More bad news about statins....

Today's Post:  Wednesday, 9-12-2012

1.  The recent bad news first.  On August 29 this year Reuters Health sent out a health article about research done at the Phoenix VA Health Care System.  Their Dr. Aramesh Saremi spoke about the research to the Reuters Health interviewer. 

In this study, type 2 diabetics with frequent statin use had greater progression of coronary artery calcification than people who took less statins or none.

Dr Saremi said this: "Our study shows for the first time that statins actually appear to promote calcification in patients with longstanding type 2 diabetes, despite optimal lipid levels and regardless of prior heart and vascular disease,"

The article also added that earlier studies of nondiabetic people taking statins found no slowing in the calcification of plaque in coronary arteries.

One of the comments about this article said this might mean that the calcification would stabilize the plaque and make the sudden clots from plaque breaking off that cause heart attacks.

Given the huge number of people generally and the number of people with type 2 diabetes who now take statins, it would be nice it this was so.

The data so far do NOT support this hopeful idea.  Despite lowering LDL cholesterol and preventing a small number of heart attacks—from less than 1 to a bit over 3 heart attacks in 100 people taking statins, so far there is ZERO reduction in the death rate for people taking statins.

(People who do lifestyle upgrades that prevent heart disease and its causes and take niacin DO have a reduction in death rates and virtually none of the side effects of statins.)

This calcification side effect of statins and others apparently cancel out any good done with their small prevention rate for heart attacks.

There are 3 grave problems with calcification of plaque.  A CAT scan showing a lot of calcification is very highly predictive of future heart attacks and related problems.  So that data suggests this side effect directly cancels out any benefit of statins when type 2 diabetics take them. 

Second, part of the problem with heart attacks is that there is a sudden clot.  But the harm is done when it gets stuck and blocks blood flow. 

Calcification of plaque both narrows the opening the clot needs to pass through to avoid this and makes the blood vessel wall far less resilient which means the clot is less able to push its way through.

Lastly, added calcification of the blood vessels helps cause high blood pressure which helps cause heart disease.  Worse, the drugs for high blood pressure are often not enough to lower this kind of blood pressure and themselves have side effects lowering the quality of life for the people who take them or even cause other diseases.

2.  Another recent study found that the harm done to people who exercise vigorously enough to help prevent heart disease and type 2 diabetes or turn them down is far greater when they take the stronger statins or larger doses of statins.

This is nuts!  That means that, with statins, people need to chose between less LDL lowering from taking statins and the more effective use of exercise to prevent both type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  The exercise also slows aging, protects your brain, and does lower death rates!

3.  The truly horrible thing is that lowering high LDL IS protective to your heart. So if you can do it safely and without excessive side effects, it IS a good idea.

That happens in two ways. 

a) Small particle LDL is literally so small it sticks into the chinks in the molecular wall of your blood vessels and begins plaque build up.  Think pouring fine sand into an engine.  Some of this may happen directly and some apparently happens because the minor damage and inflammation from this causes your body to add more patching to cover over the damage.

The most effective and protective ways to lower this kind of LDL, however are NOT statin drugs.  The two categories that both lower it and are quite heart protective are to STOP doing things that cause more small particle LDL and start doing the things that lower small particle LDL.

Eating hydrogenated oils at all increases your level of small particle LDL.  The safe amount of this stuff to eat is basically zero NOT just eating somewhat less.  Research has found ingesting hydrogenated oils increases your level of small particle LDL.  Worse, when you eat hydrogenated oils it takes your body more than a month to clear half of it from your system.  And that means that if you eat a little most days of every week, after a few weeks your small particle LDL is boosted every single day.  So stop eating things like shortening and margarine that are made out of hydrogenated oils. Always read labels and stop eating anything with either more listed grams of trans fats than zero AND stop eating anything with ANY hydrogenated oils listed as an ingredient.  (Due to lobbying, foods can have up to 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving and SAY they have zero.  But if the serving sizes are smaller than what people actually eat, if they don’t also delete foods with hydrogenated oils on the ingredient list, they can actually eat several grams of trans fats even though the label lists “zero!”

Since hydrogenated oils are cheap and increase shelf life, hundreds of foods still have them.  So you have to work at eating things like raw vegetables that have no oils and always reading labels and slashing the kinds of foods in which often have hydrogenated oils such as cookies, chips, most other store bought baked goods, and French fries, and any packaged foods.

(Doing this does have the extra benefit of helping you be less fat.)

Exposure to tobacco smoke is directly proven to cause plaque build up.  And it lowers your HDL cholesterol that helps prevent plaque build up.  So it looks likely that tobacco smoke both increases  small particle LDL and oxidizes it making the excess patching more likely.

Doing regular moderate and vigorous exercise most days of every week not only increases HDL and lowers triglycerides it’s been directly tested to lower small particle LDL!

So doing that kind of exercises effectively lowers small particle LDL.

Taking a few hundred mg a day of niacin tests as likely lowering small particle LDL.  I’ve not seen research that directly tests this.  But the research that does exist virtually proves that niacin does this.

Researchers at Harvard found that a very accurate and inexpensive way to test for small particle LDL is the ratio of HDL to triglycerides in an inexpensive and standard lipid panel test.

If the amount of HDL is far higher than the triglycerides, the small particle LDL is low.  However, in most people today the level of triglycerides is many times as high as the level of their HDL.  These people need far more than just lowering of all their LDL although it would help some.

Taking niacin without too much flushing is doable and I’ll not cover that here.  But taking it does increase HDL and lower triglycerides and shows the expected lowering of LDL too.  Taking it also lowers the death rate for people who take it from all causes.

New information on what to STOP doing to lower small particle LDL:  Eating high fructose corn syrup, foods made with refined grains, and eating excessive amounts of real sugar and drinking soft drinks lowers HDL and dramatically boosts triglyceride levels.

Stopping these things also is an enormous help with fat loss and preventing type 2 diabetes of course,  but those two readings effects virtually proves it also causes a sharp increase in small particle LDL.

Do all those things to do and not do and taking statins becomes unnecessary.  Avoid doing them all makes taking statins a totally ineffective effort.

Think tossing a glass of water onto a forest fire!

b)  But that’s not all the reason why lowering high LDL readings is desirable.  Normally the large particle LDL is safe because it rolls like a tumbleweed along your blood vessel walls. 

But what if you added metal spike to each particle of it?

High blood sugar was recently found to do just that!

Eating high fructose corn syrup, foods made with refined grains, and eating excessive amounts of real sugar and drinking soft drinks AND not doing either vigorous or moderate exercise at all causes insulin resistance and spikes of quite high blood sugar and then excessively high levels of blood sugar all the time.

The recent research has found that even lower levels of such high blood sugar has this effect because the excess sugar gets stuck to each particle of LDL and harms the inner surface of your blood vessels and capillaries much like adding metal spikes or tiny knives to each particle of LDL – including the bigger particles that would be safe otherwise.

That’s apparently how type 2 diabetes cause extra heart attacks, foot amputation, ED, blindness, several kinds of dementia and more.

Because this makes ALL your LDL harmful, people with high blood sugar would be benefitted by lowering all their LDL.

But note that reversing the two major causes of the high blood sugar is the priority choice.  Ten times the effort should be spent on reversing the cause of the condition!

(Research shows that people taking statins become MORE likely to have high blood sugar besides not being very effective against heart disease.  So using statins to lower LDL is a dramatically poor choice for such people.)

That said, are there 3 effective and safe ways to lower all LDL without using statins.

People who eat foods high in soluble fiber find their total LDL goes down.  Beans, apples, applesauce, nuts for those not allergic, and moderate amounts of rolled oats or steel cut oats each helps do this.  And most nonstarchy vegetables contain some soluble fiber as well.

(People who eat a lot of such foods also find they are less fat without being hungrier.

And this is one excellent answer to what to eat instead of the foods high in excess sugar and hydrogenated oils.)

Second most of these same foods are high in sterols which also lower LDL cholesterol.

Third and even better, you not only can take sterols directly as a supplement, doing so has been shown effective in lowering LDL cholesterol.  (I take Natrol “Cholesterol Balance” which is their beta sitosterol sterol supplement. It’s remarkably inexpensive as supplements go besides.)

Meanwhile most doctors still seem to know none of this.  They have heard that statins lower LDL and lower heart attack risk somewhat.  Since so far, that’s all they know!

So they prescribe statins despite all of the above suggesting that’s the LAST thing to do because of the side effects, ineffectiveness, and NOT using the actions that are actually preventive.

One doctor in his article I read on MedScape even is so oversold on statins that he only gives up on giving statins if his patients can’t stand ANY of the FIVE kinds of statins he prescribes and has them try!

Could this dreadful situation be worse?

It is indeed much worse in fact!

The Berkeley Heart Lab did research that was once available on their website showing that for most people taking statins offered little if any heart attack protection.

They did find there is a minority of people who have a certain heredity and genetic type for whom  statins are actually protective enough to consider as a last resort medication.

Cardiologist Dr Arthur Agatson said in an article I read that the test for that genetic pattern only costs $150.

I’ve virtually never heard of a doctor knowing to order that test BEFORE prescribing statins.

Yet this current situation borders on malpractice and adds millions of wasted dollars to our too high health care costs each and every year.

That means if your doctor finds you have LDL cholesterol of 130 or more or if you have high blood sugar an LDL reading of over 100 and says you should take action to lower it. THAT is completely accurate.

If they prescribe a statin without getting this genetic test first and educating you on all the subjects in this post, it’s not only safe to ignore that advice.  It’s likely unsafe to take it!

The facts now known essentially prove that advice incorrect and unsound!