You go for yearly medical examination. Your physician sells you a lifelong medication of statins. You get all panicked because you’re told you’ve got
- “high blood cholesterol” and that
- you’re at risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and so
- you’ve got to take Statins and stop your body’s natural cholesterol production… and that
- this is a natural process of aging.
If you’re on this web article, you want to know if taking statins is the only thing to do. After all, taking medication costs… more than just money. There are also serious health risks.
Let me explain in simple terms what high cholesterol, cvd is about, and how statins really work. Then you make the choice.
1. What Does it mean when the doctor warns of High Blood Cholesterol?
What is cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a building block of every single cell in your body. It is not some kind of poison to rid the body of. Without cholesterol, there is no life.
Bad Cholesterol? There is no such thing as Bad Cholesterol.
When doctors say you’ve got “bad cholesterol”, they are really referring to Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL).
Here are some points I used in my seminars:
How does LDL, otherwise known as “bad cholesterol” get to be in the blood?
Your diet.
Not any kind of diet, but diet rich in refined carbohydrates. Here’s how it happens…
Excess sugars from diet gets converted to fat in the liver. This fat is transported via the blood stream to the fat cells for storage. The image above shows the pathway that leads to LDL in the bloodstream.
Does Eating Cholesterol or Fatty Food Lead to High LDL?
Not likely. Your body naturally balances the cholesterol production. We also excrete cholesterol as bile.
Eating good fats does not lead to high LDL levels in the blood because the mode of transport of these fats is different.
In the above diagram we can see that the transport mechanism involves different lipoproteins and this does not include LDL or VLDL.
2. What is Cardiovascular Disease link with Cholesterol?
There is a link to CVD and LDL levels in the blood, but the link with blood cholesterol is much disputed today. Check out the Framingham Heart Study, and this article.
3. I should take statins, just in case?
Before you allow your doctor to sell you this lifelong medication of Statins, consider how statins really work. Read all about Statins here.
Statins act by inhibiting an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. This enzyme is involved in the metabolic pathway that produces cholesterol.
The important thing you got to know is that this enzyme is instrumental in producing a load of other life-essential molecules other than cholesterol.
Here is the pathway:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMG-CoA_reductase
When Statins are taken in the body the production of essential end products of the Mevalonate pathway halts. These end products include:
- Squalen , Cholesterol, (essential for cell wall, cell receptor function)
- Ubiquinones, (Antioxidant and control redux potential in cells)
- Heme A (essential for redux potential in cells, affecting energy production),
- Sterol, Cholesterol (Essential for variety of cell functions)
- Dolichols,
- Prenylated Proteins (essential for cell membrane activity).
Think about it…
When you take statins, your body gets deprived of essential compounds needed to sustain cell function.
It’s like dropping a bomb to kill a gnat!
The risk of taking statins are well documented.
Since Statins block the production of compounds that are needed for cell membrane function, redux balance (energy production processes), it is no wonder that the documented adverse effects are:
- muscle problems
- cognitive loss,
- neuropathy,
- pancreatic and hepatic dysfunction, and
- sexual dysfunction.
Naci H, Brugts J, Ades T (July 2013). "Comparative tolerability and harms of individual statins: a study-level network meta-analysis of 246 955 participants from 135 randomized, controlled trials". Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 6 (4): 390–9.doi:10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.111.000071.PMID 23838105.
Bellosta, S; Corsini, A (2012). "Statin drug interactions and related adverse reactions". Expert Opin Drug Saf 11(6): 933–46. doi:10.1517/14740338.2012.712959.PMID 22866966.
Basically statins causes you to lose your muscle and brain.
What to do?
I hope by reading this article up to this point, you’d be aware that you’ve got a choice.
Cardiovascular disease may be scary, but taking statins will lead to neurological disorders which is basically slow death … which you pay for.
What about simply changing your diet?
Proper nutrition can reduce LDL in your blood stream. Simply eat NO refined carbohydrate. Read these: Bad Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Disease Risk: Which is to blame? Dietary Fat or Carbs?
Here are some books that may inspire you in this direction. My advise is, eat clean for 3 months first before embarking on medication of statins.
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