New research on memory loss from statin drugs....

Today's Post, Tuesday, 5-5-2009

A few weeks ago, I got to read the account of a doctor who was given a moderate or moderately low dose of a statin drug who promptly developed total amnesia of virtually everything that had happened to him since he was about 13 years old.

He forgot his wife, his kids, his work, and most of his medical education. Mercifully, when the doctor that put him on the statins took him off, his memory came back.

Since then he has documented that the percentage of people with memory or other brain impairments from taking statin drugs is far higher than is generally realized.

It’s somewhat better known that taking statin drugs reliably lowers CoQ10 which your body needs to keep your heart healthy in other ways and for energy. And, people who take statins without also taking 120 to 200 mg of CoQ10 or more each day, often to usually find themselves lacking energy and much more easily tired. This is under-reported since many people who take statin drugs are older and think their lack of energy and stamina is because they are getting older and not because of the statin they take.

Since you can lower LDL cholesterol with diet, taking sterol supplements, and taking niacin AND you can prevent heart disease much MORE effectively than statins by doing that list of things, particularly taking niacin -- PLUS doing other things that raise HDL and sharply lower triglycerides such as regular exercise and NOT eating refined grains and other sources of high glycemic carbs, it seems to me that statin drugs should be used only in a small minority of cases instead of something everyone gets recommended to take.

(One of the most powerful ways to prevent heart disease is to lower small particle LDL. Lowering total LDL does help do that some. But it’s indirect and not guaranteed since you may simply be lowering the safer kind of LDL only. But a combination of increasing HDL, sharply decreasing triglycerides, and NEVER ingesting transfats or foods that contain them, directly lowers the small particle LDL that actually causes heart disease. There are things you can do that have those effects. But statin drugs don’t do them except for generally lowering LDL.
Taking niacin has such a good track record because it does the triple – it lowers LDL, increases HDL, AND lowers triglycerides.)

But that case would be improved and we might be able to better protect those few people who do need statin drugs if we knew how and why statin drugs harmed memory.

The good news is that we may now know exactly that.

The research was reported in today’s issue of the TotalHealthBreakthroughs email I got.

Here’s that article.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com ."

"Your Brain on Statins

By James LaValle, R.Ph, ND, CCN

I was recently made aware of huge news on statin drugs from the labs at Iowa State University, where a researcher has confirmed something I have long suspected regarding cholesterol-lowering drugs -- that they could seriously harm brain health.

The concern comes from simply knowing that brain cells, like liver cells, also manufacture cholesterol. Brain cells need cholesterol for a variety of functions. For instance, cholesterol is a primary component of the protective nerve coating called myelin. If your brain cells didn't need cholesterol, they wouldn't make it.

In the past it was assumed that statins primarily affect the production of cholesterol in the liver. However, as a pharmacist I have always thought it was naïve to think that a drug (statins) that circulates throughout the whole body would not affect other cholesterol-producing cells at all. My fears have now been proven correct.

Yeon-Kyun Shin, a biophysics professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology at Iowa State, says his research shows that statins do indeed slow the production of cholesterol in the brain which then interferes with efficient brain function.1 His study will soon be published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shin found that too little cholesterol in brain cells significantly affected a protein that is needed for the release of neurotransmitters. Cholesterol is needed to change the shape of this critical protein, and in his words, "to stimulate thinking and memory."

I cannot overstate how important this information is, and how big a ripple this news will cause as it is more widely reported. At least, I hope it will be widely reported.

If you deprive the brain of cholesterol, you "directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters," said Shin. "Neurotransmitters affect the brain's data-processing and memory functions. In other words -- how smart you are and how well you remember things."

As you probably already know, statins lower LDL, and while it is often reported that they can also help raise HDL somewhat, I frequently see people who cannot raise their HDL levels while they are on statin drugs, especially when they are on higher dosages. And other studies have shown that low HDL cholesterol is linked with memory loss.2

Ever since statin drugs entered the marketplace, some users have experienced severe memory problems from them. While it's true that the most pronounced of these cases has involved a very small percentage of people, some of us have been watching closely to see how wider usage of statins will end up affecting the cognitive function of people using them.

Dr. Shin's research conclusively confirms our suspicion that statins can be harmful to cognitive functioning. "Our study shows there is a direct link between cholesterol and the neurotransmitter release," he said definitively.

We have to be really careful in taking statins, especially with newer guidelines advising us that LDL cholesterol should be 100 mg/dL or lower. For people at high risk for heart disease, 70 mg/dL is the suggested level.3 But the bad news for our brain is that very often to reach these more aggressive goals, higher dosages of statins must be used.

Since statin drugs do have some anti-inflammatory actions, the trend in medicine has been to get more and more people on statins, but this could have dire consequences when it comes to long-term cognitive health. One group I am particularly concerned about is people with diabetes.

A person with diabetes is in the high-risk category for heart disease, therefore s(he) will be targeted for more aggressive cholesterol lowering. This group is already at high risk for cognitive decline due to blood sugar elevation. (I explained this connection in more detail in the February 10, 2009 issue of Total Health Breakthroughs.) To add further insult to a diabetic's cognitive function from statins could be very risky.

A study out of UCLA recently found that many people are having heart attacks even though their cholesterol is at or below the 100 mg/dL target. There is no doubt in my mind that this study will be used as fodder to encourage increased use of statins. This will be despite the fact that 21% of the people in the study were using statins, and still had heart attacks.4

The bottom line is this: In addition to their CoQ10 lowering effects, we can add this newest discovery to our growing list of concerns about statin drugs. Kudos to Dr. Shin for this much-needed research and thanks to Ross Pelton, my friend and the co-author of my drug-induced nutrient depletion books for the shout out on this very important discovery.

References

1. Iowa State University press release, Feb. 23 2008; http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2009/feb/shin.shtml .

2. Singh-Manoux et al. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.
2008;28:1556; http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/8/1556?maxtoshow=
&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=HDL+memory&searchid=

3. http://docnews.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/2/1 .

4. http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Health/2009/20091012-MeetingCholesterol .

[Ed. Note: James LaValle is the founding Director of the LaValle Metabolic Institute, one of the largest integrative medicine practices in the country. Dr. LaValle is the author of The Metabolic Code Diet: Unleashing the Power of Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss and Vitality and the Executive Editor of THB's The Healing Prescription. ....]"

X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

To me this study and this article do three things or make three points that I find valuable.

1. Statin drugs may reduce the number of people who get heart attacks; but they do not prevent them in everyone that takes statins. (Other studies find the percentage reduction in heart attacks is smaller than most people and most doctors realize.)

2. Taking statin drugs, particularly in high doses, is problematic to harmful to the brain in people with low HDL.

3. If a person must take statin drugs it’s vital they boost their HDL. And, it may not be at ALL advisable for people with low HDL to take statin drugs.

Since raising HDL while at the same time lowering triglycerides sharply directly lowers the small particle LDL that actually causes heart disease, this research is unusually important because it helps show that doing those two things is much more important for preventing heart attacks than taking statin drugs.

And, for those few people that must take statin drugs, since raising HDL looks to be necessary to protect the brains of those people, it’s quite clear I think that all prevention of heart disease should always start with raising HDL while at the same time lowering triglycerides sharply.

Not only does doing those two things directly prevent heart disease, the raising HDL part may make taking statin drugs safe to do if they are necessary to use. (Very high CRP inflammation levels and extremely high LDL levels of well over 160 even after using diet and sterols would be two such indications.)