Yes; lower high CRP readings. NO to taking statins....
Today's post: Tuesday, 11-11-2008
Recent stories all over the media in the last two days describe that newly released research found that giving statins tested as preventing some of the heart attacks that the people in the group would otherwise have gotten for people in the group studied who had high CRP, C Reactive Protein, readings as measured by the HSCRP test but relatively OK LDL or total cholesterol readings.
Since statins do lower CRP levels by lowering the inflammation that causes the CRP levels to be high, this makes it look as if taking statins, Crestor, as used in this study, or perhaps other statin drugs that are far less expensive, may be protective against heart attacks even in people who test below the 160 LDL level above which doctors often prescribe statins otherwise.
After reading about this study, some doctors may do just that and now prescribe statins for their patients who test high for CRP. But, it is a very bad idea.
1. The effect was tiny. For every heart attack prevented 120 people had to take the statin. Unfortunately, even using less expensive statins makes this quite expensive for the results achieved. An article on NPR’s online news has this: “Treating all Americans who meet the study's criteria could add $8.9 billion a year to the nation's health care bill,”
2. But the worse and more powerful reason for NOT prescribing statins is that when 120 people take statins far more than one of them has serious side effects.
3. And the most important reason is that the nondrug methods to lower high inflammation and CRP have other health benefits including helping to prevent heart attacks in several other ways and helping to prevent type 2 diabetes and obesity as well.
So, not only is prescribing statins only marginally helpful at great financial and human cost, it’s NOT necessary. The nondrug alternative has no side effects, also works, and provides much better protection from heart attacks and other related diseases.
If you have a high CRP reading, would you prefer to have a bit of heart attack prevention and a much higher risk of serious side effects and a new drug to take daily and pay for?
Or, would you prefer a method that has no such side effects that is much more likely to prevent heart attacks and has exceptional added health benefits?
Similarly, what will prevent the most disease with the lowest costs in serious and unnecessary side effects and dollars spent?
The answer is NOT more statin drugs.
The average person in the United States has, in the past 80 years, become vastly more sedentary; they have begun eating meat mostly from animals fed grain which is fattier and which has much higher omega 6 and saturated fat content and very little omega 3 oils than the meat from grass and pasture fed animals it replaced; begun eating many oils also high in omega 6 oils such as corn, soy, safflower, and canola oils, and begun to eat more refined grain foods and large amounts of high fructose corn syrup.
To lower high inflammation and CRP readings AND to prevent heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, simply reverse EVERY single one of these changes!!
1. Get regular exercise, ideally some strength training and some interval cardio every week.
2. Eat nonfat and very lowfat dairy foods; eat nuts if you aren’t allergic to them; eat beans and lentils; eat wild caught fish; eat beef fed only grass; & if and when you do eat poultry or other meat from animals fed grains, trim as much fat from it as you can and avoid eating it often.
3. Use only extra virgin olive oil. Only rarely eat small amounts of unheated butter as an occasional food flavoring. And completely stop, to the best of your ability, eating corn, soy, safflower, and canola oil or foods containing them.
4. Take DHA supplements & purified fish oil supplements daily. And, if you can, eat wild caught fish NOT known to be high in mercury at least once or twice every week (NEVER eat farmed fish for other reasons.)* The supplements and fish intake ensures you get enough omega 3 oils as the grain fed meat and poultry now sold has virtually none. *(Farmed fish are higher in omega 6 oils and have several kinds of health damaging pollutants.)
5. Stop eating all refined grain foods; stop eating or drinking any food or drink that has high fructose corn syrup; and eat sugar less often and in smaller amounts. Instead eat some high nutrition fruits such as kiwi fruit or blueberries; eat plentiful amounts of a variety of vegetables; and eat some whole grain foods also if you have little or no excess fat on your body and get plenty of exercise.
These steps will lower high CRP readings. There are some other things you can do that prevent heart attacks in other ways such as taking niacin and NEVER eating foods that have any hydrogenated oils (transfats.) But if you simply take these five steps listed here, your CRP readings will not only go down, your HDL cholesterol will go UP; your LDL levels will go down (no statins needed for that either); your triglyceride levels will go down, and if your blood sugar was too high, it will tend to fall to normal and desirable levels. You’ll also tend to lose all or most of any excess bodyfat you had.
AND, in addition to lowering your CRP levels without needing statin drugs, EVERY ONE of those other effects tends to prevent heart attacks and strokes as well.
What about doctors who have patients who would rather risk serious side effects and pay for drugs than make these lifestyle upgrades?
According to one doctor who worked for NASA AND who himself got very serious but mercifully temporary memory loss from a moderate dose of statins, the CRP lowering needed can be gotten with dramatically lower doses of statins than the amounts now prescribed for lowering LDL cholesterol. Those smaller doses cost less and are far more likely to be free of serious side effects.
Taking statins in very low doses would also help someone who DID do these 5 things and still had a CRP level above the desirable level. I think this would be quite rare; but it’s possible.
The conclusion is that such widespread statin use would be a ruinously expensive addition to our health care costs at a time they are already too high; it will harm more people than it will help; and it’s dramatically inferior to the effective alternative nondrug treatment that IS available.
Today's post: Tuesday, 11-11-2008
Recent stories all over the media in the last two days describe that newly released research found that giving statins tested as preventing some of the heart attacks that the people in the group would otherwise have gotten for people in the group studied who had high CRP, C Reactive Protein, readings as measured by the HSCRP test but relatively OK LDL or total cholesterol readings.
Since statins do lower CRP levels by lowering the inflammation that causes the CRP levels to be high, this makes it look as if taking statins, Crestor, as used in this study, or perhaps other statin drugs that are far less expensive, may be protective against heart attacks even in people who test below the 160 LDL level above which doctors often prescribe statins otherwise.
After reading about this study, some doctors may do just that and now prescribe statins for their patients who test high for CRP. But, it is a very bad idea.
1. The effect was tiny. For every heart attack prevented 120 people had to take the statin. Unfortunately, even using less expensive statins makes this quite expensive for the results achieved. An article on NPR’s online news has this: “Treating all Americans who meet the study's criteria could add $8.9 billion a year to the nation's health care bill,”
2. But the worse and more powerful reason for NOT prescribing statins is that when 120 people take statins far more than one of them has serious side effects.
3. And the most important reason is that the nondrug methods to lower high inflammation and CRP have other health benefits including helping to prevent heart attacks in several other ways and helping to prevent type 2 diabetes and obesity as well.
So, not only is prescribing statins only marginally helpful at great financial and human cost, it’s NOT necessary. The nondrug alternative has no side effects, also works, and provides much better protection from heart attacks and other related diseases.
If you have a high CRP reading, would you prefer to have a bit of heart attack prevention and a much higher risk of serious side effects and a new drug to take daily and pay for?
Or, would you prefer a method that has no such side effects that is much more likely to prevent heart attacks and has exceptional added health benefits?
Similarly, what will prevent the most disease with the lowest costs in serious and unnecessary side effects and dollars spent?
The answer is NOT more statin drugs.
The average person in the United States has, in the past 80 years, become vastly more sedentary; they have begun eating meat mostly from animals fed grain which is fattier and which has much higher omega 6 and saturated fat content and very little omega 3 oils than the meat from grass and pasture fed animals it replaced; begun eating many oils also high in omega 6 oils such as corn, soy, safflower, and canola oils, and begun to eat more refined grain foods and large amounts of high fructose corn syrup.
To lower high inflammation and CRP readings AND to prevent heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity, simply reverse EVERY single one of these changes!!
1. Get regular exercise, ideally some strength training and some interval cardio every week.
2. Eat nonfat and very lowfat dairy foods; eat nuts if you aren’t allergic to them; eat beans and lentils; eat wild caught fish; eat beef fed only grass; & if and when you do eat poultry or other meat from animals fed grains, trim as much fat from it as you can and avoid eating it often.
3. Use only extra virgin olive oil. Only rarely eat small amounts of unheated butter as an occasional food flavoring. And completely stop, to the best of your ability, eating corn, soy, safflower, and canola oil or foods containing them.
4. Take DHA supplements & purified fish oil supplements daily. And, if you can, eat wild caught fish NOT known to be high in mercury at least once or twice every week (NEVER eat farmed fish for other reasons.)* The supplements and fish intake ensures you get enough omega 3 oils as the grain fed meat and poultry now sold has virtually none. *(Farmed fish are higher in omega 6 oils and have several kinds of health damaging pollutants.)
5. Stop eating all refined grain foods; stop eating or drinking any food or drink that has high fructose corn syrup; and eat sugar less often and in smaller amounts. Instead eat some high nutrition fruits such as kiwi fruit or blueberries; eat plentiful amounts of a variety of vegetables; and eat some whole grain foods also if you have little or no excess fat on your body and get plenty of exercise.
These steps will lower high CRP readings. There are some other things you can do that prevent heart attacks in other ways such as taking niacin and NEVER eating foods that have any hydrogenated oils (transfats.) But if you simply take these five steps listed here, your CRP readings will not only go down, your HDL cholesterol will go UP; your LDL levels will go down (no statins needed for that either); your triglyceride levels will go down, and if your blood sugar was too high, it will tend to fall to normal and desirable levels. You’ll also tend to lose all or most of any excess bodyfat you had.
AND, in addition to lowering your CRP levels without needing statin drugs, EVERY ONE of those other effects tends to prevent heart attacks and strokes as well.
What about doctors who have patients who would rather risk serious side effects and pay for drugs than make these lifestyle upgrades?
According to one doctor who worked for NASA AND who himself got very serious but mercifully temporary memory loss from a moderate dose of statins, the CRP lowering needed can be gotten with dramatically lower doses of statins than the amounts now prescribed for lowering LDL cholesterol. Those smaller doses cost less and are far more likely to be free of serious side effects.
Taking statins in very low doses would also help someone who DID do these 5 things and still had a CRP level above the desirable level. I think this would be quite rare; but it’s possible.
The conclusion is that such widespread statin use would be a ruinously expensive addition to our health care costs at a time they are already too high; it will harm more people than it will help; and it’s dramatically inferior to the effective alternative nondrug treatment that IS available.
Labels: avoid unnecessary statin drugs, lower CRP, lower health care costs, prevent drug side effects, prevent heart attacks, protect your heart, reduce inflamation
posted by David at 12:29 PM
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