Cholesterol Meds - Risks v Benefits

[Midnightmom]

Here is a collection of articles, websites, and videos that I have collected about cholesterol medications.

 

Cholesterol Code: Reverse Engineering the Mystery

 

How statin drugs really lower cholesterol & kill you one cell at a time.  

• This is a review of a book written by James & Hannah Yoseph. This book should be read by every person BEFORE they either prescribe or take statins. I [the reviewer] would be interested to know if any person could prescribe or take statins AFTER reading it…
• The remarkable Yoseph book has brought us the most precise understanding of how statins lower cholesterol. It has shown that the dangers were known all along – by those pushing through the launch and approval of statins.
• The scandal has been brilliant, meticulously planned and success guaranteed. Billions and billions of dollars have been generated from first demonising cholesterol and secondly discovering a poison (Definition: “Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by microfungi that are capable of causing disease and death in humans and other animals”) that could stop the body making cholesterol. Or, as we now know more accurately – a poison that could drive cells to remove cholesterol from the blood stream, as those cells fight to avoid death.

 

Video: "How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol (and Kill You One Cell at a Time)"

The Yosephs have written the most stunning exposé. In simple language they reveal the science, the corruption and the enormous conspiracy it took to bring statins to market. As fast paced as a Mickey Spillane novel they report the research, the fraud and the facts like a detective in hot pursuit of a Nazi war criminal. Once picked up it cannot be put down until the reading is done. It is riveting. They have accomplished the impossible: they have made both complex science and medical history fascinating to read. What could not be done in an exposé they accomplished with almost unbelievable ease. It will change your paradigms about medicine forever.

Statins:

• Advicor (niacin extended-release/lovastatin)
• Altoprev (lovastatin extended release)
• Caduet (amlodipine and atorvastatin)
• Crestor (rosuvastatin)
• Juvisyne (sitagliptin/simvastatin)
• Lescol (fluvastatin)
• Lescol XL (fluvastatin extended-release)
• Lipitor (atorvastatin)
• Livalo (pitavastatin)
• Mevacor (lovastatin)
• Pravachol (pravastatin)
• Simcor (niacin extended-release/simvastatin)
• Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastatin)
• Zocor (simvastatin)

 

 

 

 

Video: "How Statin Drugs REALLY Lower Cholesterol (And Kill You One Cell at a Time)" 

Hosted By Kimberley Jaeger an interview with Dr Hannah Yoseph & James Yoseph about their important book and research on the dangers of Statin drugs.

Summary (by a viewer): Statin drugs don't actually lower total cholesterol; they only lower total cholesterol in the blood. But they work by shoving the cholesterol that is in the blood into the cells! All cells require cholesterol; in fact, cholesterol is such an important antioxidant that cells can manufacture cholesterol themselves. But that's an energy intensive process, so the cells prefer to just use their receptors to grab cholesterol from the blood, which got it from the liver where it was produced. The statin drugs force the cells to create more receptors so they basically gorge on cholesterol, soaking it out of the blood. But then the cells have too much and they rupture, or explode! Part of the debris is a protein which gets filtered by the kidneys, plugging it up and potentially causing kidney failure.

 

Preventing heart disease requires more than medicine: 

The real question that anyone taking a statin, or thinking of taking one, should ask is this: Will taking a cholesterol-lowering medication protect me from dying prematurely? The answer is a qualified yes. Many studies have shown that statins reduce the risk of dying from heart disease. But that’s not saying as much you think. The estimated benefits have been exaggerated and, worse, the side effects may have been understated.

 

The Truth about Statin Drugs:   

Since their introduction in the 1980s, statin drugs have been almost universally hailed as “wonder drugs” by medical authorities around the world. But are statins really as safe and effective as mainstream medical authorities claim? The unequivocal answer is NO. Press releases and media reports about statin drugs often dramatically overstate their effectiveness, while understating their risk.

Statin side-effects that the pharmaceutical industry appears not to want you to know about:

However, I was reading an article yesterday which suggests another reason why there is a lack of acknowledgement about the side-effects of statins: drug companies don’t want you to know about them. . . . In other words, a drug company has been able to stall the inclusion of key safety warnings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bolding mine:

Quote

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat And Heart Disease

Are butter, cheese and steak really bad for you? The dubious science behind the anti-fat crusade

By  Nina Teicholz

 

 

"Saturated fat does not cause heart disease"—or so concluded a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. How could this be? The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries. For many diet-conscious Americans, it is simply second nature to opt for chicken over sirloin, canola oil over butter.

The new study's conclusion shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with modern nutritional science, however. The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.

 

Our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s, to a man named Ancel Benjamin Keys, a scientist at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Keys was formidably persuasive and, through sheer force of will, rose to the top of the nutrition world—even gracing the cover of Time magazine—for relentlessly championing the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks.

This idea fell on receptive ears because, at the time, Americans faced a fast-growing epidemic. Heart disease, a rarity only three decades earlier, had quickly become the nation's No. 1 killer. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955. Researchers were desperate for answers.

 

As the director of the largest nutrition study to date, Dr. Keys was in an excellent position to promote his idea. The "Seven Countries" study that he conducted on nearly 13,000 men in the U.S., Japan and Europe ostensibly demonstrated that heart disease wasn't the inevitable result of aging but could be linked to poor nutrition.

 

Critics have pointed out that Dr. Keys violated several basic scientific norms in his study. For one, he didn't choose countries randomly but instead selected only those likely to prove his beliefs, including Yugoslavia, Finland and Italy. Excluded were France, land of the famously healthy omelet eater, as well as other countries where people consumed a lot of fat yet didn't suffer from high rates of heart disease, such as Switzerland, Sweden and West Germany. The study's star subjects—upon whom much of our current understanding of the Mediterranean diet is based—were peasants from Crete, islanders who tilled their fields well into old age and who appeared to eat very little meat or cheese.

 

As it turns out, Dr. Keys visited Crete during an unrepresentative period of extreme hardship after World War II. Furthermore, he made the mistake of measuring the islanders' diet partly during Lent, when they were forgoing meat and cheese. Dr. Keys therefore undercounted their consumption of saturated fat. Also, due to problems with the surveys, he ended up relying on data from just a few dozen men—far from the representative sample of 655 that he had initially selected. These flaws weren't revealed until much later, in a 2002 paper by scientists investigating the work on Crete—but by then, the misimpression left by his erroneous data had become international dogma.

 

In 1961, Dr. Keys sealed saturated fats’ fate by landing a position on the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association, whose dietary guidelines are considered the gold standard. Although the committee had originally been skeptical of his hypothesis, it issued, in that year, the country's first-ever guidelines targeting saturated fats. The U.S. Department of Agriculture followed in 1980.

 

Other studies ensued. A half-dozen large, important trials pitted a diet high in vegetable oil—usually corn or soybean, but not olive oil—against one with more animal fats. But these trials, mainly from the 1970s, also had serious methodological problems. Some didn't control for smoking, for instance, or allowed men to wander in and out of the research group over the course of the experiment. The results were unreliable at best.

But there was no turning back: Too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent trying to prove Dr. Keys' hypothesis. A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense. As Harvard nutrition professor Mark Hegsted said in 1977, after successfully persuading the U.S. Senate to recommend Dr. Keys' diet for the entire nation, the question wasn't whether Americans should change their diets, but why not? Important benefits could be expected, he argued. And the risks? "None can be identified," he said.

 

In fact, even back then, other scientists were warning about the diet's potential unintended consequences. Today, we are dealing with the reality that these have come to pass.

 

One consequence is that in cutting back on fats, we are now eating a lot more carbohydrates—at least 25% more since the early 1970s. Consumption of saturated fat, meanwhile, has dropped by 11%, according to the best available government data. Translation: Instead of meat, eggs and cheese, we're eating more pasta, grains, fruit and starchy vegetables such as potatoes. Even seemingly healthy low-fat foods, such as yogurt, are stealth carb-delivery systems, since removing the fat often requires the addition of fillers to make up for lost texture—and these are usually carbohydrate-based.

 

The problem is that carbohydrates break down into glucose, which causes the body to release insulin—a hormone that is fantastically efficient at storing fat. Meanwhile, fructose, the main sugar in fruit, causes the liver to generate triglycerides and other lipids in the blood that are altogether bad news. Excessive carbohydrates lead not only to obesity but also, over time, to Type 2 diabetes and, very likely, heart disease.

 

The real surprise is that, according to the best science to date, people put themselves at higher risk for these conditions no matter what kind of carbohydrates they eat. Yes, even unrefined carbs. Too much whole-grain oatmeal for breakfast and whole-grain pasta for dinner, with fruit snacks in between, add up to a less healthy diet than one of eggs and bacon, followed by fish. The reality is that fat doesn't make you fat or diabetic. Scientific investigations going back to the 1950s suggest that actually, carbs do.

 

The second big unintended consequence of our shift away from animal fats is that we're now consuming more vegetable oils. Butter and lard had long been staples of the American pantry until Crisco, introduced in 1911, became the first vegetable-based fat to win wide acceptance in U.S. kitchens. Then came margarines made from vegetable oil and then just plain vegetable oil in bottles.

 

All of these got a boost from the American Heart Association—which Procter & Gamble, the maker of Crisco oil, coincidentally helped launch as a national organization. In 1948, P&G made the AHA the beneficiary of the popular "Walking Man" radio contest, which the company sponsored. The show raised $1.7 million for the group and transformed it (according to the AHA's official history) from a small, underfunded professional society into the powerhouse that it remains today.

 

After the AHA advised the public to eat less saturated fat and switch to vegetable oils for a "healthy heart" in 1961, Americans changed their diets. Now these oils represent 7% to 8% of all calories in our diet, up from nearly zero in 1900, the biggest increase in consumption of any type of food over the past century.

 

This shift seemed like a good idea at the time, but it brought many potential health problems in its wake. In those early clinical trials, people on diets high in vegetable oil were found to suffer higher rates not only of cancer but also of gallstones. And, strikingly, they were more likely to die from violent accidents and suicides. Alarmed by these findings, the National Institutes of Health convened researchers several times in the early 1980s to try to explain these "side effects," but they couldn't. (Experts now speculate that certain psychological problems might be related to changes in brain chemistry caused by diet, such as fatty-acid imbalances or the depletion of cholesterol.)

 

We've also known since the 1940s that when heated, vegetable oils create oxidation products that, in experiments on animals, lead to cirrhosis of the liver and early death. For these reasons, some midcentury chemists warned against the consumption of these oils, but their concerns were allayed by a chemical fix: Oils could be rendered more stable through a process called hydrogenation, which used a catalyst to turn them from oils into solids.

From the 1950s on, these hardened oils became the backbone of the entire food industry, used in cakes, cookies, chips, breads, frostings, fillings, and frozen and fried food. Unfortunately, hydrogenation also produced trans fats, which since the 1970s have been suspected of interfering with basic cellular functioning and were recently condemned by the Food and Drug Administration for their ability to raise our levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol.

 

Yet paradoxically, the drive to get rid of trans fats has led some restaurants and food manufacturers to return to using regular liquid oils—with the same long-standing oxidation problems. These dangers are especially acute in restaurant fryers, where the oils are heated to high temperatures over long periods.

 

The past decade of research on these oxidation products has produced a sizable body of evidence showing their dramatic inflammatory and oxidative effects, which implicates them in heart disease and other illnesses such as Alzheimer's. Other newly discovered potential toxins in vegetable oils, called monochloropropane diols and glycidol esters, are now causing concern among health authorities in Europe.

 

In short, the track record of vegetable oils is highly worrisome—and not remotely what Americans bargained for when they gave up butter and lard.

Cutting back on saturated fat has had especially harmful consequences for women, who, due to hormonal differences, contract heart disease later in life and in a way that is distinct from men. If anything, high total cholesterol levels in women over 50 were found early on to be associated with longer life. This counterintuitive result was first discovered by the famous Framingham study on heart-disease risk factors in 1971 and has since been confirmed by other research.

 

Since women under 50 rarely get heart disease, the implication is that women of all ages have been worrying about their cholesterol levels needlessly. Yet the Framingham study's findings on women were omitted from the study's conclusions. And less than a decade later, government health officials pushed their advice about fat and cholesterol on all Americans over age 2—based exclusively on data from middle-aged men.

 

Sticking to these guidelines has meant ignoring growing evidence that women on diets low in saturated fat actually increase their risk of having a heart attack. The "good" HDL cholesterol drops precipitously for women on this diet (it drops for men too, but less so). The sad irony is that women have been especially rigorous about ramping up on their fruits, vegetables and grains, but they now suffer from higher obesity rates than men, and their death rates from heart disease have reached parity.

 

Seeing the U.S. population grow sicker and fatter while adhering to official dietary guidelines has put nutrition authorities in an awkward position. Recently, the response of many researchers has been to blame "Big Food" for bombarding Americans with sugar-laden products. No doubt these are bad for us, but it is also fair to say that the food industry has simply been responding to the dietary guidelines issued by the AHA and USDA, which have encouraged high-carbohydrate diets and until quite recently said next to nothing about the need to limit sugar.

 

Indeed, up until 1999, the AHA was still advising Americans to reach for "soft drinks," and in 2001, the group was still recommending snacks of "gum-drops" and "hard candies made primarily with sugar" to avoid fatty foods.

 

Our half-century effort to cut back on the consumption of meat, eggs and whole-fat dairy has a tragic quality. More than a billion dollars have been spent trying to prove Ancel Keys' hypothesis, but evidence of its benefits has never been produced. It is time to put the saturated-fat hypothesis to bed and to move on to test other possible culprits for our nation's health woes.

---

Ms. Teicholz has been researching dietary fat and disease for nearly a decade. Her book, "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet," will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 13.

 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486

Updated May 6, 2014 10:25 a.m. ET

 

 

 

 

[Littlesister]

Great info.  And very helpful for making a decision on taken statins.  Now I am going to pull some bacon out of freezer for breakfast tomorrow. What can I say. I like bacon, eggs and yes real butter. As I do have 12 lbs. of butter in freezer.

[snapshotmiki]

That was a great article! 

I read this morning  on MSN  that "experts" are saying that  statins may lessen the  severity of covid. You know, instead of a vaccine  or booster.

 

 

Edited October 16, 2021 by snapshotmiki

[Littlesister]

Haven't heard that about statins. Interesting, but questionable.

[snapshotmiki]

It was on MSN  home page  on my computer. 

[Mt_Rider]

DH knew about statins but his cholesterol was so high, he was giving our doc a heart attack.    So he tried one and got terrible pain from it.  Tried a second one and got the same reaction.  Sooooooo....cholesterol problem still there....looming.  Then he tried a self-injection called Rapatha.  [not sure of spelling]   It worked well to get his numbers back to normal.  But it does give him the achy muscles for a day or two.  Only takes every other week so he puts up with it infrequently. 

 

MtRider  ....he figures he's old enough to take something even if long-term, it can have some affects.   

 

 

[Midnightmom]

 

Dr. Berry is also the author of a book called, "Lies My Doctor Told Me: Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health."

 

Is high cholesterol dangerous? Will high cholesterol cause a heart attack? These are great questions and we should follow with good quality research tells us about cholesterol and heart disease. Your doctor might think that high cholesterol is very dangerous, but what does the cholesterol research actually show?

 

 

[Snowmom]

This is very interesting.        I have been taking something for high Cholesterol for wow, let me see if I can think that far back      I think it was about 30 years give or take.  

 

The doctors don't tell you everything at all.  

 

I have had sinus infection for a long time and just trying to get over another one.      Well, my back started to hurt bad so like a good patient, I went to my chiropractor yesterday and guess what.     I am not wearing a brand new  white belt and will be wearing it for 4 to 6 week.      Yes, a fracture in my back.    I coughed to hard I guess.     But, it was because of what I too and have taken for the last several times I had sinus infection, or was it.      When I said I had taken 5 days of Prednisone, my doctor. looked at me and told me it will eat the bones.      Ok now,    I ask you, why would a doctor give me something that will damage my bones when they know I have Osteoporosis?      Man I can't figure these doctors out at all.     So next time they say something about Prednisone I will say NO.          I got Doxycycline to, but the Prednisone just is not going to happen again.  

Now, I think I will be asking more questions when I go to the doctors.      

[Jeepers]

Thanks for the info about Prednisone Snowmom. My DIL relies on it for her rheumatoid arthritis. I'll have her talk to her doctor about maybe some calcium or something. Wish there was something else she could take but nothing else seems to work for her. 

[Snowmom]

Jeepers, I hope things work out for your mom.     Sometimes there is just nothing else for some of us to take.  

 

I use to get Z-Pak's and then they don't do those any more.     Why, I have no idea.  

 

If I remember right, my MIL use to take a lot of Prednisone too for the same reason, rheumatoid arthritis.   

 

I do know next time I go in for a sinus infection I will be very careful and tell them I don't want to take that stuff again.      My bones are old and I have weak bones anyway and to give me something that weakens them more, no thinks.        Am I the oldest one on here???    

 

I hope things go well for you DIL.    

[Littlesister]

I do agree on the prednisone.  And if you are a diabetic, it will raise your sugar levels. I am getting ready to go back on the carb. blockers. I did that a long time ago and for some reason I stopped doing it. My chol. and my A1C was really good. So need to start back up on that again.

[Midnightmom]

On 10/22/2021 at 12:45 PM, Jeepers said:

Thanks for the info about Prednisone Snowmom. My DIL relies on it for her rheumatoid arthritis. I'll have her talk to her doctor about maybe some calcium or something. Wish there was something else she could take but nothing else seems to work for her. 

 

I'm pretty sure Hydroxychloroquine is used for arthritis.

Yep, I was right.

Maybe she can discuss this with her doc?

[kappydell]

I go to see my doc tomorrow, and I can hardly wait to see if my now daily dose of raw garlic for breakfast has lowered my cholesterol like the drugs have been unable to do.  Then I'll be asking my doc to cut the meds back and finally out.  

 

i can see cholesterol being used to demonize red meats.  My ancestors were all very long lived on diets with plenty of lard and fats eaten daily.  But they were very active all their lives.  I suspect it is inactivity, not fat, that kills.  But then again, I'm not one of those that follows the science (blindly) without some real life field tests.  

Edited October 27, 2021 by kappydell

[Midnightmom]

New video about statins.

 

 

 

 

[Homesteader]

Thanks MM.    DH went with the bp and cholesterol drugs years ago after a blood-clot got stuck in an artery that decreased flow to the heart and caused a heart cramp. At first they thought it was a heart attack. It turned out that the clot came from an arm surgery weeks before.  I always thought he lost so much of his memory because of those drugs, but I was laughed at.  He is the typical patient who is willing to add more meds so that he can keep his lifestyle intact. 

 

I have chosen not to take the two drugs prescribed in September. My bp stays low and cholesterol is normal. All the other docs are wondering who the hospital cardiologists wanted to put me on them.

[Littlesister]

My doctor is determined that I am going to take statins. I am not taken them. Mine was not that high and was within limits. I am using other ways to keep it down and it so far has worked for me. Garlic is one of them and cutting way down on carbs has helped also. 

[Homesteader]

17 hours ago, Littlesister said:

I am using other ways to keep it down and it so far has worked for me.

 

One of my friends at church mentioned niacin yesterday. She just started going to a homeopathic doctor in the big city. So is another nurse friend from church.  

[Littlesister]

Yes, niacin is a good one for lowering chol.  I had forgotten about that one. I used to take it but don't remember why I stopped taken it. Will have to start back on that one again.

[Mother]

Niacin used to be recommended by doctors for years to lower cholesterol and was very effective but one side effect is an unpleasant flushing and feeling hot.  Niacinamide , the altered form of niacin that doesn’t cause flushing, does not work for cholesterol.   When statins became available they moved to them but the side effect appear worse with them.  

[Midnightmom]

Most recent information about Statin Drugs.

 

Quote

Do statin drugs protect you from heart attack & stroke? Do statin drugs prolong life??
The real answers to these questions will surprise you! A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine removes all doubt on these questions. Now you can understand what statin drugs really do, and then teach your doctor the truth!

 

JAMA IM article: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2790055

Demasi Summary: https://maryannedemasi.com/publications/f/new-analysis-shows-statins-have-minimal-benefits

Doctors understanding of Relative Risk: https://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4830

[Justmelome]

Thanks for the updated information my doctor just prescribed cholesterol meds to me . I’m going to try the niacin first.  Along with ACV.