6 Things You MUST Know About Statin Drugs
Recently we posted this article on statin drugs, cholesterol, lipid panels and heart disease. There has been so much misinformation in the last four decades that we wanted to arm you with more information on the subject.
Don’t take a chance with your health!
Statin drugs are a $26 billion per year business. Go ahead, read that number again. As if that number wasn’t high enough, there have been plans afoot for years to expand their use. Fortunately, the attempt to make chewable statin drugs for children was criminalized but the fact that they tried should show you how far afield their thinking is.
At Pathway To Wellness we believe that it is up to every individual to take control of their health decisions, first by educating yourself. Educated is empowered, and in this day and age, there is no excuse to not be empowered. We have access to information like nobody in history ever has. The accumulated knowledge of the world can be found on a machine we keep in our purse or pocket, yet so often we take somebody’s word on health issues (which could have catastrophic effects) simply because they have a few letters after their name.
Have you ever gone to your personal care provider with a concern that wasn’t obvious to them?
“Hm, it sounds like…”
What are they doing? They’re guessing.
Now ask yourself this: do you want to start taking an expensive and potentially dangerous medication based on their hunch?
To be fair, doctor’s don’t guess blindly. They have their education and their experience to inform their guesswork, and some of them can do it with a fair degree of accuracy. But it’s still a guess based on what they were taught: Column A has a symptom; Line B has the patients age. The point where they meet is the potential disease, or sickness.
Making an educated guess does not set anybody up for success. Our track record speaks for itself, and it is no accident that Pathway To Wellness motto is, “We don’t guess. We Test.”
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STATIN DRUGS?
It’s important that you know some of the risks of statin drugs. Some of you reading this may be taking statin drugs already. Maybe you’re wondering if statin drugs are right for you. Some of you may have been told by your doctor that you need statin drugs.
Do the research. Educate yourself. I’m going to suggest that you don’t even take my word for it. Check my sources and make the decision that’s right for you.
Remember, the flat Earth theory did not come from an abundance of research. It came from blindly listening to people who didn’t know what they were talking about in the first place.
Let’s look at a few facts about statins that the pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know.
1. Statins deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). [i]
CoQ 10 is essential for the creation of ATP molecules, which are in turn essential for cellular energy production. Organs like your heart depend on CoQ10 to function properly. When the CoQ10 levels go down you are more likely to become fatigued and sore. Ironically, low levels will lead to heart failure- the very thing most people take statins to avoid.
2. Statins are classified as a “Pregnancy Category X Medication.” [ii]
That means it is acknowledged by the Food and Drug Administration to cause serious birth defects and should never be used by a woman who is pregnant or planning to become pregnant.
You tell me- is something that causes serious birth defects to a baby going to have zero effect on an adult? Of course, the grown up immune system is stronger, but we’re still putting foreign chemicals into the body!
3. Statins interfere with many necessary biological functions. [iii]
By reducing your body’s cholesterol statins reduce your body’s ability to create vitamin D. Your body needs cholesterol to create vitamin D after you’ve been exposed to sunlight. Keep this in mind- we’ll be getting back to vitamin D in a moment.
Statins also interfere with the central pathways for the steroid management in your body.
What pathways are those you ask?
All your sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone), the dolichols (which are tasked with keeping your cells healthy), cortisone and all sterols, which includes cholesterol and vitamin D.
That’s a lot of interference.
4. Statins can contribute to causing Diabetes as well as other diseases. [iv]
Remember how I said that statins reduce your body’s ability to create vitamin D? Well, vitamin D is well-documented to reduce insulin resistance. Statins are a bad idea even if you do not already have diabetes. Your body needs it, desperately.
Insulin resistance will even lead to heart disease, which is what you’re taking the statins for in the first place. Proper insulin levels will also help to prevent Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer.
Tests have documented that side effects of statins include cognitive problems and memory loss.
5. Almost 900 tests have documented the dangerous side effects of statin drugs. [v] [vi]
The documentation of adverse side effects is there, some of which are worse than heart disease- others of which ARE heart disease. Muscle problems and neural issues are the common side effects of statins, but you can take a look at the studies and decide if the “cure” is worth the risks.
Why don’t these tests get the attention they should? Because other tests are making a whole lot more noise.
Let’s take a look at The Jupiter Study, a look at statin drugs that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008. The published info said that statins were safe and effective.
Stop the presses! Statin drugs were safe and here was the study that proved it.
Then it turned out that the study was funded by AstraZeneca, the makers of Crestor. Incredibly, nineof the 14 authors had ties to AstraZeneca! [vii]
No bias there, I guess.
5.5. They’re lying to you.
You probably won’t find this hard to believe, but sometimes numbers can be fudged to say something they don’t really mean. In the case of statin effectiveness, the high success rate is due to statistical sleight of hand.[viii] The statin supporters will use relative risk reduction to make the benefits seem huge- like 30-50% of the population is walking on sunshine. At least until somebody drops a truth-bomb like this:
“In the Jupiter trial, the public and healthcare workers were informed of a 54 percent reduction in heart attacks, when the actual effect in reduction of coronary events was less than 1 percentage point,” said Ravnskov and Diamond, who is also a Career Research Scientist with the Medical Research Service at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Florida. “In the ASCOT-LLA study, which was terminated early because it was considered to have such outstanding results, there were heart attacks and deaths in 3% of the placebo (no treatment) group as compared to 1.9% in the Lipitor group. The improvement in outcome with Lipitor treatment was only 1.1 percentage point, but when this study was presented to the public, the advertisements used the inflated (relative risk) statistic, which transformed the 1.1% effect into a 36% reduction in heart attack risk.[ix]
1.1% is the absolute risk reduction, a more accurate marker of the effectiveness of statins, in this case Lipitor. Over a three-year period, 100 people would take Lipitor, but only one would have 1 less heart attack. That means 99 people are taking it for no reason whatsoever. With all the dangerous side effects attached to these drugs, why would you want to take that kind of chance?
The cure is more deadly than the problem!
6. Statin drugs will lower your cholesterol, but…
Statin drugs work to lower your cholesterol, but that’s not always a good thing. Our body needs cholesterol! It needs it in every cell. Low cholesterol is far more dangerous than high cholesterol! There is no evidence that they improve morbidity or mortality. HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, which can be found in statin drugs like Lipitor, actually inhibits normal liver function.
Since when did our livers start making mistakes?
YOUR BODY DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES
In this article we talked about how cholesterol is an important part of our body’s normal physiology, and not the bio-terrorist, scapegoat that it’s made out to be. There are many bodily functions that rely on cholesterol, and statin drugs can lower them to a dangerous level.
Your body is behaving the way it is for a reason, and it’s never wrong. It knows what it needs to do, what it is designed to do. It will not make mistakes. If you have a fever your body is responding to a specific need; when your body creates an abundance of insulin, it is because you need an abundance of insulin; or if it creates cancerous cells it is because it is responding to a specific stimulus.
Statins prevent your body from responding properly. They disrupt the pathways of your body’s natural response mechanisms and, ironically, cause the very thing they are meant prevent.
If you’ve been thinking about using, or you’re doing your research on statins- or even if your doctor has told you that you need to start taking statin drugs, we hope you will come talk to one of Pathway To Wellness doctors, and have get the Advanced Cardiovascular Test done. It will give you the best, most accurate information about what’s going on in your heart and how you can protect yourself without taking dangerous drugs.
RESOURCES
[i] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014299913003026
[ii] https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/19/vitamin-d3-sulfate-exposure-recipe-for-disaster-part-1.aspx
[iii] See footnote ii
[iv] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21693744
[v] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2849981/
[vi] https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/21/900-studies-show-statin-drugs-are-dangerous.aspx
[vii] https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Statins_Flawed_Studies_False_Advertising.php
[viii] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25672965
[ix] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150220110850.htmthis article