Take Statins or Blood Pressure Drugs?

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In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 9-7-2006

Take Statins or Blood Pressure Drugs?

There’s a serious problem with statins & some blood pressure drugs. Mercifully, some doctors do finally know about this, particularly in the case of statins.

But, I suspect the majority of the doctors who prescribe these drugs don’t yet know them.

So, if you take these drugs or someone important to you does, today’s post has some information you should know.

First, the good news:

Used correctly, these are good drugs for most of the people who take them based on the research I’ve seen. Used correctly, they do tend to prevent heart attacks & strokes or at least help to do that significantly.

A. Despite what some health sources that I otherwise find sound are saying, high levels of LDL cholesterol are NOT wise no matter what. The harmful fractions of LDL act very much like sand or glue would inside your car’s engine. LESS of them IS better for you.

And, statin drugs do reliably lower LDL.

B. Mean blood pressure of 120 & over is harmful. And, drugs that reduce it below that protect you from heart disease, strokes, & unnecessarily early death.

This has been well established by the research done on it.

[To estimate mean blood pressure, you add one third of the difference between the Systolic reading (the larger one listed first) & the Diastolic reading (the smaller one listed second) to the Diastolic reading.

So, if you have a reading of 160 over 100, one third of the difference is 20; the estimated mean blood pressure is found by adding that 20 to the 100. So, it’s 120.]

HERE’S THE BAD NEWS:

Taking statin drugs & some blood pressure reducing drugs, lowers CoQ10 in your body.

And, since many people who take these drugs start out with low levels of CoQ10 due to being older, this results in quite low levels indeed.

This makes you feel depleted of energy & tends to make you tire easily.

In addition, it tends to trigger or make worse a condition called congestive heart failure.

In his book, called The Better Brain Book by David Perlmutter, MD, Dr Perlmutter also says low CoQ10 may make strokes more likely & be harmful to your brain & ability to think & remember.

These effects can largely be avoided, he finds, if you take 100 mg a day or more of CoQ10.

This knowledge is relatively new to the medical community; & in my own experience, many doctors, even reasonably good ones otherwise, don’t yet know it.

Mercifully, this effect IS becoming better known to doctors.

If your doctor doesn’t yet know it, by all means refer him or her to Dr Perlmutter’s book.

And, whether or not you do that, give strong consideration to taking CoQ10 yourself.

It looks to be essential to your health if you take these drugs. And, it has significant advantages even if you don’t -- as researchers are beginning to report.

It’s, unfortunately, one of the more expensive supplements although it costs a lot less than the drugs. But it is available in virtually every health food store.

Dr Stephen Sinatra, in his book on lowering blood pressure, quotes a study that found that taking 100 mg or more of CoQ10 tended to lower high blood pressure even when that was the only thing done to do so.

And, it’s quite common to experience a good deal more energy when you take CoQ10 if your initial level of it is at all low.