Has your doctor used the “you have high cholesterol” line on you yet?
Did hearing these grave words make your hands shake and your face go pale?
Did you immediately call or text your spouse after you left the doctor’s office? Did you drive just a little too fast as you drove to the first pharmacy drive-thru to get your statin prescription filled?
It’s time to end the madness about high cholesterol, because you see, cholesterol isn’t going to kill you and contrary to conventional belief, it’s not going to make you drop dead of a heart attack if you don’t religiously take statin drugs for the rest of your life.
It’s time to start listening to those doctors who are telling us the truth: evaluating heart disease risk is far more complex than a snap evaluation of a single number like total cholesterol.
Furthermore, it’s time to carefully weigh the ample scientific evidence that cholesterol is actually beneficial, not detrimental, to our health! Consider the research of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, consistently ignored by the statin pushing crowd, who reported that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
Besides the fact that “total cholesterol” is a meaningless number in and of itself, taking statin drugs carries huge health risks such as muscle wasting, significant cognitive impairment and cancer. That’s right, the c-word. In every single study to date conducted on rodents, statins caused cancer. One human trial showed that breast cancer rates of women taking statins were 1500% higher than than of controls (source). In addition, a study showed that women who take statins for 10 or more years increase their risk of breast cancer by nearly 2.5 times (source).
Let’s examine a few other cholesterol myths so the next time you’re sitting in a doctor’s office and the person in the white coat is pushing statins on you, you are armed with evidence supporting your position to just say no.
Natural cholesterol has many benefits in the diet!
Cholesterol Myths #1: People with high cholesterol are more likely to have a heart attack.
It is indeed true that men who are young or middle aged have a slightly greater risk for heart attack if their total cholesterol level is over 300. However, for elderly women and men, high cholesterol is associated with a longer life. In addition, cholesterol levels just below 300 carry no greater risk than very low cholesterol levels. The suggestion by conventional medicine to take statins if cholesterol is over 180 or 200 is completely arbitrary and harmful over the long term.
Cholesterol Myths #2: Cholesterol and saturated fat in foods like butter, egg yolks and liver clog arteries.
This myth has no basis in fact as arterial plaques contain very little cholesterol or saturated fat. 75% of arterial plaque is made up of unsaturated fat, of which 50% is polyunsaturated. Only the remaining 25% is saturated. Moreover, the greater the concentration of polyunsaturated fat in the plaque, the more likely it is to rupture, a primary cause of heart attacks. Chris Kresser L. Ac sums it up well:
the notion that saturated fat “clogs arteries” and causes heart attacks is totally false. It is actually polyunsaturated fat — the so-called “heart-healthy fat — which has those effects.
Cholesterol Myths #3: Eating saturated fat and foods like butter cause cholesterol levels to rise and make people more susceptible to heart attacks.
If this is true, why then have heart attack rates risen as people have avoided saturated fats like butter, meat fats and egg yolks? There is no evidence that saturated fat and cholesterol rich foods contribute to heart disease and doctors that continue to claim this are just plain wrong with at least two major studies confirming this (source).
Cholesterol Myths #4: Cholesterol-lowering drugs save lives.
Statins do not result in any improvement in outcome in recent trials involving thousands of test subjects. Why risk the devastating side effects of statins like cancer and mental decline when they won’t help anyway? (source)
Cholesterol Myths #5: Countries that have a high consumption of animal fats and cholesterol have higher rates of heart disease.
The elephant in the room with this myth are countries like France where butter, cream, and pate are eaten with abandon with no corresponding increase in heart disease (source). According to Dr. John Briffa, top honors graduate of the University College London School of Medicine:
You’ll sometimes hear about the ‘French paradox’, which describes the phenomenon of low heart disease rates in France ‘despite’ a diet rich in saturated fat. Well, it seems that this ‘paradox’ is not limited to France, but is alive and well in several other countries too including the UK, Germany, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In other words, it’s not a paradox at all. It’s only a paradox if one believes saturated fat causes heart disease. The thing is, there’s really no good evidence that it does.
So relax! The next time you’re sitting in the doctor’s office reviewing the results of your latest blood test and the words “high cholesterol” and “statin drugs” are spoken in the same breath, just smile politely and say “no thanks”.
Feel confident in your decision to opt out of the statin madness.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources:
Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD
Ignore the Awkward: How the Cholesterol Myths are Kept Alive by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD
The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD
The French Paradox is Not a Paradox
How to Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease
Heart Surgeon Speaks Out on What Really Causes Heart Disease
I heard you can also safely treat high cholesterol with Niacin and Vitamin B.
I meant to also add that the cycle of treating symptoms and not the cause is real too. I forgot to mention that while taking one of the statins, I developed mitral valve prolapse. Again, I was told now I have yet another thing wrong with my heart and it needs to be monitored (more doctor bills, and at the age of 25 I had a heart specialist on my list of doctors). Each time I went to the dentist, I was required to take an antibiotic. I dealt with this every 6 months for many, many years.
After changing the one statin to another (I was still listening to my doctor about needing statins), I no longer had mitral valve prolapse…..the doctor couldn’t find it in the echo cardiogram after changing the brand of statin. He never linked it to the statin. Since being off statins, I haven’t ever had a problems with my health (other than the times I accidentally ingest gluten).
Thank you! Thank you! I want to share my statin story, as I now call it. At one time I was ashamed to share the problems I experienced because there are many problems many people don’t understand or believe would happen by taking these meds.
When I was diagnosed with “high cholesterol”, I was actually going in for an eye infection. The eye doctor saw something in my eye that was related to high cholesterol, so he had me go to my regular doctor. This was in the early 90s when the low fat trend was in high gear. Three tests later, with each coming back at 424 total cholesterol, I was told to eat a low fat diet, handed a script, and then told I would be on these for the rest of my life. And I believed them. I shunned butter, nuts, oils and headed to the breads and starch–today, ironically I am gluten intolerant.
I hate to admit, I was one of those people who blindly followed my docs orders without question about putting me on statins. In my defense, I was 19 at the time, and grew up being told you do as the doctor says. I spent the next 15 years on different statins with different side effects. The side effects changed based on the brand and the dose. If my doc didn’t like my numbers or was not satisfied with the numbers, she would change it. And 10 years into this regimen was when my ob/gyn suggested I take CoQ10 to support my statin usage, but didn’t explain why. I know now why!!!
Some of my side effects were: lethargy (I was in my 20s and felt like an 80 year old woman getting out of bed every morning), trouble swallowing (I am still afraid to eat when I am alone), joint pain, stomach problems and major bloating! (of course, I was told I might have IBS). the weird feeling of floating above my body, heart palpitations, female problems, and so on and so on. Each time I had a side effect, the doc would change the dose or the meds. I have been on them all. The worst side effect almost took my life.
I was at a point where the statin I was on was not “doing it’s job”. The doc added another one to my protocol. Within the month, I started having serious problems (but again it was said I was dealing with severe PMS). I would wake up near my “time of the month” and feel rage. I became afraid of the dark, and heard voices when I would lie in bed (the only way I could go to sleep was by saying “black, black, black….” until I would eventually fall asleep. I was afraid to use knives while cooking, had anxiety attacks, and literally felt I was going crazy. This would go on for about three days, and then end. So I contributed it to severe PMS, and tested my theory by documenting my symptoms when the next month came. The next month, I felt this again, only to an nth degree. One day I was doing laundry in the basement, looked up at the rafters, and thought to myself, ‘I wonder if I could hang a rope around that”. I dropped the shirt I was holding, ran upstairs, and called a family member. If I hadn’t had a strong self worth, my children would have been motherless, and my husband a widow.
I was immediately taken to my ob/gyn and put on anti depressants. I then pretty much became a zombie for the next month–as my husband describes. Just getting the kids to the bus stop took all the energy I could muster. While they were at school, I slept. But the saving grace was that I KNEW feeling this was not right, and not who I was as a person. I kept telling myself that I may not have control of my mind, but I had control of my body and my actions. I was ashamed to share my experience because I was a mother, wife, and involved in school activities, and a girl scout leader. I have full understanding now of what people with mental illness are experiencing.
I took the statins with the anti depressants for six months and realized that I was no longer the person I used to be (I was still following doctors orders0. I didn’t cry at sappy commercials, I never showed emotion….I was just a shell of a person.
THEN I STARTED RESEARCHING. I spent hours on the computer while the kids were at school. And then I became angry…angry that the medical establishment was doing this to people. I was angry that I spent the best years of my life with my young children fighting my health that was caused my a drug that I didn’t need. Angry that when I requested my history from the pharmacy that I was able to link the start of the extra statin in my regimen to my mental situation (I was looking at this report at a stop light, and just sat there in the car bawling). Angry that when I pushed my doctor to give my long term studies of effects of these drugs, she dropped me as a patient. Angry that when I was referred to an endocrinologist, that she did a 10 year survey on me and told me I would die of a heart attack within 20 years if I didn’t take these meds. Angry that I spent thousands of dollars of these medications that was damaging my mind and body. And angry that I might have permanently damaged my body because of taking these meds.
Today, my husband and I can joke that those years were “our dark years”; I love him for standing by me and the stress brought to the family during this time. We just celebrated 20 years of marriage this year.
BUT I am not angry anymore, I am quite happy. I haven’t taken these “poisons” in over 8 years and gladly tell anyone who mentions they are on them my story. My cholesterol is still in the 300 range, but my particle size is the good type, my triglycerides normalized after cutting out HFCS, and I have changed my families eating habits. My family thinks I have totally gone off the deep end because I don’t allow artificial colors or preservatives, GMOs or any synthetic chemicals in our food. We eat mostly organic, grass fed beef, non-gmo if not organic. We’ve changed the way we clean our house, what we put on our bodies, and what we bring into our home. It took my daughter a severe reaction (mental issues) with Tylenol to kick it up another notch to only allow homeopathic meds into our house. When I pushed her pediatrician of this issue and all my research (thanks to MIT researcher, Stephanie Seneff, to help me with my research), her pediatrician pretty much dropped us too, of course after pushing her missed vaccines, even after I explained why would I allow them to give her a vaccine when my daughter couldn’t even detox a simple food coloring in her food at the time.
I have gained a voice in how I live my life now. My cholesterol is still high even after changing diet and exercising, but my ratios are better than most. I am trying to be okay with that…..being conditioned to think high cholesterol is bad is a hard one to break. I still am trying to find a doctor that is okay with it too, or at least take the time to figure out why my body is producing so much or if it is hereditary. I have been told, “why does it matter”. It matters to me. But I am healthy and haven’t needed a doc in years. I wish more doctors would break away for this statin trend. These side effects are real.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story.
Wow. Great story! Good for you for taking charge and doing the research and making the decisions you know will improve your life! Good job.
Greg Esce
I honestly don’t know how you can compare type 1 diabetes and the need for insulin with high cholesterol and statin drugs. Type 1 diabetes is a disease caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The pancreas is producing little or no insulin. (And I have my own opinion as to why this is happening, but thats for a different conversation)
People who develop high cholesterol is most likely from poor diet and exercise. It’s something they’ve caused because of lifestyle choices, which is why they’re should be no reason you can’t reverse the problem. And what’s the harm in trying? Doctor’s are so quick to the prescription pad.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/abc-australia-exposes-cholesterol-lowering-statin-drug-scam-and-pharmaceutical-criminal-activity/
Astonishing claims…..All those who reviewed the book available on amazon US have had the high cholesterol ‘diagnose’ and since going back to higher fat have improved their health.So what is a healthy cholesterol level reading or is there really no such thing?
Before the drug companies got involved, the total cholesterol number cut off was 300. By dropping that number to 200, they made thousands upon thousands eligible for statin drugs. I use 300 for the number that concerns me. Triglycerides are another issue. I had those very, very high when i was eating HFCS, but they came down quite naturally to a healthier number when i stopped drinking soda and eating other processed junk.
so just got my blood work back n cholesterol was 289 n said are u taken ur crestor well no haven’t in a yr! have 8 stints taken raw honey usally get from the amish or a local farmer I know its safe but take a lot of spices the only 2 prispt drugs I take now is diovan in morn n Toprol at nite tried not taken them but pressure went really high do u know what I can take to keep it down without taken these 2 drugs I want off al of them! the rest of my bld work was fine please can u pm me n let me know thank u so much I really glad u are doing this to help others I really appreciate it so much n once I learn I will help others also
Ever heard of endothelial dysfunction? Chronic inflammation? High sensitivity CRP? Particle size? Particle number? This article is dangerous because it gives blanket statements. True: a lot of people with high LDL (bad cholesterol) do not need to be on statins. But, a subset of them absolutely do. It depends on a person’s genetics and state of their endothelium. Some people’s endothelium (lining of blood vessels) will let cholesterol in and plaques will form easily because of a problem with the endothelium. These people do need a lowfat diet and a statin. With that being said, our processed American diet is to blame for a portion of endothelial dysfunction. So, I am a family doctor that looks at both sides of things…allopathic and naturopathic. Eat whole foods/organic foods; eat the good fats (ie, Mediterranean diet); exercise; take responsibility for yourself. But, look at your family history — if all your siblings died in their 50s of a heart attack, then wake up, make changes to your diet, take the right supplements (ie, Coenzyme Q, L-arginine) and take a statin if you are found to have endothelial dysfunction or chronic high inflammation. After all, the reason statins save lives is in large part due to their anti-inflammatory properties. Just beware those who are on one side or the other and don’t look at things with a balanced perspective…
thanks Niki Frank