Why the new statin guidelines are HARMFUL....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 11-15-2016

1.  The new guidelines suggest many ways in which people over 40 should be taking statins for heart protection.

Whether you call this insane, atrocious, or badly informed, it is extremely harmful and simply an incorrect and unneeded thing to do.

There are four reasons this so bad as to reveal incompetence in the people who created it.

a)  Age 40 is much too late for medical and public health policy to inform people to take action to prevent heart disease. 

If people take the actions to prevent heart disease and to NOT do things that cause it from age 6 years old, it doesn’t happen or only happens to very elderly people who have widespread system failure from advanced aging.

So for people 6 to 18, there should be public health programs for parents and children on why these steps are so important to do and interactive lessons on how to do them well and make them a normal part of life.

For people who are 18 and over, every doctor and nurse in the country should either know how to teach this or have access to an effective program that does so. 

And, they should insist, prescribe, and even nag if necessary to get people started.  If the teaching is done well, interactive, and customized to each person, having them start is the essential thing.

It is true that heart attacks and strokes and heart failure ruin people’s lives, make our workforce far less productive, and are extremely expensive to treat driving up our health care costs.

So it IS well worth doing. 

Doing it early enough and well enough when it is relatively easy to do and most effective is valuable. 

Waiting until people are already damaged at age 40 is a very bad idea!

b)  The repeated statements that these guidelines cut heart disease and heart attacks by evidence based studies are worthless.

The reductions found ARE there. But they are tiny and only somewhat protective.

Only about 3 people out of 100 who take statins escape a heart attack according to the data I’ve seen

Only about ONE in a hundred of the majority of people with less protective heredity who take statins escape a heart attack.

Of the 30% or so of the people who have the heredity to be more protected by statins closer to 9 out of 100 escape a heart attack.

Clearly, at best the majority of people get little protection from statins; and the genetic test to find which group people are in costs about $150.

Do these guidelines begin by suggesting that test? 

No, the people who created it either are ignorant of it or want to have statins given whether they make sense or not.

Lastly, while nonfatal heart attacks are prevented, taking statins has not been shown to reduce the death rate from heart attacks.

This tested effectiveness overall is much weaker than would justify these guidelines.

That leads to two questions:

3.  Are there methods to prevent heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular disease that are far more protective than this record is for statins?

We have data on those too.  There certainly are!  And THOSE are the methods these people should be suggesting.

These guidelines are rather like saying to bet on a team that wins sometimes instead of a team that almost always wins by a lopsided score.

We’ll cover that in detail in section 3 below.

4.  Are statins safe to take?  Alas -- NO they are not. 

To be fair, some of them are less harmful; and lower doses, while less effective, are safer.

And, there are individual differences too.  Some people feel less harm while others feel an energy drain right away.

This research is newer and completely off the radar of the people who created these guidelines.

It’s quite real.

And, it is so strong that it suggests that statins be sold and prescribed with a black box warning saying that these side effects exist and contraindicate using statins in many situations where THESE Guidelines suggest their use.

We’ll cover that in detail in section 4 below.

3.  Are there methods to prevent heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular disease that are far more protective than this record is for statins?

We have data on those too.  There certainly are! 

And THOSE are the methods these people should be suggesting.

These guidelines are rather like saying to bet on a team that wins sometimes instead of a team that almost always wins by a lopsided score.

The actions that slash the rate of heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure and deaths from them and all causes are known.

a)  Discontinue eating and drinking the foods and drinks and food and drink components that directly cause heart attacks.

It takes regular effort in the face of the current heavy advertising for these and that it has become all too common for people to do the reverse.

It couldn’t be simpler.  If you want to avoid heart attacks and deaths and disability from them, completely stop eating and drinking heart attack starters!

Also stay 100% away from tobacco smoke and other tobacco or routine nicotine use.  While those do cause as many as half of all cancer, they are much more effective heart attack starters!

AND no one who uses these things escapes this harm.

This combined step is many times more effective than the most favorable tests on statins are.

Even better, this set of actions reduces the money spent on heart attack starters AND also helps prevent fatty liver, many cancers, osteoarthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease.

And, it does reduce the death rate too!

b)  We now know the foods that prevent heart attacks and all these other things.

So, 95 % to 100 % of the time -- eat those instead!

It does take regular effort to do this.  But it’s surprisingly easy once you start and learn how to customize it to you and do it well.

The data on eating over 6 servings a day of organic, nonstarchy vegetables on heart attack protection is so good, it’s astounding.  Some UK data showed it to be 24% AND a reduction in the death rate from any cause.

We also know that a version of the Mediterranean diet that includes this amount of vegetables AND extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and other monosaturated fat foods is very heart protective.

It is even more effective when it leaves out the heart attack starters of grain oils and wheat and other grains.

A well done Mediterranean diet relies on pasture fed chicken, wild caught fish, and seafood from unpolluted waters which just about doubles that effect.

Red wine in moderations tests as adding to that effect.

Wouldn’t it be nice to double that entire effect?

Recent studies show that regular vigorous exercise even if in brief sessions done to the level that produces fitness does so.

In fact, fit people who eat 4 or 5 servings a day of vegetables AND do this to become fit have tested as protected as well as people who eat TEN servings of vegetables.

The doctor who may know this best and expresses it most clearly is UK Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra:

“Following a Mediterranean diet after having an MI is more effective than statins --

when you look at the components of the Mediterranean diet with consistent evidence of benefit, they're green vegetables, cauliflower, tomatoes-you name it.

Non-starchy vegetables should be at the base of the food pyramid. The reason I say "non-starchy" is because potatoes are not good for people with type 2 diabetes

We have evolving research telling us that excess sugar is associated strongly with cardiovascular mortality.

A paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014[10] showed that people who consumed more than 25% of their calories from sugar had an almost threefold increase in cardiovascular mortality compared with people who got less than 10% of their calories form sugar.”

This is one doctor who knows this!  Since he knows it in great detail and is using his media background to publicize it, this is good news indeed.

His movie details this in much more depth.

4.  Are statins safe to take?  Alas -- NO they are not. 

To be fair, some of them are less harmful; and lower doses, while less effective, are safer.

And, there are individual differences too.  Some people feel less harm while others feel an energy drain right away.

This research is newer and completely off the radar of the people who created these guidelines.

It’s quite real.

And, it is so strong that it suggests that statins be sold and prescribed with a black box warning saying that these side effects exist and contraindicate using statins in many situations where THESE Guidelines suggest their use.

a) The most effective exercises to protect your health are

cardio style exercises done vigorously for short periods before a rest or easier pace;

and effective strength training, particularly for the large muscles in your lower back, hips, and legs done with increasing amounts of weight.

But if you build up to doing them well enough they produce good health and heart protection, and then add taking statins, --the statins will cause and have caused muscle damage instead including your heart. 

And this damage can be and has been permanent and even kills people sometimes.

For that alone statins should have a black box warning as being contraindicated and dangerous for people who exercise and rarely used.

That means these guidelines if followed will harm people.  LOTS of people in fact.  So I think they should be dumped entirely and never followed.

b)  The same damage statins cause by damaging the mitochondria, the energy producing centers of all our cells, also we now know one of the several causes of type 2 diabetes.

More people, in fact develop type 2 diabetes from taking statins than the heart attacks they prevent!

And, it’s even worse than that!  A recent study found that the most harmful side effects of uncontrolled diabetes such as blindness, and foot amputation, and more are caused by the damage to the mitochondria that are harmed by the excess sugars.

Because statins damage the mitochondria too that means that they are TOTALLY contraindicated for all type 2 diabetics.

Yet, many doctors still prescribe statins to type 2 diabetics. This research suggests this should be totally stopped.

c)  Then too statins also harm the nerves and brain cells with this mitochondrial damage

This can be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of mental decline.

That means these guidelines if followed will harm people.  LOTS of people in fact.  So I think they should be dumped entirely and never followed.

d)  Lastly, a recent study found that instead of reducing it, statins significantly increase the percentage of people who take them who develop Parkinson’s disease.

It seems the irreversible part of Parkinson’s disease comes from harm to the mitochondria also.

That means these guidelines if followed will harm people.  LOTS of people in fact.  So I think they should be dumped entirely and never followed.

That’s what the evidence shows.

So, I think these guidelines are a high level public health disaster!