelian randomization data. The issue seems to be about people who had gene deletion having had the benefit of survivor bias to have made it long enough to enrol into the studies in question. This is true…but is true of any adult participant of any study. Anyone who was included in Jupiter (for example) did not die in childhood. It’s the same survivor bias that applies to absolutely any study of anybody. I don’t see why it should only discount a Mendelian randomization cohort that results in a low LDL.
In the end, I don’t think the answer is for statin in primary prevention in everyone, nor in no one. We already have validated tools to try to better understand risk (and no CAC for me, thanks). And as Dr. Mandrola mentioned in that behavioural study, different people will have different values and preferences that emphasize different things…even when presented with the same data. IMO, our job is to present the info in as plain language as is necessary, then to be fairly indifferent about what the pt chooses based on that information. Some will say sign me up; others will say no thanks. And either is fine by me.
I had the honor and pleasure of being interviewed by Maryanne Demasi for her documentary "The Heart of the Matter" which ran on Australian television about ten years ago. It was practically the only production that raised questions about the cholesterol theory. But it also was a lesson in power politics. The Australian version of the American College of Cardiology threw a complete hissy fit and got it banned from further broadcast and removed from the internet. In the process they slandered me and the other interviewees who appeared in the show. I wrote letters of protest to most of the Australian newspapers that reported on it but got no acknowledgement or reply.
Thanks. I didn't know it was still available. And I agree that it was not that incendiary. Actually I disagreed on a number of points with some of the others that were interviewed. We only agreed that the current narrative was false. It stirred things up because it brought into contention the possibility that the viewpoint of organized cardiology might be wrong. So they wanted to snuff out any dissension right at the start. Same as with the covid scam.
Guilty as charged. I am pretty sure that was the shirt I wore the day Maryanne and her crew filmed my part in the documentary 10-15 years ago. It distresses my wife no end that almost all my shirts are older than our grandchildren who are all well into their 20s.
This just adds to my internal back and forth over starting statins earlier. In my late 20's I found I had high LDL. My doctor recommended I change my diet but I don't think I had any actual guidance. He wanted me to ask my family to check theirs and then....said none of it mattered anyway since the Framingham scale (I didn't know how he calculated it at the time) said I was a low risk. Better advice might have been to tell me it matters and will matter more a I age but off I went to forget about it until I was 40. A year after my dad died of a heart attack I went in for a physical or whatever it's called now. Hight LDL of course, changed diet, lost weight exercise more but never got a straight answer from the new doctor to tell me I have a higher risk or not. I really gave up on her, google was better. Changed doctors again and only because I finally knew enough to ask for my LPa to get checked did he finally recommend a statin as my LDL needs to be treated aggressively! Before knowing my LPa and looking at similar information only a year prior he said this is all fine.
So knowing what I know now should I have started them in my 20's or 30's or waited until now at 48. I suppose it doesn't matter anymore.
On the upside I've stayed lighter than since before I graduated highschool and can still run and cycle faster then ever before I only wish I'd have made the effort in my 20's instead of waiting until I was 40.
Perhaps a naive question: If 97 million people in the United States take statins, why are heart related deaths the most common cause of death in the US?
All drugs are bad. The Amish bypass pharma altogether and their children are healthy!
Overall this essay agrees with what I've read about statins and heart disease in the past two years (and I've read a lot.) Like many I was on statins (and some other preventions) until I started asking questions and found out for myself how nearly worthless these are for primary prevention of heart disease.
I highly recommend the (4) books of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. I'm sure there are many other worthy authors too. Or, if you're cheap, read a lot of the same stuff for free at his web site, although not highly organized.
None of the following are my original ideas but I didn’t see them mentioned in the essay and I believe they are highly relevant:
(1) The medical-industrial complex is motivated mainly by profit. Drugs and other treatments cost enormous amounts of money and time to research. Therefore, it should be obvious that strong incentives exist for Pharma and others to get their product to market and to the widest number of patients possible. Alas, that means there will inevitably be the risk of various ethical lapses, corners being cut, standards sidestepped and outright criminal fraud or other violations of law.
(2) The problem is not only greed. Medicine, as with many disciplines, is hidebound. New discoveries that may invalidate established dogma, often with deeply entrenched career and investment conflicts of interest, always face a difficult battle of being accepted. Some, I suspect remain suppressed and never see the light of day.
(3) Many researchers and doctors who are aware of the limitations or even outright dangers of existing, permitted treatments and/or who might be willing to try newer, cutting-edge treatments, must often decide between toeing the party line and keeping their careers or risk losing all if they dare voice distrust of current treatments or try a newer treatment.
You should give some thought to the known or likely motivations of various entitles you interact with. Of course, one shouldn’t go overboard. In fairness medicine can and does provide treatments and cures for many diseases. Nor do I begrudge Pharma and other industries from making a fair profit. But I’m under no illusion that these all exist solely for the goal of delivering the patient the best health care possible.
To your points:
1.) There is no profit in keeping patients healthy.
paragraph last - A fair profit has no benefit to shareholders
What happens when a case of hypertension is cured? Nothing. Nobody cares. Hypertension is an incurable disease. Cured is not medically defined for hypertension. Just like the "there is no cure for the common cold," "there is no cure for hypertension." We know how to cure the common cold and most cases are cured. We know how to cure hypertension, and few cases are cured. Cutes have been documented, but cannot be proven for lack of a definition. Medically, there is no cure. Why not? Because the cure is not an approved medicine, it's an improvement in healthiness.
To your health, tracy
No no no
In practice I can share that it takes only three weeks to drop the LDL levels by using two servings per day of resistant starch in the diet.
Cholesterol levels in particular triglycerides and glucose ratio is a useful surrogate marker for insulin resistance.
In my practice diet and nutritional supplements have been enough to see benefit reducing need for statins.
Partly agree. Although [total] cholesterol and LDL levels are still part of the official dogma, there is increasing awareness that they are not of great diagnostic worth in predicting CVD.
Far more important are total triglycerides (lower the better) and HDL (higher the better). Having "large, fluffy" (bigger particle size) LDL is apparently a good marker, but requires special tests your doctor typically doesn't do, if he even knows about them.
Want to improve your health? Just cut way back on the carbs, especially the refined sugars and flours and you are 90% of the way there. Resistant starch is only one example of many ways to achieve that. Of course there are many other things you can change, but reducing the amount of junk you eat is a huge step to overall better health..
I feel compelled to comment about “a healthy diet” since practically every post mentions diet and exercise as a preferred treatment. I wholeheartedly agree but for the average reader looking for real tangible help it’s not enough. The real question is what is considered a healthy diet? Our medical societies and our government pushes a diet that is not healthy at all, and keeps us exposed to the harms found in our food supply. Then pharmaceuticals come to the rescue to try to heal the damage. The only winners are big ag, the food industry, and pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile our quality of life is awful. I am a walking miracle today after changing my way of eating has literally saved my life. Doctors always encourage a healthy diet, and for decades I followed their definition of what that was: the Standard American Diet (SAD) as lauded by nutritionists everywhere, universities, and our government agencies. To say I was always sick following their advice is an understatement. Our food supply today is riddled with horrible things that are not healthy for the human body to process nor taken into account with these medical studies. I just read a study last week where a sugar substitute they were trying to prove was bad for our hearts was given to the subjects in cookies, sodas, and other prepackaged foods rather than given along with whole foods instead. There was no way to determine if the results could have been caused by the other chemicals and ingredients found in the packaged foods. The SAD favors the financial interests of the food industry and later pharma. Once I started to really learn about food and about everything that you will find in ingredients listings, it was like the Matrix and I started to wake up. 30 years on the medically recommended healthy diet left me as a stroke risk, pre-diabetic, having three tumors, riddled with depression and anxiety, obese at 203lbs (I’m 5-2”) and I developed severe advanced osteoporosis at a severity only ever seen in someone 25-30 years older than me. Medications also led to this development as both diet and meds robbed my bones of calcium. I also developed muscular problems and neurological pain. On top of that I carried the worst case of acne my entire adult life (I’m only 58.) 5 years ago I was diagnosed with high cholesterol too. Now I know my cholesterol wasn’t really that high at all, but I passed some pharmaceutical-developed boundary where their statins should be prescribed. By 2021 I was sick as a dog and had been following the standard “healthy diet” religiously. It was not healthy at all and caused me to continue to decline. Here I sit two years later with better health than ever before and the energy of a 20 year old and clearer skin than a new born baby the entire time. My cholesterol levels are enviable. How? I learned the truth about what’s in our food both in the stores and in restaurants. I have not had a single boxed, prepackaged food in two years, nor any sugar whatsoever or any other over processed, over refined ingredient. I learned to cook again from scratch even making my own condiments and other homemade ingredients where I can control everything that’s in my food. I don’t eat out much anymore but when I do I opt for a grilled steak or fish, and a salad, since I know it can’t be adulterated by our food supply. A healthy diet is using all whole foods and ingredients without any chemicals or lab created ingredients. It’s using butter instead of the recommended margarine. I lost 55 lbs and last week for the first time since I was in my 20s I was doing sprints in the gym. Anyone who saw me up to two years ago would not recognize me. My husband lost all his visceral fat on his belly and outpaces all the young men he works with when doing physical labor. Both of our blood tests over these two years show such a remarkable improvement that our doctors are perking up and finally listening to us. The single change we made that improved our health was to stop trusting our current food supply and anything processed or premade, and to stop following the current nutritional food pyramid. So if you are here wondering about statins and read that what works better is a healthy diet, I agree and disagree. It IS better, but it has to be the right diet, not the nationally and medically prescribed diets of today. If you really want to get healthier, do the hard work of staying away from easy and convenient when making meals, and learn the miracle and convenience of fasting. It can help you afford a truly healthier diet in both time and money.
Good for you! I haven't eliminated as much processed food from my diet as you, but we're working on it. I did change to the "Plate Method" diet in 2018 after being diagnosed with diabetes. (Lower starchy carb diet) Lost 60 lbs over 2 years. (5'3") Began walking regularly. Last summer, my husband and I began buying our eggs from a local farm, meat from another farm (all pasture-raised animals), and produce from local farmers markets, etc. (we do our best with veggies over the winter) My complexion has also vastly improved. I have fibromyalgia, but the pain definitely improved. I tripped over something back in November, had a bad fall, and needed PT. At one point, the therapist must have looked at my age on my record, and said, "You're 63?! You don't look like you're 63!" Best compliment ever. Back in early 2018, I had terrible back spasms every time I walked very far, and I didn't have much hope for my "golden years." Now I do. A healthy diet and a healthy weight make a huge difference!
It’s great to hear of your progress. Yes lower carb can reverse diabetes! It can cure a multitude of other things too, even improve mental health. I don’t do extreme low carb, but I do keep my total carbs below 50-60g/day and it has made a miraculous world of difference. I could probably increase to 75-100 and maintain just fine, but they would all come from really healthy choices, none would be high starch or empty. Interestingly my lipid panel hasn’t been as healthy as it presently is in over 15 years. My new way of eating reversed what was happening as well if not better than what statins did but without any risk of side effects. Shouldn’t that always be the first line of treatment? Rather than drugs?
Exactly! I turned down a medication a Dr. recommended a while back - I told him that meds were like fairy tale magic; there was always a price. (And the potential "price" for this one was diarrhea) He looked at me funny, and then said, "Yes, sometimes." I am a nurse, so I frequently saw the "price," particularly in the older patients. But people definitely should try lifestyle changes first; however most folks want "bandaid" or easy fixes. For example, those new diabetes shots that cause weight loss seem wonderful, but you don't learn lifestyle habits to keep your glucose stable, or to keep the weight off permanently.
Since I changed my diet and began exercising, my y A1C is normal, my cholesterol/triglycerides, (HDL76, Triglycerides 76) etc are the best they have been in decades - yet my nurse practitioner wants me to stay on the statins because I am a diabetic and I am "supposed" to keep the LDH below 70. I dropped my dose down to 10 mg/day, and it's up to 86. She won't be happy when I see her. Especially when I tell her I want to completely stop the statins.
Anyway, with the plate method, I don't count the grams of carbs, but I do limit them, and try to make them quality carbs like brown rice, whole grain bread, oven roasted sweet potatoes, etc. I do love my breakfasts, with the brown eggs from the farm, and a slice of whole wheat bread. Yum!
High cholesterol levels indicate inflammation. They are signs the body is trying to deal with it, LDL, HDL, fluffy, hard whatever the latest goalpost shifting nonsense increasingly spouted is, what is important is the cause or causes, address them (often diet and lifestyle, meds too), lower that inflammation and the levels will fall / drop naturally. Sadly medicine has now become one dimensional in execution and understanding to the degree that now even a primary child could see the failings, the gaps in logic and understanding. Do physicians still actually study biochemistry anymore?? Serious question.
"Goalpost shifting" is a problem yes. But in fairness, it MAY reflect advances in medical theory or technology. For example, relevant to blood lipids, in the beginning they were not able to measure anything beyond total cholesterol. It wasn't until well into the 20th century (around WW II) that tests to measure the fractions (LDL, HDL, etc.) became available at all, much less came into wide use. The medical-industrial complex is slow (decades) to accept new learning. For better (filters out crackpot claims) or worse (threatens established academic fiefdoms and imperils Pharma profits) this is simply a fact of life.
I’m currently reading Gary Taubes, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” which offers a fascinating overview of many of these issues in their historical contexts.
I don’t know if physicians study biochemistry. I suspect they might have had a few weeks’ training in it as part of med school but that’s about it. But even if they just received their MD, the aforementioned problem of time lag all but guarantees that at least some of what they learned was out-of-date and perhaps even proven wrong by later discoveries that had not yet entered the textbooks.
I appreciate you are trying to give a benefit of doubt suggestion on the why and how of changes in medical understanding, but this cholesterol malarkey all goes back to the beginnings and a certain fraudulent/selective study you may have heard of from a certain Ancel Keys, aka the so called 7 countries study which claimed dietary cholesterol was the primary driver of CHD merely by association of dietary habits. In between then and now certain industries and players have been more than keen to promote this unevidenced flawed nonsense, as have numerous physicians and researchers who have lost all integrity in my humble opinion. Many still to this day persist in showing their true ignorance, maybe dishonesty, i am never sure, in continuing to explain a component of CVD as "blocking up your arteries with cholesterol". At that point one should be aghast at the lack of basic medical knowledge/ lack of integrity, either reason is dreadful. Fire your physician or cardiologist immediately is my advice and find one that can actually explain honestly what actually occurs (epithelial damage from inflammation).
The real rub is that none can offer any plausible biochemical way that dietary cholesterol can actually affect bloody cholesterol, let alone how blocking the movalenate pathways lead to reduced CVD events and primary risk reduction, not even in those with the rare familial Hypercholesterolaemia. As you may have guessed by now, I very much align with such as Dr Kendrick's overview and evidence analysis. It is time to reject this paradigm from vested interests obsessed with selling more Statins and PCSK-9's all in the name of so called prevention of which it has roundly shown to have a null affect in various studies.
Well-put and compelling argument!
Thank you. Interesting timing as I recently spent 2 days reading studies to see if Atorvastatin 10mg is the right choice for a family member with high Lp(a). I found small studies that statins might actually be increasing this genetic risk factor. It seems even in higher risk and older people addressing high LDL-C with diets supplements and exercise would be the fist attempt at treatment. Thank you for all of your work. I am hoping your video about your research and experience re being fired (a horrible story particularly since you had to deal with the sickening covid pharma lies soon after) will help my family member as many folks can’t process the data alone.
Thankyou
Yesterday I received a letter from my professor at the royal Brompton hospital London
Saying my LDL levels have spiked high FOLLOWING SARS2 blood test confirmation in 2020 and he wishes to now put me on high dose statins .
I’m having problems with heart rhythm 🙄
And taking 100mg beta blockers.
I think I’ll be sticking to a healthy keto diet, fasting and my cardio miracle, DMG recommendations from Judy mikovits 🙏and a bit of dr zelenco and his zelenco protocol (RIP) god bless and leave the rest in gods hands 🙏
I am the sole survivor of the professor sir magdi Yacoub procedure replacement of the aorta 🫀 re suspended aortic valve and repaired mitral valve.
Thankyou for this article this morning 🌅 I take it as gods sigh to me 🙏
I was on statins from the mid-1990s until about 2008. Within a year of being on Lipitor, I had very sore knees that my doctor dismissed as being from statin side effects. The issue never went away, and I just put up with it. I changed brands a couple times after that point and ended up on simvastatin first. That one gave me sore calves and shoulders so my doctor switched me to pravastatin, which I was on for about four to six years. It got so I was so sore all over my body, not just the knees and calves, so I decided to go off statins completely at that point and have refused to go on them since.
I can't help but wonder if I had gotten side effects from the time I was on Lipitor, as I had suspected, and if my doctor had taken me off it, if things would have been different if I had quit then instead of staying on. It seems that my soreness increased the longer I was on the statins, and nowadays, even being off, the soreness remains. I wish I had never ever gone on a statin. The fancy graph that purports to show the benefit of pravastatin should have an overlaying graph showing the cumulative side effects from it as well.
Although in a different context, your account of how doctors will switch a patient from one drug to another recalls the story from one of the Alcoholics Anonymous books about how many drunks, as part of trying to self-treat the disease, will switch brands or types of alcoholic beverage in the vain hope that it'll fix their problems.
Do you mind my asking the Lipitor dose you were on? A family member was recently started on 10mg which supposedly has less side effects but i remain skeptical.
I was on a low dose (10 mg) of Lipitor for 1-1/2 years only. It caused a severe sharp pain in my left thigh that often also sends an electrocution type pain. Neurology tests ruled out nerve damage and all other potential causes. It was the statin. I started the Keto diet 2 years ago and after 4 months stopped all my prescriptions, including the statins. My health and energy has never been better in 30 years. It has been 2 years since I stopped the statin but I’m still suffering from that severe sharp pain in my left thigh. I believe statins carry the risk to cause irreversible damage. By the way, my cholesterol levels got way better with diet change. My LDL is still a tad high but there is a healthy beneficial LDL that doesn’t get measured separately, and my triglycerides have never been so low. The triglyceride ratio is the real indicator that matters, not the LDL.
Your experience is very much like mine. I never suffered any side effects of the statin, that I am aware of. What convinced me to stop was first reading -- and then verifying through my own research -- how little value statins have as a primary intervention.
Almost never mentioned are the costs of such an intervention, not just time and money to the patient, but potential adverse effects in the future. It’s telling that detailed patient records from drug trials are rarely, if ever, released to outside investigators. Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the product, does it? It’s almost as if they have something to hide.
Your experience is very much like mine. I never suffered any side effects of the statin, that I am aware of. What convinced me to stop was first reading -- and then verifying through my own research -- how little value statins have as a primary intervention.
Almost never mentioned are the costs of such an intervention, not just time and money to the patient, but potential adverse effects in the future. It’s telling that detailed patient records from drug trials are rarely, if ever, released to outside investigators. Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the product, does it? It’s almost as if they have something to hide.
Juju thank you for sharing your information. It is helpful and I very much appreciate it. I don't know if this might help you but I had undiagnosed neurological shooting pains and loss of sensation in my right foot for years after a severe reaction to an antibiotic. An MD I eventually found put me on a supplement called ATP 360 from Researched Nutritionals which acts at the mitochondrial level. It helped immensely. Hard to know if it would help in your case but maybe it is worth trying? Thank you again for your info on statins.
Good to know thank you! I’ll certainly want to try it.
Good article.
My approach is the following:
1/ Stratify all risk factors, and correct the correctable ones (primarily exercise, which is rarely considered by treating physicians).
2/ Check lipid subfractions rather than relying on total cholesterol, total LDL and HDL.
3/ For those whose risk of coronary artery disease is higher, offer coronary artery calcium score CT.
It is quite amazing how many patients who may have been on statins for decades have a very low coronary artery calcium score.
To me it is simply a matter of a right brain "gestalt" approach versus the modern medicine left brain flowchart approach.
I agree with 1 aspect of this article in its criticism of Dr. Mandrola’s position. As JMM says, the data suggest that the younger you start primary prevention statin, the higher likelihood of more people who stand to reap huge gains (vs fewer people who make more modest gains by starting later). But the current author rightly points out that the “average benefit” of statin in primary prevention, in absolute terms, remains small. So by starting more people younger, the cost of getting more people to reap huge gains is to expose WAY MORE people to minimal benefit, while everyone has the same cost of pill burden and potential long term complications. And of course, we have no idea which category our patient in the office falls into. I disagree with Dr. Mandrola’s emphasis only on the “lucky few”.
OTOH, I disagree with the current author’s criticism of the Mendelian randomization data. The issue seems to be about people who had gene deletion having had the benefit of survivor bias to have made it long enough to enrol into the studies in question. This is true…but is true of any adult participant of any study. Anyone who was included in Jupiter (for example) did not die in childhood. It’s the same survivor bias that applies to absolutely any study of anybody. I don’t see why it should only discount a Mendelian randomization cohort that results in a low LDL.
In the end, I don’t think the answer is for statin in primary prevention in everyone, nor in no one. We already have validated tools to try to better understand risk (and no CAC for me, thanks). And as Dr. Mandrola mentioned in that behavioural study, different people will have different values and preferences that emphasize different things…even when presented with the same data. IMO, our job is to present the info in as plain language as is necessary, then to be fairly indifferent about what the pt chooses based on that information. Some will say sign me up; others will say no thanks. And either is fine by me.
I had the honor and pleasure of being interviewed by Maryanne Demasi for her documentary "The Heart of the Matter" which ran on Australian television about ten years ago. It was practically the only production that raised questions about the cholesterol theory. But it also was a lesson in power politics. The Australian version of the American College of Cardiology threw a complete hissy fit and got it banned from further broadcast and removed from the internet. In the process they slandered me and the other interviewees who appeared in the show. I wrote letters of protest to most of the Australian newspapers that reported on it but got no acknowledgement or reply.
It's on YouTube now, and is surprisingly not that incendiary. One wonders what all the fuss was about. Sorry this happened to you.
Thanks. I didn't know it was still available. And I agree that it was not that incendiary. Actually I disagreed on a number of points with some of the others that were interviewed. We only agreed that the current narrative was false. It stirred things up because it brought into contention the possibility that the viewpoint of organized cardiology might be wrong. So they wanted to snuff out any dissension right at the start. Same as with the covid scam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H29vMfzRXuY
Found this still of you. :-) https://doutorlucashomeopatia.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/dr-Ernest-Curtis.jpg
Guilty as charged. I am pretty sure that was the shirt I wore the day Maryanne and her crew filmed my part in the documentary 10-15 years ago. It distresses my wife no end that almost all my shirts are older than our grandchildren who are all well into their 20s.