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Do Statins Increase COVID Deaths, Diabetes, Dementia?
Related: Alzheimer’s and Dementia, atherosclerosis, cholesterol, Diabetes Mellitus, ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, metabolic syndrome, nutrition, raw file processing, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, statin, The Epoch Times
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: Is the cholesterol hypothesis dead?
re: Your Doctor is NOT Responsible for Your Health—YOU Are! Recommended Reading to Open Your Mind and Ask the Right Questions, Because Your Life Depends On It
re: The Awful Side Effects of Statins
re: Statins: Systemic Poison that Damages Virtually Every System in the Body
re: statins
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
More than a year ago I blogged extensively on statins. Use statins at your peril.
Last year, I speculated also that statins might increase COVID deaths and damage because they suppress the body’s ability to maintain tissue integrity (cholesterol is a a critically-essential building block of cellular structure and function, especially in the brain).
With the cholesterol hypothesis dead and mounds of evidence showing numerous life altering side-effects of statins, the medical establishment continues to push these poisons on the public with absolutely no public health benefit to show for it. Their use is a classic pharmacological fraud of “claim relative risk reduction using deeply flawed studies, ignore all risks by not looking for them”. See The Awful Side Effects of Statins for starters.
I would say here “consult your doctor”. And you should. But do not expect honest dialogue with your physician about statins, because very few are willing to speak independently on the matter. Indeed,very few non-cardiologists have more than passing knowledge on statins. My personal experience with most doctors on statins is that they are unqualified to advise anyone on the matter, knowing little more than the generic treatment guidelines of paint-by-numbers medicine. An “MD” on a jacket does not mean someone is qualified to weigh-in an an extremely complex topic founded on fraudulent research. Moreover with no skin in the game (zero responsibility for side effects), you are on the hook for all the downsides—financial and physical and cognitive. And you are extremely unlikely to get any upside.
The Epoch Times: Statins Double Risk of Dementia, Are Linked to COVID Deaths
by Joseph Mercola, August 10, 2021
The use of statin cholesterol-lowering medications has been on the rise for decades and they are among the most widely used drugs in the world. In the U.S., nearly 50 percent of U.S. adults over 75 years old take a statin to lower their cholesterol in the misguided hope of preventing heart disease, heart attacks, and stroke.
Not only is there strong evidence suggesting that statins are a colossal waste of money, but their use may also harm your brain health—more than doubling your risk of dementia in some cases.
The benefit must clearly outweigh the risk when it comes to any drug treatment, but this is rarely the case with statins, which don’t protect against cardiovascular disease and are linked to a number of health conditions including dementia, diabetes, and even increased risk of death from COVID-19.
Statins Doubled Risk of Developing Dementia
... Subjects were divided into groups based on cognitive status, cholesterol levels, and type of statin used, and followed for eight years. Those with early mild cognitive impairment and low to moderate cholesterol levels at the start of the study who used lipophilic statins had more than double the risk of dementia compared to those who didn’t use statins...
Your Brain Needs Cholesterol
About 25 percent to 30 percent of your body’s total cholesterol is found in your brain, where it’s an essential part of neurons. In your brain, cholesterol helps develop and maintain the plasticity and function of your neurons, and data from the Shanghai Aging Study published in Frontiers in Neurology revealed that high levels of LDL cholesterol are inversely associated with dementia in those aged 50 years and over...
[WIND: eg more cholesterol = less dementia]Statins Increase Death Risk From COVID-19
...Among patients with Type 2 diabetes admitted to a hospital for COVID-19, those taking statins had significantly higher mortality rates from COVID-19 within seven days and 28 days, compared to those not taking the drugs...
Statins Double—or Triple—Diabetes Risk
A connection already exists between statins and diabetes, to the extent that people who take statins are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than those who do not, and those who take the drugs for longer than two years have more than triple the risk.
“The fact that increased duration of statin use was associated with an increased risk of diabetes—something we call a dose-dependent relationship—makes us think that this is likely a causal relationship,” study author Victoria Zigmont, a graduate researcher in public health at The Ohio State University in Columbus, said in a statement...
The Statin Scam
...Even in the case of recurrent cardiovascular events, despite the increase in statin use from 1999 to 2013, researchers writing in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders noted, “there was only a small decrease in the incidence of recurrent CVD, and this occurred mainly in older patients without statins prescribed.”
Statins Won’t Protect Your Heart Health
Statins are effective at lowering cholesterol, but whether this is the panacea for helping you avoid heart disease and extend your lifespan is a topic of heated debate. Again in 2018, a scientific review presented substantial evidence that high LDL and total cholesterol are not an indication of heart disease risk, and that statin treatment is of doubtful benefit as a form of primary prevention for this reason.
In short, these drugs have done nothing to derail the rising trend of heart disease, while putting users at increased risk of health conditions such as diabetes, dementia, and others, which include:
- Cancer
- Cataracts
- Triple risk of coronary artery and aortic artery calcification
- Musculoskeletal disorders, including myalgia, muscle weakness, muscle cramps, rhabdomyolysis, and autoimmune muscle disease
- Depression
In the event that you’re taking statins, be aware that they deplete your body of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and inhibit the synthesis of Vitamin K2. The risks of CoQ10 depletion can be somewhat offset by taking a Coenzyme Q10 supplement or, if you’re over 40, its reduced form ubiquinol. But ultimately, if you’re looking to protect both your brain and heart health, avoiding statin drugs and instead optimizing your diet may be the answer.
WIND: whether or not you found the cited studies persuasive or not is not too important*. If you go spend a few hundred hours studying what is known (evidence presented by MDs), you’ll come away concluding that statins are one of the worst public health disasters ever foisted on the American public.
Imaging gulping down a small poison every day, only because paint-by-numbers medicine pushed on you like from a street-corner heroin pusher, all from guidelines that remove judgment, demand and require conformance, and punish deviation.
* Some of the cited studies are low quality, but unfortunately the findings are consistent with and more importantly predictable from evidence accumulating over decades on the negative side effects of statins.
