Why FAR FEWER people should take statin drugs....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-11-2013

I.  A recent study headline says:  “Cardiovascular Benefit Of Statins Outweighs Risks, Big Study Reassures”

This is horribly irresponsible and totally inaccurate!!

OMG! 

The DATA say otherwise!

And more detailed and broad information on heart attack prevention and statin side effects say it’s even worse than the data suggests it might be!

As serious and harmful as this mismatch of conclusion to reality is in its effects, to some degree it’s understandable at least: 

Heart attacks and strokes now kill about half the people who die each year.  And many of these heart attacks happen to people still young enough to have expected to live productively another 20 years.

Though the effect is tiny, statins do reduce heart attack risk. 

Most doctors do not yet know statins are actually very bad drugs or that their protective effect is tiny at best or to whom statins should really be prescribed and how.  They want their patients to be healthy and since they think statin drugs protective and safe and know nothing else to do, they keep writing thousands of statin prescriptions.

But why is this a horribly bad and flawed practice?

Here’s what I’ve read of the data:  

For every 1000 people who take statins about 18 people will avoid having a heart attack. 

But look at the other end of this:  (98.2% of the people who take the statin drugs, pay the money, and suffer the side effects to pay for this tiny effect!)

About those side effects:

The DATA show this risk for so many is ONLY justified if there is NO OTHER WAY to cut heart attack risk.  They show the side effects totally outweigh this tiny amount of protection.

 The same study that was titled: 

“Cardiovascular Benefit Of Statins Outweighs Risks, Big Study Reassures”

Had this statement: 

“The current researchers did though find a 9% risk of diabetes in statin users.”

Oops!  That alone is FIVE times as many people as the 1.8% protected.  How is that consistent with the headline?!

Then there is the 3 % of the people taking statins who will get cataracts who would not have otherwise.

But there are four far worse problems here!:

1.  Doing vigorous or high intensity but brief exercise most days of every week is FAR more protective from heart attacks and deaths than taking statin drugs. 

It also slows aging and tends to prevent or turn off type 2 diabetes.  It helps people avoid obesity or to lose fat they keep off.  For lower high blood pressure, it’s more protective than the drugs for lowering high blood pressure and adding the drugs if people do such exercise adds ZERO benefit.  It helps prevent or even reverse osteoporosis.  It preserves balance and mobility and ability to be independent for older people.  And, it tends to prevent both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Here’s the truth: The more and better a person does such exercise, IF they take statin drugs, the statin drugs will tend to cause irreversible muscle damage particularly if they take the more potent statins or take higher doses.

THAT alone should make statin drugs a little used drug with a black box warning in my view.

2.  Mental decline is deadly serious in its negative effects on our economy.  People who have degraded mental ability cannot be fully effective at work and are not.  People who can no longer work because of mental decline not only do no productive work, they cost healthy people money and time that drains the economy.  And, people who die of mental decline when they could have been alive and productive also do no productive work.

How does that impact taking statins?  Taking statins prevents one of the most effective ways to prevent mental decline, the vigorous and regular exercise.  AND in many people it CAUSES nerve damage and memory loss directly.

3.  The CoQ10 depletion caused by taking statin drugs tends to make the people taking them feel older and more fatigued than they should be.  This too reduces work productivity.  It seriously harms the quality of life of the people taking the drugs.  And, it tends to help cause and worsen heart failure.

4.  But what about that 1.8 % of the people who are protected?  What if even that benefit is missing for most of the people who take statins?

This IS the case!  Worse, for a $150 genetics test, you can find out if you are in the majority for whom this is true according to an article by cardiologist, Arthur Agatson, MD.

A minority of people DO get better heart attack protection from statins.  But for most people the protection rate is closer to 1 percent or less!

What does that mean after reading the side effect data and taking it into account? 

To me it means that it is ignorant or totally irresponsible to prescribe statin drugs ever -- without giving this test FIRST.

Do most doctors know this yet?  Unfortunately most know nothing of this now.

Bottom line is that the practice of wholesale and mindless prescribing of statin drugs is very undesirable and should be halted not fostered with falsely titled studies!

II. What about the new information that statins reduce high chronic inflammation that causes other diseases and may be in fact how statins prevent the few heart attacks they do prevent?

It’s totally the same story as heart attack and heart disease prevention.

Have people STOP doing the things that cause it!  Have them take or eat the dramatically safer foods and supplements that reduce inflammation and you get FIVE times the reduction and prevention that you can get by taking statin drugs.

(Here’s one post I did on that:

http://iehealth.blogspot.com/2009/10/two-more-ways-to-reduce-inflammation.html

Two more ways to reduce inflammation, Thursday, 10-8-2009.

III. And here’s a short list of the things that have OTHER health benefits instead of side effects to do that produce heart disease and heart attack prevention that is dramatically more effective than taking statin drugs:

Stop eating ANY trans fats or hydrogenated oils.  They are a direct cause of increased small particle LDL that in turn directly causes inflammation and heart disease. Worse, your body only can process a fraction of any you eat in a day.  So if you eat some every day, even a small amount, it builds up to very harmful levels and stays there.  Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter!

Stop eating ANY high fructose corn syrup, most regular sugar, and refined grains and foods made from them.  Eating that stuff slams up your triglycerides to high or very high.  That means they ALSO are a direct cause of increased small particle LDL that in turn directly causes inflammation and heart disease. 

Nor does it help ingesting these things fattens and causes type 2 diabetes too!  The blood vessel and capillary damage from high blood sugar dramatically increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes!

Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter!

What if there was something almost as bad as these first two things to avoid added together?

Unfortunately there is!

Every exposure to tobacco smoke whether from smoking or second hand smoke adds a bit of plaque as it gradually but inexorably causes heart disease!

Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter.

Even worse, if you can imagine that, is this.  Exposure to tobacco smoke also triggers heart attacks in people who would have escaped them otherwise!

In my view, advice to stop these 3 heart attack starters totally AND to do the protective and vigorous exercises should be what all doctors prescribe instead of statin drugs.

What about people with existing very, very bad heart disease or who just had a heart attack they barely survived?

It’s too late to do much prevention I’ll grant you.  For those people, they should be given the genetics test.

Those it shows statins would help should get statins.  That would be an indicated and highest and best use.

They should also take 100 mg twice a day of the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 as this will reduce many of the statin side effects.

Those that show little benefit from statins on the genetic test would be better off taking niacin and sterol supplements and following the anti-inflammatory guidelines and taking or eating things like ginger and turmeric (curcumin) that are natural, effective, and mostly safe ways to lower inflammation.

Would that set of practices cut statin prescriptions by over 99%.  It would indeed!

How about increasing statin prescriptions instead as some advocate?

OMG! 

Given the facts here, that would be harmful, unnecessary, and totally irresponsible to do!