Statins are the most profitable drugs in the history of the Big Pharma Cartel. In the U.S., the most stunning statistic about statin drugs is that nearly one-third of adult Americans currently take a statin medication. And, if the Powers-That-Be have their way, all Americans over the age of 50 would be prescribed a statin drug.
Why do so many people take a statin drug? Statins are prescribed for elevated cholesterol levels with the idea that statin use will lower the mortality from heart disease. What most health care providers and patients don’t know is that twenty years of research has failed to show that statin use significantly lowers the risk of dying from heart disease.
A recent British Medical Journal study looked at the mortality benefit from taking a statin medication for two to six years. (1) The authors performed a literature review of statin studies. They reported that if you are take a statin medication for two to six years to prevent your first heart attack—this is referred to as primary prevention—your death will be postponed by an average of 3.2 days. If you have already suffered a heart attack and are taking a statin to prevent another cardiac event—this is referred to as secondary prevention—your death will be postponed an average of 4.1 days.
So, let me summarize these findings. You will need to take a statin medication—which poisons a crucial enzyme in your body—for two to six years to live a few more days. I guess a few extra days would be ok if statins were inexpensive and not associated with serious adverse effects.
However, neither is true. Statins are not inexpensive and they are associated with severe adverse effects including mitochondrial dysfunction, muscle weakness and breakdown, brain fog, memory loss, dementia, and cancer.
Take a toxic drug for six years for an extra three or four days of life?
Fugetaboutit.
Folks, statins are a disaster. They fail nearly 99% who take them to prevent getting a heart attack. And, their mortality benefit is close to nonexistent as shown in this study. We are wasting a huge amount of scarce health care dollars on a class of medications that should be pulled from the market.
If you are taking a statin, my advice is to educate yourself about how effective the drug really is and decide if the benefits outweigh the side effects. Remember, it is up to you to decide whether to take any drug prescribed to you.
More information about statins can be found in my book, The Statin Disaster.
DrB
(1) http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118.full.pdf+html?sid=17757f80-d84f-4fa9-baf7-d3fa144a1d35
HI DrB,
Dr. Joel Wallach claims that if you take statin for 10 years straight and your level remains <140ttl. cholesterol, you are 100% likely to get Alzheimers. I love his work but just wonder if you concur?
Statins killed my father. He died from CHF and other complications related to the statin drug. I decided to go back to school as a Nurse Practitioner to help educate patients and My preceptors give them out almost daily. I cringe every time I see a patient walk out with a script. I have said something many times. The response I get is always the same– that statins are the recommended protocol and they can’t just leave a cholesterol that high without doing something about it. Well they need to educate themselves before they can educate the patients. There are other alternatives to lowering cholesterol.
Another known side-effect of statins (for some people) is high blood-sugar and diabetes…
A close relative of mine tracked his blood sugar and told his doc that it was HIGH due to the statins, but the doc told him to keep taking the statins anyway. He nearly ended up in the hospital a few months later when he felt terrible, and found out his blood sugar was over 600! He’s now off the statins (has a new doc, as the other retired, thankfully!), and is working on getting his sugar back under control. But, he might have permanent kidney damage due to this unfortunate event.
For those who question the doctor’s advice – trust your instincts and stick to your guns. Get DATA if needed and do what is right for YOU.
I can also attest to the damage these f**ing (sorry, but I’m THAT angry) drugs can do. My dad was put on statins more than 10 years ago. He went from being able to fix anything and I do mean anything just by looking at it, to not knowing how to turn on his computer! We lost him a little over 2 years ago. Please understand, I’m not against taking needed drugs, but these big corporations have taken over our lives. It both saddens and infuriates me.
Recent CNN article reports research that points to statins causing cataracts as well. Cardiologist, Eric Topol, referenced in this article was the whistle blower on Vioxx. http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/03/health/statin-usage-heart-disease-stroke/index.html
It is important to remember that you can lower cholesterol other ways than by taking drugs! Do this: 1) Drink water or herbal teas (unsweetened) instead of all your other drinks and 2) stop eating simple carbs. If you can do this for a month, your numbers will totally change and you’ll be inspired to continue. See the Wheat Belly plan (book and website) for tips.
Thank you Dr B.
My family history is littered with hearth related deaths, grandmother, aunt, mother, father. Six years ago I had 3 stents and was prescribed statins as part of on going treatment. I went through 3 of the four major statins in the UK due to side effects.
My cholesterol ration was never lower than 4.5 and I felt awful most of the time. Statins were making my life very unhappy.
I decided to do something and started taking alternative cholesterol reducing supplements. This was not before having an independent blood test to measure my cholesterol 5.2. ( Lloyds Pharmacy ).Each month I returned and measured my cholesterol. My last ratio being 3.1.
I then returned to my Drs and had the same cholesterol test which read 5.9 ratio. The Dr said we need to up your statin intake and change your diet. A long conversation followed. I have a significantly better quality of life now than in the past five years and do not want to return to a life of statins.
I had a “severe cardiac event” (a.k.a. a “heart attack”) four years ago. It came as a surprise to me and my doc. After that, I started doing some research and discovered our medical industry does virtually nothing to DETECT, PREVENT, or REVERSE the factors that lead to heart disease — namely CLOGGED ARTERIES.
The theory behind blood cholesterol levels is like an analogy to humidity: at some arbitrary point, the mere presence of cholesterol in your blood will make it magically start to precipitate out by lining your arterial walls. Yeah, right.
Clouds in the sky might be close to 100% humidity, but rain doesn’t simply start falling from the sky just because of that! There needs to be another factor to act as a catalyst of sorts to cause the precipitation to occur.
For clouds, this catalyst is dust particles. No dust in the air, not much chance of a thunderstorm happening. (Here in Phoenix, AZ, we get these things called haboobs in the late summer during our monsoon season. This is when the air contains seasonally high moisture levels, like 35%. A haboob is a big windstorm that blows across the desert, kicking up huge clouds of dust and pollens. These clouds can reach a couple thousand feet in the air. In their wake, we usually see torrential rains that can literally dump several inches of rain in very short periods of time (~15 mins).
For our arteries, the catalyst is … INFLAMMATION. What causes inflammation? Common stuff, like elevated blood sugar levels, oxidation, stress (releases cortisol, a powerful oxidant), among other things.
You don’t reduce the likelihood of rain by cutting humidity, and you don’t reduce the likelihood of plaque buildup in your arteries by reducing blood cholesterol levels.
To reduce plaque buildup, you want to reduce inflammation. In contemporary terms, this means changing your diet — less sugars and simple carbs (which convert quickly to sugar), less stress (ie., meditate, relax more), and do things to reduce the amount of oxidation that occurs in your vascular system.
There’s one other thing that can help directly: an L-Arginine supplement.
Long story short, Nitric Oxide (NO) is produced naturally in our endothelial walls. When we hit about 30, the amount of NO produced begins to drop — about 50% for every 10 years we age. This happens to correspond to when plaque buildup starts to happen to most people. Go figure!
Now, this might be a mere coincidence, and it might not. But there’s a Nobel-prize winning doc, Dr. Louis Ignarro, whose research not only got him a Nobel Prize, but it also shows that L-Arginine is one of the most powerful triggers of increased production of NO in the endothelium. And boosting NO production tends to dissolve plaque and reverse clogged arteries.
Why? Because NO is a natural ANTI-INFLAMMATORY and VASODILATOR. That’s just how it works.
Most docs now claim you should take statins not necessarily because they cut cholesterol levels, but … get this … because they’re also a POWERFUL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY! Imagine that!
But none of them discuss taking L-Arginine because, well … it’s a nutritional supplement, and it’s a lot cheaper than meds.
Another problem is that there are several L-Arginine complexors on the market, but they’re all manufactured and sold by network marketing companies (ie., MLMs). Why? Because there’s simply very little money to be made from nutritional supplements! Especially since the FDA prohibits anybody from making any health-related claims about them — even a Nobel Prize winning scientist who dedicated his life to discovering and sharing the critical role that NO plays in our endothelial health, and how this particular nutritional supplement acts to trigger NO production, and thereby preventing and reversing plaque buildup in our arteries.
Statins do neither! They simply cut off production of some critical hormones that screw up both our immune system and the ability of our liver to do what it was designed to do naturally. (Which is why they always want you to get your liver tested if you take statins. But why aren’t they also doing a CrP test to see what your systemic inflammation levels are like as well? If there’s not much systemic inflammation present, then your blood cholesterol levels are pretty much irrelevant.)
Doctors may give statin drugs instead of thyroid medicine. Amour thyroid may lower cholesterol. They should not go by TSH since gluten may hurt the thyroid and pituitary that makes TSH. Statin drugs hurting coenzyme Q10 and mitochondria is not good and may cause heart failure eventually. I do EDTA/DMPS IV chelations to unclog blood vessels. Saturated fat clogs my blood vessels. Eating no gluten/dairy/soy/sugar/GMO..taking vitamins/good oils/minerals…probiotic…LDN..detoxing may help heart disease and much more.
Well done Dr Brownstein. I assume that you are aware of Dr Malcolm Kendrick inthe Uk.
Regards.
John,
Absolutely. I have learned much from his work.
DrB
Hi Dr. B, I have been on Metformin and Lipitor for several years and just had a major heart attack. I told my Dr. the drugs were perhaps partially responsible along with my life style of eating. My doctor tried to put me on more statins. I told my doctor ” NO way was I taking anymore statin drugs”!. We went back and forth on the statin drug issue. Then I stopped and told him to get copies of the drug trial results and I’ll prove to him how wrong he was in his argument for statins. Long story short: I read your book on Statins and was armed with the Crestor trials and used that for my bases of and winning a stand off with my PCP and cardiologist[s]. I’m currently in cardiac rehab my schedule is 3 days in heart exercise and 3 days weight strength training. I’m also on the Mediterranean life style of eating. My best book buy is ‘ the Mediterranean Slow Cooker Cookbook by Salinas Press. Lots of really good recipes! I also have several of your books and currently am Salting my way to health, also. Perhaps by the time I get ready to retire I’ll be as healthy as I was in my twenties. LOL Keep us posted on the latest health events: And keep up the good fight for good health, Dr. B
Henry,
Keep reading and keep working at it! You are doing great.
DrB
Hi, My husband has a stent and it’s coated with Plavix . His Cardiologist said he needs to take these drugs (Statins) because his stents are coated with Plavix and well you may know the rest. Is this true ? Can he stop . I just don’t believe a thing the cardiologist says anymore. Thank you Dr Brownstein you are a blessing!
Janet,
Your husband is ultimately in charge of his own medical decisions. Education is the key to making the right decisions.
My book can provide you with information about statins.
DrB
Hello Dr. B,
as you know, cholesterol is vital to our health and well being. As a ND, I am amazed at how much disinformation that is associated with cholesterol. A level of 220 to 260 present no real threat to increasing the risk of a heart attack. I had one patient with cholesterol reading over 400, and I recommended for her the same natural remedy that I usually use with all who have a high cholesterol reading exceeding 300. Mix one TBS of virgin flax seed oil very thoroughly with a half cup of low fat cottage cheese. Add a pinch of sea salt and natural spices such as celery and garlic powder to taste. Spread it generously over a fresh vegetable salad. My, this is so yummy. In a space of six weeks, her cholesterol plummeted from 400 down to 200 and she was feeling fantastic with absolutely no side effects. Always remember what Hippocrates said. “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine your food.” I hope this proves helpful to many of your readers.
Thank you again, Dr. Brownstein, for providing essential information for people to make informed decisions for their health.
I am in Australia, and last nights TV news had an amazing new research result for taking statin drugs..having read about statins due to Dr Brownstein, I was agahst! Apparently tests ( run by the company that produces statins) was encouraging us to take them as it helped prevent heart disease. 13000 men and women from various countries, who did not have heart disease, took this drug. They were overweight, or smokers, though. Apparently at the end of the study( sorry, cant remember how long) they had reduced there chances of heart disease by 25%. There were side effects mentioned, sore muscles, but that apparently was well worth it. It ended with encouraging more people to take statins, apparently that was going to be helpful.
It makes me very angry that this sneaky bit of advertising is presented in the news.
.
Thank you Dr Brownstein for writing this blog,I have much more scientific awareness of medications and how they effect our bodies.
Big Pharma (and Big Food) have the blessing of politicians who keep the health charade going because of the perks offered to the “health” industry in exchange for election and re-election campaign contributions. Not only are statins dangerous, our elected prostitutes have signed off AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE on an agreement with Big Pharma that the government will pay FULL RETAIL PRICES for drugs – including statins, for people receiving Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and other government subsidized medical benefits. What we have is a combination of greed, pseudoscience, and public ignorance – a recipe for disaster.
My late husband had been given a cancer-associated statin (Atromid S) for two years prior to his cancer diagnosis. We now know the majority of people having heart attacks have normal cholesterol. However, many doctors are telling their patients that the lower the cholesterol the better and have no idea how low is too low. One local, well respected medical doctor does NOT want total cholesterol too go below 150 because that is the break point below which the body cannot make necessary sex hormones. Also important, most doctors are NOT using blood tests to check the hereditary Lp(a) genetic marker for increased risk of heart attack and stroke if there is familial susceptibility or the LDL particle size – Pattern A being the most protective LDL and Pattern B being the small, dangerous LDL which plugs up arteries.
Standard-of-care conventional medicine – determined to get everyone on a statin, sees elevated cholesterol as the heart attack/stroke culprit and IGNORES THE INFLAMMATION CONNECTION. Also being ignored are two major studies showing that the very lowest cholesterol levels are associated with the highest death rate from all causes. The government contributes to the problem by subsidizing and perpetuating our nation’s food standard which contains inflammation-causing junk food loaded with pesticides, sugar, salt, and bad fats and food animals loaded with antibiotics and hormones. Notice that the presidential follies currently underway are NOT mentioning anything about our “sick care” health care system much less how to improve it. As long as the majority of citizens remain uninformed and therefore indifferent, we and our loved ones will continue to be victimized and die unnecessarily by the statin purveyors, etc. It is apparent that the FDA doesn’t pull bad drugs from the market until the dead or injured body count gets high enough. However – to its credit, the FDA recently put a black box warning on statins due to the increased risk of diabetes from taking statin drugs.
I appreciate all your efforts, Dr. B. Vaccines, statins, etc. Many people seem to forget “for every action, an opposite reaction”.
Please be sure to take care of yourself.
My doctor just prescribed them for me and I have not pick the medication up from the pharmacy s yet. So, how do I lover my cholesterol?
Deborah,
I would refer you to my book. There are no studies that show lowering a woman’s cholesterol has any significant benefit to mortality rates.
DrB
Remember that so many prescription drugs deplete B12, including Metformin and PPI’s.
Do statins do that? I would not be surprised.
I wish more physicians would wise up to the fact that these are expensive nocebos.
How to I get my husband to quit taking statins? He is a PhD chemist who actually helped develop statin drugs, and he refuses to listen to anything that I have to say about the side effects.
Lori,
Education is the key. That is why I write my books/newsletters.
DrB
Dr. B,
Statin drugs are one of the reasons I am no longer a pharmacist. I’m not against medications per se, but against
the ones that have dubious value. I have had several patients die of Alzheimer’s disease this year alone. I wonder
how many other people taking statin drugs are getting dementia. If we do not recognize that most of these brain conditions
are caused my certain medications and nutritional deficiencies, like Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, etc., we will begin seeing
Alzheimer’s disease in younger and younger folks, in their 50s and 40s. YIPES!
Keep up your great work Dr. B.
I’m a 58 year old male that works out six days a week. I follow a Paleo’ish diet, get fairly decent sleep, & drink alcohol moderately. Three years ago I caved in to my PCM’s insistence that I see a cardiologist because my cholesterol was “high” at 230. My LDL/HDL ratio was 3:1 which is supposed to be one of the prime indicators of your risk for heart disease. The cardio convinced me to give Lipitor a try to see what it did to my levels. After six weeks my LDL level had plummeted, but so had my HDL. And my LDL/HDL ratio? Surprise, it was unchanged at 3:1! I never felt so horrible in my entire life during those six weeks on a statin. I couldn’t sleep, I had constant stomach cramps, I couldn’t think straight, & I felt completely lethargic. I called my PCM to tell him the reactions i was experiencing & he said “Let’s stop taking the Lipitor.” My response was “I stopped taking it a week ago, what the hell do I need you for?” My most recent cholesterol level was in the 260’s, but i attribute that to the fact I stopped taking red yeast rice a year ago (started again after I got these results), plus about the same time I started drinking Dave Asprey’s Bullet Proof coffee & have been consuming 2TBS of grass fed butter about five days a week. I feel fantastic, I keep active & fit, I eat great, & I live well. Why in the world would I want to destroy that just to keep Big Pharma in business?
What about if one’s husband is taking a statin, and he considers the doctor’s words more valid than his wife’s (a retired RN).
Jana,
The best advice I can give you is to educate him and let him decide.
DrB
I know two people over 50 taking statins who “suddenly” developed MS. Isn’t that oddly coincidental?
I have watched statins destroy my father-in-law. He was duped years ago into believing they would help him but the ironic thing is that this man was the healthiest man I’ve ever known before he ever “needed” (per his doctor) any statins. He was meticulous about what he ate, exercised religiously, and we were all convinced he would outlive us all. Seriously, he put the rest of us to shame.
The statins destroyed his brain. He has been dealing w/memory loss and it is sickening. He has access to some of the best doctors in the country and a few have actually articulated what Dr. Brownstein does in this article YET my FIL has refused to go against his primary doctor’s recommendation and will probably be on statins until they kill him.
It’s heartbreaking.
Can I just stop taking it cold turkey…or do I need to wean off it?
Barb,
When I advise my patients to stop taking them, I do not wean them off.
DrB