Last July the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation that obese children as young as 8 years should be put on statins! Notably absent from the recommendation was the suggestion that controlling the obesity of these kids in the first place should receive at least equal consideration. More recently, Astra Zeneca, makers of Crestor, issued a press release laying claim to a "study" that found Crestor to be capable of saving the life of just about anyone. The release neglected to say that it was Astra Zeneca that paid for the study.
So that should effectively round out the cradle to grave philosphy of Momma Big Pharma. When you go on statins, you go on them for life and all that remains is for our betters in the drug business to come up with more product like that on which to hang our dependence.
All this amounts to a gigantic cash cow for the industry. In 2006, the statin drugs collectively generated $27.8 billion in sales to 13 million Americans and an additional 12 million around the world.
DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO USE THEM?
Now what are people getting for their money? Dr James Wright, professor at the University of British Columbia, headed a team analyzing the evidence from years of trials with statins. Unlike so many of his peers, Dr Wright accepted no compensation of any kind from the drug companies. Here is what he found
- Statin drugs could in fact be life saving in men who had already suffered a heart attack, with the exception of men over 65, who received no benefit from statins at all.
- Women, regardless of age, received no benefit from taking statins.
- Ten to fifteen percent of statin users suffer from side effects including muscle pain, cognitive impairment, and sexual dysfunction.
- There was no overall reduction in total deaths or illness requiring hospitalization despite big reductions in cholesterol levels.
After concluding his study, Dr Wright was forced to change his mind about prescribing statins. "Most people" he said, "are taking something with no chance of benefit and some risk of harm."
CRITICAL INFORMATION WITHHELD
Studies conducted by the pharmaceuticals themselves and vigorously withheld from public view, involving people without existing heart disease,
could show no reduction in deaths or serious health events among those regularly taking statins. These studies showed clearly that
Cholesterol does not cause heart disease, and cholesterol lowering is not the reason for taking statins.
One indisputable fact has come out of all this research. Statin drugs are good drugs that like any others, need to be used correctly and not simply foisted off on all of us for the sake of making a buck. When statin drugs are given to patients who actually have serious heart disease, then the statins, through a complex enzyme reduction process, dial back serious and damaging arterial inflammation.
In men!
NON-STOP MARKETING
The marketing of these predominantly useless and sometimes dangerous drugs goes on relentlessly. Drug manufacturers make sure that researchers and doctors who extol the virtues of statins and other drugs are well compensated. Patients are encouraged to expect more from drugs than what they actually can deliver. They are frightened into believing that dire consequences await their failure to take these high priced drugs.
The drug business is a business. Companies are expected to boost sales and returns to shareholders and the pressure on us as consumers is never ending.
CHOLESTEROL FACTS OF LIFE
We all
need cholesterol! Without it we die. No one has ever died of high cholesterol. If we ever do have low cholesterol, our liver will strain to make more of it; up to 1-1/2 grams a day. It's that important to life.
This is not to say that high cholesterol is good for you. Whenever cholesterol is a factor in heart disease, those who study this subject with complete impartiality agree that it is the
imbalance between HDL and LDL cholesterol that is the real culprit. Actually, there is no such thing as "good" cholesterol or "bad" cholesterol.
We need both! Only we should have higher levels of HDLs over
LDLs. Dr Rodney Hayward, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan carries the argument a step further by saying unequivocally that the evidence available today supports ignoring LDLs altogether. Well, those are fighting words for Big Pharma. Nevertheless, statin drugs lower your cholesterol
en masse and by doing so have been found to cause multiple deaths, like
Baycol, which had to be removed from the market.
So the trick is to bring your cholesterol levels into balance, lowering your LDLs while raising your HDLs. Bottom line here is,
the total cholesterol number is meaningless.
BALANCING HDL & LDL LEVELS
So how to bring your cholesterol into balance? There are countless products promoted on the web, all claiming miraculous benefits from taking them. Most of them are either totally useless or of marginal benefit at best. Effective products to accomplish this are around. It's just a matter of of looking objectively, disregarding the general hype and evaluating them carefully.
