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Do Statins *CAUSE* Heart Disease and Other Health Issues?
Related: assembly-line medicine, atherosclerosis, cholesterol, Diabetes Mellitus, ethics in medicine, follow the money, follow the self-interest, gears of the machine, health, Metformin, nutrition, raw file processing, statin
re: assembly-line medicine
re: follow the money
re: ethics in medicine
re: statins and cholesterol and The Awful Side Effects of Statins
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty is not qualified to discuss it — Lloyd
I am not a doctor! Do not follow my advice! Trust your drug pusher doctor who does everything solely with your best interests in mind based on advice from those fine people at CDC/FDA/AHA, etc.
Assuming the truth of a fundamental that is nothing more than dogma is a major intellectual error. Yet that is the foundation for a big chunk of modern medicine.
Lacking credible causal evidence for the cholesterol hypothesis, we nonetheless skip right to “fixing” it with statin poisoning.
The premise that cholesterol causes heart disease is absurd: 80 years of study have failed to produce any credible causal evidence. But it so ingrained as the “truth” and so dogmatic that doctors just accept it with their training. That acceptance proves only one thing: a deficit in critical thinking, commonplace in the medical profession today.
BTW, if statins work so well with tens of millions “benefitting” from them, why is there an epidemic of heart disease? Nice work, doc.
Medical practice is far worse than the too-often wickedly unjust stare decisis principle of law because follow the money drives it all.
Long-Term Use of Statins Linked to Heart Disease: Studies
2023-12-14. Emphasis added.
A new expert review suggests that long-term use of statins may be inadvertently aiding the enemy by accelerating coronary artery calcification.
A new expert review suggests that long-term use of statins may be inadvertently aiding the enemy by accelerating coronary artery calcification instead of providing protection.
Statins Deplete Heart-Protecting Nutrients
The review, published in Clinical Pharmacology, suggests statins may act as “mitochondrial toxins,” impairing muscle function in the heart and blood vessels by depleting coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), an antioxidant cells use for growth and maintenance. Multiple studies show statins inhibit CoQ10 synthesis, leading many patients to supplement.
CoQ10 is vital for producing ATP, the cell’s fundamental energy carrier. Insufficient CoQ10 inhibits ATP production, resulting in an energy deficit that the review authors say “could be a major cause for heart muscle and coronary artery damage.
“We believe that many years of statin drug therapy result in the gradual accumulation of mitochondrial DNA damage,” according to the authors.
A 2022 study published in Biophysical Journal linked reduced ATP to heart failure.
Side-effect reduction of CoQ10 after stopping statinsA 2008 study published in BioFactors reaffirms the statin–CoQ10 link. Researchers evaluated 50 statin patients for side effects like fatigue and muscle pain. All then stopped statins and supplemented CoQ10 for 22 months on average.
...
Statins Deplete Vitamin K, Raising Heart Calcification Risk
Statins impair the production of vitamin K, an essential vitamin in managing calcification, according to the review. Optimal vitamin K2 intake helps avoid plaque buildup of atherosclerosis—thickening or hardening of the arteries—and keeps calcification risk low.
[WIND: it is Vitamin K2 (not Vitamin K) that is at issue. The two are different!]...A 2021 study published in the Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences found a connection between statin use, coronary artery calcification, and vitamin K2 deficiency...
Statins also damage selenoproteins, carriers of the mineral selenium essential for heart health...
Statins were also linked to increased calcification in a 2022 study published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. However, the authors proposed that statins may encourage calcification by heightening inflammation rather than nutrient deficiency.
Physicians Overlook Statins as Driver of Heart Failure: Experts
...physicians in general are not aware that statins can cause heart failure and are clearly not recognizing it.” Though doctors readily diagnose heart failure in statin users, they usually attribute it to factors like age, high blood pressure, or artery disease.
[WIND: cognitive blindness caused by rationalizations, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, along with and ego and follow the money motivations]Doctors prescribing cholesterol drugs “cannot ignore the moral responsibility of ‘informed consent,’” the researchers wrote, noting that patients deserve full disclosure of side effects like cardiovascular disease or heart failure.
With over a million annual heart failure hospitalizations in the United States, the condition is often referred to as an epidemic—and it may be that “statin drug therapy is a major contributing factor,” according to the review.
WIND: how about just not taking medical poison*?
When you fuck with a system designed by nature over millions of years, it is the ultimate in hubris and stupidity, with the Law of Unintended Consequences always coming to bear.
The study cited is poor quality ; there should have been three groups: (a) no change, (b) stopping statins, (c) CoQ10+ stopping statins. It’s also underpowered and the cohorts unclear. And it does not prove causation. But based on the false cholesterol hypothesis and showing no credible data for statin benefits, it is insanity to keep prescribing statins for another 50 years. All for some bogus “benefit”.
However, the side effects of statins are very real, very common, and for some, very damaging up to including total memory loss. Even “sub clinical” side effects can degrade quality of life and quite likely degrade cognition, perhaps the most vicious side effect of all. Even the self-enriching Peter Attia** admits that he has to down-dose or change meds to address the side effects.
The statin drug pushers aka doctors have been at it for decades, with widespread damage and no good to show for it—even the most high-risk cohort “benefit” looks like bullshit data to me and there the benefit is vanishingly small and quoted on a relative risk reduction basis (a robust 'tell' for chicanery).
* Do take, and always take magnesium (Mg) with Vitamin D and Vitamin K2 together. These are things can obtain adequately with diet, especially Mg. With so much chicanery out there on supplements, whether it is heavy metals or misleading labeling, the only magnesium product I trust right now is the Nutricost MgCl hexahydrate. And I don’t even trust Nutricost fully anymore.
** Self-enriching doctors like Peter Attia have a severe follow the money conflict of interest,though in an atypical way. IMO, he is a very smart self promoter dumb enough to rationalize the idea that data is reliable/credible, and therefore a statin pusher like so many others. Let’s see what his judgment makes of the latest claim about statin harms.
See also
Commonly reported side effects include headache, muscle pain and nausea, and statins can also increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, hepatitis, pancreatitis and vision problems or memory loss.
@AMAZON
