Lipitor Horrors
I have been practicing natural medicine for 26 years now, yet I am still frequently amazed at the clinical stories I hear from patients who have gone through harrowing experiences with orthodox medicine.

Recently I saw a new patient, a woman almost 60 years old She told me she had some chest pain about 4 years ago and was found to have had a mild heart attack. An angiogram at the time revealed some blockages, and so an angioplasty with stents was performed at the same time. As she was released from the hospital, a huge priority was placed on putting her on Lipitor, even though her cholesterol was less than 200. Her physicians put her on the usual dose, but failed to perform the customary and necessary one month blood chemistry to check for liver dysfunction. For those of you who are not regular readers of my newsletters, or are new subscribers, Lipitor is a drug which lowers cholesterol essentially by poisoning certain liver enzyme systems. As such it can cause a chemically induced hepatitis as well as muscular weakness and hormone changes. She was also placed on blood thinners, low dose aspirin, a beta blocker to slow her heart function, and a blood pressure medication to lower her normal blood pressure still more.

My patient began to feel ill and started turning yellow. When she finally had her chemistries done after 3 months on the drug, she had a severe hepatitis with liver enzymes over 2000 (normal is less than 40), and elevated bilirubin which accounted for the jaundice. What happened next is rather “mind blowing”. The liver was reacting to the toxicity of the Lipitor, and they did discontinue that drug. But they placed her on high dose prednisone to suppress her immune system’s response to the chemical insult the Lipitor had caused, and unbelievably put her immediately an another cholesterol drug in the same class, Pravachol! As my readers know, there is no clinical evidence that cholesterol lowering drugs improve survival from cardiac events in women. None-the-less she is still maintained on a new liver damaging drug in the face of this huge liver problem from the first drug. Her liver enzymes did gradually drop due to the suppression of the body’s healing inflammation by the prednisone, but not completely, and she gained 40 pounds. Had she been removed from all statin drugs and given nutritional support for her liver, I am confident that her enzymes would have completely recovered on there own. Instead, because she was on another drug that was probably having the same liver-toxic effects as the first drug, she now needed to see another specialist. This doctor may have been severely limiting his practice, or perhaps he was doing a clinical study, but he does not seem to me to be the “healer” you’d expect a physician to be. He told the patient that she now needed to take a chemotherapy drug called Immuran to further suppress her immune system, and he also made it clear that if she wasn’t willing to take Immuran, she shouldn’t come back to see him. How about that for helping people in need? The Immuran is now affecting her blood sugar, and she is on her way to becoming diabetic. No doubt it is already caused insulin resistance, which means the treatment she is getting now is making the problem she had at the beginning (coronary artery blockages) progress even faster.

The patient complied, and her liver enzymes did come down to normal. But I asked her “At what cost?” The patient’s husband was able to convince her to consider a more natural approach, so she came in to see me. What went wrong here? First, she got sucked into the highly technical and highly dangerous cardiology care system. Granted her circumstances seemed dire what with a heart attack having just occurred, but that in itself is NOT a necessary indication for angioplasty or surgery.  She could easily have been managed medically or with natural medicine. The doctors acted on their non scientific “do something pharmaceutical” bias, and subjected this patient to a drug (Lipitor) which she didn’t need and which had no proven chance of helping her, short or long term.

They compounded their mistake by not taking the drug’s potential to harm the patient seriously enough, and thus allowed a very serious liver condition to develop that should have been caught early and cut short by discontinuing the drug. As so often happens, one drug side effect got handled by prescribing drugs (prednisone and immuran) that masked one problem but created two others (weight gain and elevated blood sugars) to take their place. And finally, they added multiple layers of other medications all of which with side effects and expense are either unnecessary or replaceable with safe effective natural alternatives. Had she seen me initially I would have advised her to see a medical non invasive cardiologist for medical management consultation, started her on IV chelation therapy, never started her on a cholesterol drug, and instructed her on eating habits, weight loss, and exercise. Think seriously about seeing a natural medicine doctor any time something significant comes up with your health. You’ll get a different perspective that will help you sort out your option, and it just may keep you out of getting complications and side effects.