Comments on: The Truth About Statins

BusinessWeek And CBS News Examine Whether Statins Are Over-Prescribed

[andor3]

so many myths that we have been fed by pharmaceutical spin machines. Some truths:

TRUTH: cholesterol is GOOD. It is an essential chemical for normal body functioning, including building brain tissue and making hormones. Cholesterol has been made out like some kind of poison, like if we could get rid of it we would be better off. In fact, because cholesterol is so precious, the body recycles it--that is why there are so many varieties of ways cholesterol is found: the body sends out scavenger molecules to gather and reuse cholesterol. Maybe too much cholesterol is bad (and there is controversy about that), but it may be just that the U.S. diet has more animal products than the body is equipped to handle safely. hmmm... imagine which powerful lobbies would want to prevent that info from getting out: beef, milk, cheese, eggs. It is interesting that those products used to be advertised as healthy, but they stopped that theme.

TRUTH: people vary in size, shape, body chemistry and a million other ways. So it is absurd that there should be one "right" number for cholesterol. If that were adopted, doctors would coerce tall people into surgery to have the tops of their heads removed so they will fit the "average" height number.

[dogband]

What about the 46 year old excercising, biking, hiking male within his proper weight range, that has all uncles/aunts on both sides of family with cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and open heart surgery, but it missed his own mom/dad.

46 year old male has significant MI and survives.

On a complete vegetarian diet with exercise, doubtful that total cholesterol would be below 240, maybe much higher.

Statins yes or no? I''m on them, guess I will go with doctors recommendation, but who the hell knows?

Flip a coin.

[nebraskadan]

I don''t know where these "studies" were done but they sure didn''t include my results! My brother had a heart problem before age 50 so they put me on Zocor..no significant change till I had a M.I. and a 5-way CABG (bypass) then my Dr. switched me to Lipitor. Over the past 5 years at varying dosages, still no good. About 6 months ago my primary hooked me up with a pharmicist to take over cholesterol management. Still on Lipitor at 20 mg and added Gemfibrozil at 600 mg twice a day the triglycerides came down enough to measure 725 little change in LDL but it did drop my "good" cholesterol a few points. So "I" started taking fish oil and flaxseed oil on my own and a month later I was below our 6 month
"target" level of 150.
Blew us both away after 7 yrs of taking statins and 6 wks of the oils finally showed me a "light at the ...", the pharmacist too. So he told me to double the in take of the oils with the meds and we should find out next week on my 6 week follow up what that has done. Those of us that need help to lower cholesterol, I personally think they need to do some more tests, only this time use people with "risk factors" to see if they actually work before they get every doctor in the country to prescribe them. I think it just makes more work for the blood labs!
Thanks for your time.
Dan

[andor3]

When I had problems on statins, I did some research. Statins are overprescribed, and of questionable efficacy and safety. They also are leading money makers for pharmaceutical companies. Those two facts are strongly connected. But they are ideal for the physician/pharmaceutical cartel because they can be prescribed to treat nothing--the new guidelines suggest that a huge chunk of the population should be buying and popping a statin everyday, not to treat anything, but just because it might do some good. They will preternd it is preventative, but there is little evidence statins prevent anything.

On the other hand, they do have nasty side effects: muscle weakness and damage, mental confusion and amnesia, and a host of other things. There have been studies of the side effects, but they have a hard time because drug companies do not want to fund them and will seek to prevent them--like the study in this article, the results could devastate their profits.

In the end, if you ask doctors or drug makers, they will often praise statins. If you ask people who take them, you often get a different story.

[ender18-2009]

As a MD, I agree that possibly statins are overprescribed. However if a patient has high cholesterol and is not willing to exercise or change their diet, they probably should be taking a statin. It would be negligent if they were not. Some people are also predisposed to have high cholesterol and therefore a higher risk of heart disease. They also should be on a statin.

People should take responsibility for their lives rather than blame drug companies, the FDA and health professionals trying to help them, for their own unwillingless to get on a bike and eat less.

We should not be looking for a magic pill to cure everything, but rather looking to ourselves to be healthy. It starts by not eating that bag of chips and drinking a 40 oz soda.

Mike Moore (Sicko) can complain about healthcare, but the bottomline is he can''t even care for himself and be healthy. He is morbidly obese likely with both diabetes and obestiy. He is part of the problem with healthcare. If you want to lower healthcare premiums and avoid medications in general (which do have side effects), try exercising and staying healthy.

[fstop100]

The FDA is controlled by the drug companies...

[greeneyes222]

My husband takes statins following bypass surgery. So he''s one of the people who should. Still, he''s convinced he''s playing a game of Russian roulette, whereby he trades lower cholesterol for nasty side effects. (Before anyone gives advice, he''s already thin, on a restricted diet, and physically active.)

That being said, however, it''s appalling that drugs like these are approved by the FDA with so little regard to the side effects and effects of long term use. The word of the FDA is absolutely no comfort to patients, since they have long since become nothing but a marketing arm for pharmaceutical companies.

The perversion of government agencies by big business has been coming on for a long time, we''re just all starting to be hit in the face by how far they''ve fallen. FDA, EPA, FCC, doesn''t matter, they''ve all quit doing the jobs they were created for.

[jacobmarley3]

I recommend everyone contemplating clinical statin administration read Dr. Graveline''s book regarding side-effects. You should find it being sold at most bookstores, including Amazon.com etc. Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a known side-effect of statin drugs. He also has recently been diagnosed with Lou Gerhig''s disease.

As you''ll notice, Dr. Graveline himself has fairly impressive credentials.

Lipitor: Thief of Memory
by Dr. Duane Graveline
ISBN-10: 1424301629
ISBN-13: 978-1424301621
"When Dr. Duane Graveline, former astronaut, aerospace medical research scientist, NASA flight surgeon, and family doctor is given Lipitor to lower his cholesterol, he temporarily loses his short-term memory. Urged a year later to resume the drug at half dose, he lost both short-term and retrograde memory and was finally diagnosed in a hospital ER as having transient global amnesia (TGA). This is the "scary, appealingly written" account of his search for answers that his medical community didn''t have -- the how and why of his traumatic experience, and what needs to be done to prevent the devastating side effects to body and mind from the escalating use of the statin drugs."

[mbburch06]

The flu vaccine has about a one in a million chance of death or paralysis. I suppose we should yank that off the market too.

ANY MEDICAL TREATMENT CAN HAVE ADVERSE EFFECTS. A story like "I know this one guy who started taking Zocor and died the next week" is not scientific evidence. Try reading some of the thousands of controlled, scientific studies on these medications and then form an opinion.

[drscareme]

ALS like symptoms. That is just one wonderful benefit lipitor can add to your lifestyle. I think I''d rather take my chances with a heart attack.
Again I say, read: www.spacedoc.com

These drugs are NOT safe. Even if I believed that they are prevening anything, they are NOT safe...so should not be used.

Maybe people shoul dsign waivers saying they won''t sue when they end up with muscle issues, cant remember what they had for lunch, or are convined to a wheelchair (but have low cholesterol). I guess from what I have seen first-hand, you''d have to hold a gun to my head and I still would not swallow this garbage.
I''ll bet my former pastor who is now convined to a wheelchair, can hardly speak and can only slightly move his arms wishes he read about the dangers (real, serious ones, not RARE!) before going on Lipitor.
I hope this *** is banned soon. I hope this investigation opens up the whole statin can of worms and it all gets pulled.
People will be better off. Look at the studies...so few heart attacks were supposedly prevented compared to the placebo. NOT worth the risks in my warped mind.