Much better for your heart and health than statins and aspirin….

Today's Post: Monday, 2-1-2010

In January, just last month, I saved a New Year’s resolution article with local people and their resolutions.

Kathy Ordonez, the CEO of Celera, said she wanted to cause more doctors to use the advanced cardiovascular risk factor testing her company sells so that more people who are at risk could benefit from taking statins and aspirin. (What she really wants is for people to use her tests to stay well.)

Last Friday, I finally had a chance to see Celera’s website.

In my opinion, her company’s tests, though expensive, can do wonders for some very high risk people if they are well followed up as indicated on her company’s website.

But taking statins and aspirin is NOT a good idea in my view.

1. I knew of the advanced cardiovascular risk factor testing of Berkeley HeartLab that they apparently act as a sales agent for.

THAT part of the website showed that a subclass of people at risk did do well taking statin drugs. Virtually all the others did better taking niacin!

So, if you are a heart attack survivor and take their tests, about $700 last time I checked, AND you test as being in that subtype, it MIGHT make sense to take a statin.

But even then, doing the other things that lower your small particle LDL and inflammation will likely do more for you at less risk.

(We end this post with a review of many of these. Our regular readers have seen them before in part because each of them has virtually no side effects and other, abundant health benefits.)

Dr Al Sears sent an email last week with these side effects of statins.:
Muscle pain; Liver damage; Chronic fatigue; Cardiomyopathy, deterioration of your heart’s functions; & Congestive heart failure.

These effects are largely cause by the fact that, as Dr Sears put it, “Statins aggressively deplete your heart of life-giving CoQ10.”

He also quotes another doctor who has experience treating heart patients with CQ10 that his experience over the past several years shows that increased statin use has caused a dramatic increase in congestive heart failure in older patients.

Since my own father is close to death today primarily from congestive heart failure and has been on statins for at least the last 10 years, this is an issue that I’ve had personal experience with. And, it does NOT endear me at all to having people take statin drugs unless they try other methods first and are unsuccessful with them, see the list at the end of this post.

In addition, anyone who does continue on a statin drug should take at least 50 mg a twice a day of ubiquinol, the more potent substance that CoQ10 turns into in your body, to combat that bad side effect of statins that is a major cause of these other problems.

Statin drugs also often result in lowered mental performance. This can be from the lack of cellular energy or feeling of energy from the CoQ10 depletion we just discussed or from heart failure. But sometimes it results from quite serious harm to a person’s ability to access or retrieve their stored memory up and including forgetting they are married and their entire professional education and experience in some cases!

These side effects also may be caused in part by statins also depleting vitamin D blood levels. This is new and I just saw the headline in passing. So I don’t know if it will be verified as yet. But, if true, given what we now know about the value of vitamin D & how many people today are deficient or below optimum in vitamin D, that would be frightening health news indeed.

So, it MIGHT be safe for you to take statins if you supplement with ubiquinol and likely 5,000 iu of vitamin D3.

But, I’d not want to be the health insurer of people who take statins who do NOT do these things!

And, for most people, you can lower inflammation and small particle LDL better with safer means as we’ll summarize shortly.

2. Aspirin is safer than statins for most people. But it causes serious intestinal bleeding for many people if it’s taken daily as many people do now. This also causes bad breath that cannot be overcome with mouthwash!

You should have aspirin on hand at home and at work. Chewing it up and swallowing a couple of aspirin immediately if you have heart attack, just about doubles your chances of having a heart attack.

But taking it every day to prevent heart attacks risks side effects far more than any heart attack prevention it gains you.

And, similar to statins, there are safer methods to avoid excess clotting that have other health benefits instead of side effects. Some of the methods to protect your health generally also increase your HDL and tend to prevent excessive blood clotting. Do those and you’ll only need aspirin IF you have a heart attack – NOT every day for 20 years!

3. But how do you prevent cardiovascular disease and heart attacks without using statin drugs and aspirin?

You can do a much better job for one thing. Taking statins versus doing nothing does seem to prevent one or two percent of the heart attacks and deaths in people at risk.

But you can prevent, in my view, 50 to 95% of them with other means.

The bad news is that it takes several things combined. So, at least until you get used to using them, you DO have to work at it.

But if you’d prefer to get better protection and avoid the side effects of taking statins, some of them heart damaging, here is a partial list.

A. A doctor from the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention told me an extremely valuable piece of information a couple of years ago.

You can get an accurate picture of the level of the truly deadly dangerous small particle LDL that is one of the most effective causes of heart disease along with tobacco smoke by looking at the ratio of your HDL to your triglycerides.

That’s really good news since getting a standard lipid panel for total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, & triglycerides is inexpensive; & many, if not most, of my readers can get one. The Berkeley HeartLab tests cost far more and are far less accessible. They DO reveal more since they are so complete.

But just the ratio of HDL & triglycerides tells most people the most important thing.
You want your HDL to be high -- above 50 is important to achieve; and above 80 is better. And you want your triglycerides to be low – below 150 is important; & below 100 is better. (It’s ideal if your HDL is greater than your triglycerides.)

So, how do you do that?

You do things that lower your small particle LDL directly and avoid those that increase it!

Here are three.:

Regular, vigorous exercise and moderate exercise to a lesser degree directly lower your small particle LDL. And, ingesting hydrogenated vegetable oils directly increase it. It’s heart attack starter; & ingesting it is simply NOT good for your health.

So, the most important two things are to do the exercise & never ingest hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Taking at least 300 mg a day of niacin also both increases your HDL and lowers your triglycerides, so it almost certainly also lowers your small particle LDL. (You do have to get liver function tests just as you do for taking statin drugs if you take more than 900 mg a day of niacin, please note. I take 600 to stay below that level; and both my HDL and triglyceride readings are very good.)

Next, do things that increase your HDL.

Eat nuts and avocados and drink red wine in moderation.

Get abundant choline from eating some whole eggs or wheat germ and taking choline supplements or lecithin, which contains choline.

Do things that lower your overall LDL such as eliminating or cutting back heavily on eating fatty, grain fed meat. Taking sterol supplements also works very well. Eating foods such as lentils, beans, apples, and minimally processed oatmeal that are high in soluble fiber also lowers LDL.

Do things that lower your triglycerides, inflammation, and avoid excess blood clotting.

Stop eating or drinking foods and drinks that have high fructose corn syrup or are made out of refined grains; cut way back on sugar; eat berries often; and if possible, take resveratrol, grape seed extract; and bilberry extract.

Eat nuts, avocados, and use extra virgin olive oil instead of butter, cream, or high omega 3 oils such as corn & soy.

Eat wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils and take purified fish oil supplements.
And, eat onions and raw, minced garlic frequently each week.

Drink red wine moderately, but regularly.

Use curry and ginger often as spices. And take a daily turmeric or curcumin supplement.

Yes, that’s a lot. But doing the things on this list also helps prevent cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes and slows aging!

Statin drugs and aspirin do NOT. And statins and aspirin do have side effects not found in these other methods.

(To be fair, you DO have to be careful of doing too much red wine and niacin though.)


PS: My HDL reading has tested as more than double my triglyceride reading. So, I do these things; and they have certainly worked for me.