> The Misguided War on Cholesterolhttp://www.spacedoc.net/misguided_war_cholesterol.html
>
> I was recently sent this as a glaring example of 40 years of anti-
> cholesterol brainwashing.
> An 85 year old woman was prescribed a high dose statin, had liver
> problems, and they 1.) Say it was just latent hepatitis, and 2.)
> Suggest rechallenge with Statins! *
>
> It really saddens me to read reports of this kind. It violates every
> bit of common sense I ever acquired in my 23 years of family practice
> and runs antagonistic to everything I have learned in the past seven
> years from my own research and experience with statin side effects.
>
> My two episodes of statin associated transient global amnesia in the
> year 2000 set my present course of researching the side effects of
> this class of drugs. Their potential for harm exceeds even my wildest
> expectations and to think how little of the truth has reached today's
> doctors.
>
> I understand the brainwashing of the past 40 years because I was part
> of it, riding the anti-cholesterol bandwagon with all my peers,
> singing the same song to my patients about the dangers of eggs, whole
> milk and butter. Then I read Uffe Ravnskov's, The Cholesterol Myths,
> and Kilmer McCully's The Homocysteine Revolution and was finally freed
> of my oppressive mind-warp.
>
> If we have learned anything these past few years it is that
> cholesterol appears irrelevant to atherosclerosis and increased
> cardiovascular risk. Only in the well-known familial
> hypercholesterolemia of genetic etiology do blood lipids add to the
> underlying problem. For the remaining 98%% of those with the usual
> elevated cholesterol seen everyday, inflammation appears to be the
> cause suggesting treatment should be directed at this cause.
>
> I have learned that statin drugs benefit cardiovascular disease risk
> and atherosclerosis by their powerful anti-inflammatory effect. Sure
> they reduce LDL cholesterol and for years that was confusing. Statins
> have a strong dual role and only their ability to reduce inflammation
> is relevant to the benefit they produce. So why were these doctors
> trying to reduce this 85 year old patient's cholesterol?
>
> The next thing to emerge from the most recent decade of longitudinal
> studies is that older women, and especially 85 year old women, receive
> no benefit whatsoever from statin treatment unless heart disease
> already is present. So here we have a medical team trying to lower
> irrelevant cholesterol in a patient for whom there is no justification
> in the first place?
>
> Then once having induced liver inflammation, perhaps the most common
> side effect of Statins, especially in older people, this medical team
> found that because she had antibodies for Hepatitis C, that in itself
> was sufficient cause for liver inflammation to reassure everyone and
> justified their putting her back on the same statin, triggering yet
> another attack of liver inflammation.
>
> Did I get this right? Is there something here I did not understand?
> Sadly, I shake my head for I understand too well how little about
> statin side effect are reported back to the doctors. Unless FDA
> corrects this oversight, it is likely that years will go by before
> doctors are fully informed. Meanwhile problems of this nature and much
> worse will continue.
> *Acta Neurol Taiwan. 2007 Sep;16(3):163-7.
>
> Duane Graveline MD MPH
> Former USAF Flight Surgeon
> Former NASA Astronaut
> Retired Family Doctor