Statins for children NOT a good idea....

Today's post: Tuesday, 7-15-2008

Children as young as 8 years old with high cholesterol should be put on statins, according to a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This is NOT a good idea at all in any way.

In adults, statins only address a small part of the causes of heart disease. (See yesterday’s post for details of the five measures one needs to optimize to prevent heart disease.) They only lower LDL cholesterol. They do not lower homocysteine or blood sugar readings that are too high. They don’t lower triglycerides. And, though some of them apparently do raise HDL cholesterol, they don’t increase it as much as niacin & other methods do.

Worse, they have significant harmful effects; & there are other quite effective & far safer ways to lower LDL cholesterol. Statins sometimes cause liver damage, nerve damage, & serious damage to muscles. And they ALWAYS lower CoQ10. When you add to that the fact that far less than 100 % of doctors know to prescribe CoQ10 of at least 100 mg a day with statin drugs or how extremely important that is to the health & quality of life of their patients, it’s not at all clear to me that more than 5 to 10 % of the ADULTS now taking statins should be on them.

And, worst of all, they allow doctors & patients to think they do NOT need to address eating right & discontinuing the consumption of things harmful to the heart such as transfats & high fructose corn syrup & that they do not need to address adding regular exercise or losing excess fat if in that patient it’s an excessive amount.

Every single one of these things is an even stronger argument against giving statins to any child who doesn’t have such high cholesterol readings that it’s clear there is a genetic problem of some kind. (Pediatricians already prescribe statins for such children.) This report suggests that if a child has only a high reading, not an incredibly high reading, that statins be prescribed.

The two worst things about this recommendation for children are these.:

1. In addition to all the risks of side effects that it is NOT necessary to take to prevent heart disease in adults, since children are still growing and developing, there is an additional risk for children taking statins that their normal growth & development may be screwed up.

Since damage to mitochondria from the C0Q10 depletion statin drugs cause is common & such damage produces lack of energy & aging effects, it’s also possible the children may have less energy for their educations to work out well & might even experience accelerated aging over their lives.

2. But the very worst problem with this recommendation it that it totally ignores treating the causes of the problem. And, if these causes are addressed well in children, those children not only will have their high LDL cholesterol levels go down & be far less likely to get heart attacks, they will avoid obesity, type II diabetes, high blood pressure & become less likely to get heart disease since the other causes of it will be addressed.

If a child has high LDL cholesterol, they very likely are also fatter than they should be & on track to get heart disease & all these other health problems. But that’s because the CAUSES of those conditions have not been addressed.

If a child watches TV for too many hours each week & never gets any exercise & never exercises regularly, as many do now unfortunately, THAT is the thing to get professional help to change NOT taking a drug & leaving that alone.

If a child often & regularly eats the snack foods advertised often on TV that contain refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, & trans fats AND that child also drinks several soft drinks a day, as far too many today do unfortunately, THAT is the thing to get professional help to change NOT taking a drug & leaving that alone.

As you can see from yesterday’s post all of the things is these two categories cause negative health effects in all five of the factors we posted on yesterday that DO cause heart disease.

Yes, the American Academy of Pediatrics is right to recommend that if a child has high LDL cholesterol something effective should be done & begun right away.

But to ignore treating the real causes & to advocate a symptom treatment that has serious side effects & ignore the real causes is extremely ill advised.

And, since the parents of these children very likely do NOT yet know that these things are causing their children AND the parents themselves to get all these diseases, what they need & should get is an effective education on why these factors produce disease and how to live differently.

And, since the parents of the children their child goes to school with likely don’t know either or the parent’s resources may be limited in time and money, the parents or the child or both may well need some kind of ongoing support group that the doctor can refer them to.

One book that many parents would find helpful in this area is Dr David Ludwig’s book,
Ending the Food Fight:
Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/ Fake Food World.

Dr Ludwig’s book would have been a MUCH better & more effective tool for the American Academy of Pediatrics to have recommended to their doctor members & for parents of children who have high LDL cholesterol than statin drugs.

Dr Ludwig has researched the causes of heart disease in detail. He knows what lifestyle changes prevent it. And, for parents even better, he has successful experience working with parents & teen aged kids to put those changes into place.