On Jul 15, 12:51 am, bum
yahoo.com> wrote:> On Jul 14, 8:40 am, NotImportant
gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> 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
>
> Looks like the big Phamar lobbyists have been winning th ewar. Latest
> is recomendation to drug obese children in the USA instead of
> encouraging them to exercise like the good old days.
Indeed their power and grip on government and private institutions -
from the media to the doctors themselves - is so pervasive that they
have succeeded in pushing their dangerous cocktail on to unsuspecting
public.
_Consider the latest Reuter report :_
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/07/17/statin-use-has-jumped...
Use of the cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins rose by 156
percent between 2000 and 2005, rising from 15.8 million people to 29.7
million people. Spending on the drugs jumped from $7.7 billion to
$19.7 billion annually over the same period.
The total number of outpatient prescriptions for statins rose from
about 90 million in 2000 to nearly 174 million in 2005. Each
individual spent $484 a year on average on statins in 2000; this rose
to $661 by 2005.
Statins include atorvastatin, sold by Pfizer under the brand name
Lipitor; pravastatin or Pravachol, sold by Bristol Myers Squibb;
fluvastatin, sold by Novartis under the brand name Lescol, and several
others.
Sources:
* Reuters June 25, 2008
Do read the commentary that follows.
Statin Use Has Jumped 150 Percent
