I’ve always had high cholesterol (around 240 total), but I’ve never bought into the statin thing. And over the past year, since I went mostly paleo in my diet, I’ve gotten it down to 207 (as of October), with HDL of eighty and triglycerides below fifty, so for me at least, diet makes a big difference (not by cutting out cholesterol, but by cutting out the wrong carbs). I’ve also lost almost twenty pounds, though that wans’t a goal (and I gained seven or eight pounds over the holidays, what with the mashed potatoes and bread with holiday meals). The notion that “you are what you eat” and that fat makes you fat and cholesterol gives you high cholesterol is primitive thinking, and yet it remains the medical mainstream view. And while it’s been good for the drug companies, I think that it’s killed millions over the decades, including my father.
18 thoughts on “The Statin Fraud”
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Doctor has me on Crestor. But I only take 20mg a week, one Monday and one Thrusday. I found a fraction the dose gives me 95% the benefit of taking it everyday as far as LDL reduction goes.
I also take COQ10, Niacin and Fish Oil. I do the Crestor to humor him. The rest I do for me.
I am a large white male who is classified as obese. I have been fat my entire life and even fought with it while in the Army. My cholesterol was always “normal” until they changed the numbers. My doctor convinced me to take statins because of my risk factors for heart attack. After taking them faithfully for two years I found myself weak, having severe muscle cramps, loss of memory and a really weird feeling of having crystals in my muscles. I could massage a muscle and it felt like I was breaking up a crystal or sediment that was in my body.
One day while sitting at the table I happened to pick up the paper that came with the medicine and read the warnings and side effects. It is a bad day when you are experiencing 9 out of the 10 listed side effects. I immediately stopped taking the drug. At my annual checkup my cholesterol was again elevated and, after I told my doctor what happened, she put me on a different brand of Statin. However, this time I knew what to look for and recognized the symptoms three weeks after starting to take the other brand of Statin. After almost two years of not taking the drug I am still having issues with numbness and feeling of weakness. I even developed a neurological heart condition. To overcome all this I have changed my diet and exercise regularly. I am still over weight but my heart condition is controlled and most days I feel strong.
Rand, what’s a good starting point for practical Paleo (books, sites, apps) as you’ve done? I see a lot of literature out there, some more helpful than others. Also, what’s your opinion on oatmeal, brown rice, etc. grains? There seems to be a lot of division on the inclusion of grains of any kind. (Many restaurants around here are catering to the gluten-free, so that seems like a good starting point for eating-out (which I’m never going to be able to exclude…), but I haven’t looked at those menus too closely.)
I just saw a new book on the subject that I skimmed at B&N. It was written by a doctor who’s pretty radical (no grains, no potatoes or cassava, though other root veggies are all right, no legumes, no dairy). One problem that I have is that paleos tend to rely on tree nuts a lot, and I’m allergic to many, if not most of them. Diana Hsieh (Paul’s wife) has a site.
George, you hit the nail on the head. The problem with statins is that they block an enzyme acting very early on in the chain of reactions that leads to cholesterol, and in particular block the formation of Coenzyme Q10. Lack of this substance in the body can lead, among other problems, to – wait for it – heart failure. The reason is that CoQ10 is needed to get energy out of food, to leave all the complicated biochemistry out.
My advice, for what it’s worth, is to take 100-200 mg of CoQ10 per day for aftereffects of statins. I don’t know of any side effects of this stuff, which is quite widely available.
It’s also quite notable that the “desirable” level of cholesterol has been revised downwards at least three times to my knowledge, to levels difficult to achieve without statins. Of course, this suits Big Pharma just fine. And just one more thing; blood levels of homocysteine are far better correlated with heart problems than is cholesterol level. And it’s never mentioned. Why? Because the best way of keeping down homocysteine levels is a daily B complex pill. There is a specific formula (B6, B12 and folate), but a decent B complex will do. And there’s no patent on that.
Looks like I am doing both right then. To think I was taking the B Complex to prevent grey hair!(46 and not a single one!)
You should be taking your Q10 as ubiquinol, not the ubiquinone capsules (we get Qunol at Costco).
Quinol is what I take.
If it is only that high, talk to your Dr and see about Niacin in high doses. I ran around 260 or so for a LONG time. Dr. started me on Niaspan (3x 500 mg and a half dose aspirin before bed daily). Next and subsequent checkups, cholesterol has been around 150 +/- and steady. A lot of folks can’t tolerate high doses of niacin as it causes flushing – which is why you take it before bed. Found it over the shelf at Costco; Doc signed off; and it works. Might be worth looking into. And I don’t have to eat paleo to keep it working. Try it. Cheers –
I’m not actually that concerned about my cholesterol (I really do think that, as it says at the link, in attempting to lower cholesterol to reduce heart problems, you’re treating a symptom). I’m on the diet to reduce my blood pressure. The reduced cholesterol and triglycerides (and improved HDL) are just a side benefit.
Individual results can vary with niacin just like anything else. I tried high doses of niacin some years ago and it felt like my body was on fire. Even the so-called “non-flushing” niacin gave me results that my wife compared to menopause hot flashes. Some people can take niacin without any problems but unfortunately I’m not one of them.
I would try a different brand Larry. Some no-flush works for me, others do as you describe.
I don’t know. It hurt so bad (and it lasted for hours) that I don’t want to go anywhere near the stuff. It may be that my body just can’t handle high doses of niasin the same as some other people can’t handle statins. One size does not fit all.
Barry Sears, author of the “Zone Diet,” points out that cholesterol is produced by an enzyme in the liver that is directly affected by insulin–the real culprit. I have long thought that cholesterol levels are a surrogate for insulin, and attacking cholesterol was like pouring water on the smoke instead of the fire.
High insulin levels are deleterious in many ways and the *only* way to control it is through diet. Carbs stimulate insulin production and the higher the glycemic index of the carb, the worse it is. Rice, potatoes, grains (bread and cereal), corn, bananas, grapes, raisins, pears, and oranges are among the worst offenders and should be minimized. Sears advocates a mix of carbs, protein and fat (preferably monounsaturated) each and every time we eat.
I’m quite sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but I don’t mind mentioning it again. For the past year I’ve been incorporating many elements of what might be called the neo-traditional or “Nourishing Traditions” diet into my lifestyle. It has a lot of overlaps with the Paleo diet, but it doesn’t eschew grains, dairy products, or other starches (like potatoes). Nevertheless, it stresses the importance of dietary fat (particularly saturated animal fats from pasture-fed animals), probiotics from lacto-fermented foods (from yogurt and kefir to sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables), and whole-grain products prepared in traditional ways (soaked, soured or sprouted). It also advises avoiding sugars, refined carbohydrates and processed foods.
Although weight, cholesterol and other such things were not a concern for me before I started eating this way, I’ve noticed that it is easier for me to stay leaner, that I enjoy cooking and eating my food more, and that I feel less tempted to snack on unhealthy foods.
Ubiquinol is somewhat better than ubiquinone, but also quite a lot more expensive. I suspect 100mg of ubiquinone is better than 50mg of ubiquinol, if money is an issue – which it usually is.
I used to run a shop selling supplements. (It fell afoul of the banker-generated economic crisis.) Just about all my customers had a budget in mind for supplements. The difficulty is sometimes deciding what potentially beneficial things to leave out. With no money constraints I could defend a $300/month budget for supplements – easily. Maybe more.
Well, I do not know what to believe – I’m not qual-ee-fied (as spoken by John Cleese). All I know for sure is that statins lowered my count from 270 (but with high HDL, too) to 150 (still with high HDL) and I haven’t noticed any ill effects. Yet.
Just looking at the graphic that shows where the statin drugs inhibit cholesterol production makes clear they are criminal drugs. Rather than having a drug that would inhibit cholesterol production at the end of the reaction chain branch, they made the drug to inhibit production at the very beginning such that it inhibits the production of a lot more than just cholesterol (like Co-Q10, for example, which is essential for metabolism).
Statins are based on a fraud in other ways as well. First, the Framingham study, itself, which the lipid hypothesis of cardio-vascular disease is based on, is a criminal fraud. The source data was never published and the published data is well-known to have been modified. It took several years through the freedom of information act lawsuits to obtain the source data, which the medical journals to this day refuses to publish.
Second, as Rand pointed out, people who have “high” cholesterol have cells that are cholesterol resistant, as opposed to having actually high cholesterol. This is analogous to Type-2 diabetes, which is due to insulin resistance rather than an underproduction of insulin itself. Since the cause of “high” cholesterol is the inability of cells to use the cholesterol rather than excessive production of cholesterol itself, it make more sense to treat the actual problem itself (cholesterol resistance itself) rather than to reduce the production of cholesterol. Its analogous to treating type-2 diabetes with supplemental insulin when, in fact, the body is producing the correct amount of insulin.
I think both conditions, Type-2 diabetes as well as “high” cholesterol, demonstrate than much of modern medicine is not based on the proper understanding and application of biochemistry and molecular biology. This is the reason why I generally do not trust doctors lack confidence in the medical industrial complex, in general.