Anti-Cholesterol Drugs
I must say that I am alarmed at the aggressiveness with which anti-cholesterol drugs are being prescribed in our country. To me, this has all the makings of a health crisis so serious that it will make the Vioxx debacle look small in comparison. Here we have a known enzyme-disrupting liver poisoning class of drugs being pushed on our unwary population, while "targets" for safe cholesterol levels keep getting pushed lower and lower. This is a dangerous combination. It really seems that we have gone way past science, and now are simply in the realm of aggressive and unethical marketing practices.

I believe that the financial bias of pharmaceutical companies, combined with the desire of American physicians to "do something" useful (and preferably something pharmaceutical, because it's "easier" for them) for people at risk of heart disease have created a statin drug feeding frenzy. Eight out of nine of the experts recently recommending further lowering of cholesterol target levels were on drug company payrolls. Is this who you want recommending your medical treatments? I want my readers, and my patients, to step back from the hype a moment and carefully reconsider whether the evidence supports this insanity.

Cholesterol pumped straight IV has never been successful in creating arteriosclerotic arterial plaque in experimental animals.

Only oxidized cholesterol can do that. That's why eating fried eggs is a bad idea, while eating raw or poached eggs is a good idea. The former creates oxidized cholesterol which is then ingested, while the other supplies healthful protein and unoxidized cholesterol which is used in various ways throughout the body, including repair of cell membranes, synthesis of hormones, and healing of inflammtion.

Many patients with heart disease or acute heart attacks have perfectly normal cholesterol, even by today's draconian standards. Many other (generally ignored) biochemical factors (homocysteine, lipoprotein(a), fibrinogen, insulin resistance, DHEA, and inadequate antioxidant defenses) may account for the inflammation that initiates and then sustains the damage to the inside of blood vessel walls which will ultimately show up as plaque.

Focusing on getting the cholesterol number down by poisoning the liver's synthesis of this molecule is not the way to get the job done. What's more, these new low cholesterol readings in the lower one hundreds gives both doctors and patients a false sense of security that something specific has been done to reduce the patient's risk for a coronary event. In fact, the issues underlying the elevated cholesterol (like inflammation or insulin resistance) continue unnoticed and untreated, and the patient's high risk biochemistry is no better than before.

In the meanwhile drug related side effects can be substantial, especially disruption of CoQ10 and related muscle metabolism in the short term, and perhaps we'll be seeing another spike of congestive heart failure as long term follow up studies of these drugs come out. It is already known that these drugs make heart failure patients worse. Why? Could it be that it is because the heart is a muscle? I think so. I have seen patients who were unable to get out of a chair because of the detrimental metabolic consequences on their skeletal muscles of taking a statin drug. What could the drugs be doing for the heart muscle? Nothing good, I dare say.

Existing studies may point to a relatively weak correlation between heart attacks and cholesterol levels, yet proof that these drugs save lives by reducing cardiac mortality has been very hard to come by. And it is very clear that they do not save lives in women that are taking the statins. As any good scientist knows, a correlation is no proof of a causal relationship. Gray hair is highly correlated with other signs of aging, but does it cause aging? No. So it is with cholesterol.

I like to think of it as an innocent bystander at the scene of a crime. Is it worth while to check it out? Sure. But just because it was found in the area, dosen't mean it was the perpetrator. Considering life is not possible without the cholesterol molecule, can it really be as bad as "they" say? On the other hand, careful studies do reflect a causal relationship with coronary disease when insulin resistance is considered. This theory is based on the fact that inflammation is initiated inside blood vessel walls. Cholesterol may simply be a repair molecule being transported to the sites where it is needed. This inflammation theory of arteriosclerosis has become rather primary these days, so it's interesting to see that the pharmaceutical giants have recently started going back to the drawing board with research on these drugs. Now they are trying to tell us that these drugs may also work by reducing the inflammation process inside the arteries, so maybe that's their primary effect. Well, do you want to take a statin drug when chelation therapy, vitamin E, fish oils, or even a baby aspirin may reduce inflammation just as much, for a fraction of the cost? I don't think so.

So what's the rest of the story? Cholesterol is a friend, not an enemy. The whole coronary artery disease problem is way more complicated than dropping your cholesterol reading with statin drugs. Low cholesterol levels may give you a false sense of security, as mortality rates have never been shown to be reduced by these drugs, and that may be partly because the drugs predispose to other non cardiac causes of death (like cancer?), weaken heart muscle, and leave the underlying metabolic disorder (like insulin resistance, for example), untouched. Statin drugs are not the answer to the heart disease problem. Unless stopped soon, this ongoing human experiment with statin drugs may turn out to be the most mind boggling example of dangerous and unethical corporate manipulation this country has ever seen. I suggest getting yourself off the cholesterol bandwagon by seeing a competent natural medicine doctor. He or she will show you there are better ways of getting the job done.

 

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