Andreas Moritz
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 Since cholesterol-lowering drugs have not been shown to lower the risk of heart attack, they were notably absent in the study's list of recommendations, much to the annoyance of the major statin producers.
INTERHEART isn't the only large study that discovered the significance of the apo ratio. During a Swedish study, researchers tracked more than 175,000 men and women for about five and a half years. The average age of the subjects was 48. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Those eating the red grapefruit also lowered their LDL ("bad" cholesterol) by 20 percent, all the more impressive since all of the subjects had previously failed to benefit from cholesterol-lowering drugs! "Red grapefruit is higher in antioxidants, which may explain the difference in health benefits," said study author Sheila Gorinstein, Ph.D.
Potential weight loss, cholesterol lowering, and anticancer benefits aside—and those are pretty big benefits to put aside—grapefruit is a good low-calorie source of potassium and vitamin C. |
Kevin Trudeau
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 Most people believe that if they take cholesterol-lowering drugs and lower their cholesterol they are reducing their risk of heart attack and stroke. The exact opposite is true. The cholesterol-lower drugs do not reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. The cholesterol-lowering drugs cause disease in the body. They cause liver damage and make you get dozens of various types of sicknesses and diseases. These cholesterol-lowering drugs do not in any way reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke. They do in fact give you more sickness and disease.
Go back and read that again. |
Andreas Moritz
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 However, unlike cholesterol-lowering drugs, sunlight does no?increase cholesterol in the bile, which is a major cause of gallstones. Sunlight has a holistic effect, which means that all functions in the body benefit at the same time. |
Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
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 High cholesterol runs rampant in the United States—feeding a billion-dollar industry that hawks statins, which are cholesterol-lowering drugs, as miracle drugs. An estimated 12 to 15 million American adults of every age and description depend on these drugs daily. They have become among the most popular prescription drugs in America.
Relying on statins, however, isn't a fail-safe solution. They can reinforce unhealthy habits (eating processed foods high in saturated fat, salt, and refined sugars) and serve as a disincentive to create a healthy lifestyle. |
Bottom Line Health
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| During a seven-year study at Duke University, almost half of the 31,750 people treated for major heart problems acknowledged that they were not taking beta blocker drugs, aspirin and cholesterol-lowering drugs exactly as their doctors had ordered.
In fact, the patients who would gain the greatest benefit from these drugs—the elderly and those who have heart failure or other diseases— were the least likely to be using the medications as directed. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 But just because they have a greater risk of heart attacks doesn't mean they will get extra benefit from taking cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Much has been made of a few studies that have shown a reduction of heart attacks in diabetics without heart disease who have been treated with statins.7,8 However, more studies have shown no benefit for diabetics without heart disease,9"11 and some studies in heart-disease patients show that diabetics get less benefit from statins than do nondiabetics. |
| The fact that Lipitor is scheduled to go off patent in 2010 led the company to look for new cholesterol-lowering drugs with unique mechanisms of action. Torce-trapib, slated to be Pfizer's next drug, works by raising HDL, the "good cholesterol," and thus has a mechanism of action that is complementary to that of Lipitor, which lowers LDL, the "bad cholesterol." Pfizer expected Torcetrapib to be its next best-selling medication. |
| The Status of Statins
The search for better cholesterol-lowering drugs led to the development of statins, a class of drugs that lower LDL cholesterol by blocking an enzyme that churns out LDL cholesterol in the liver, called HMG CoEnzymeA reductase. The enthusiasm among doctors for statins has resulted in the writing of prescriptions for 13 million people each year, many of whom don't derive any health benefits, as I'll explain in detail here. |
| For instance, as reported by USA Today on October 16, 2004 ("Cholesterol Guidelines Become a Morality Play") eight of the nine doctors who formed a committee in 2001 to advise the government on cholesterol guidelines for the public were making money from the very same companies that made the cholesterol-lowering drugs that the doctors were urging millions of Americans to take. For example, one of the committee members, Dr. H. |
Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.
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 They also point out that a meta-analysis (a composition of many studies) indicated cholesterol-lowering drugs may increase mortality rates caused by other conditions. A review of the available research indicated that all cholesterol-lowering drugs cause cancer in rodents, and that the dose of the drug used in test animals was comparable to that used in humans. This important information is conveniently omitted from the Physicians' Desk Reference (published by Medical Economics Company), which your doctor uses to determine drug risk. |
Elaine Magee
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 For example, simply incorporating four cholesterol-lowering foods into your diet has been shown to lower cholesterol levels up to 30 percent, reducing the need for cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) according to studies conducted at the University of Toronto. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 We have already discussed the effects of some cholesterol-lowering drugs to deplete patient's coenzyme Qiq levels, and other drug interactions have also been reported.
For example, beta blockers have been shown to inhibit coenzyme Qi0-dependent enzymes. Coenzyme Qi0 depletion may be the reason why some patients with congestive heart failure worsen when they take beta blockers. Although we regularly recommend beta blockers for our patients, we are mindful about the depleting effects these drugs have on coenzyme Q10. |
Andreas Moritz
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| Other Pharmaceutical Drugs
Prescription medications used to lower the level of fats (lipids) in the blood, including clofibrate (Atromid-S) or similar cholesterol-lowering drugs, actually increase cholesterol concentrations in the bile and, thereby, lead to an increased risk of gallstones. These drugs successfully lower blood fats, which they are designed to do. However, having high blood fats actually implies a shortage of fats. Fats become trapped in the blood when they are unable to cross capillary membranes and are, therefore, lacking in the cells. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| Robert Wortmann from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, patients with statin-induced myopathies are at increased risk for having underlying metabolic muscle disease. cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins can cause such a profound metabolic shift, resulting in muscle discomfort in susceptible individuals.
These genetic conditions are difficult to diagnose and are frequently left untreated by physicians who cannot pin down the cause of muscle soreness and long-lasting fatigue in their patients. |
| Another environmental factor that may result in coenzyme Qi0 deficiency is the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs such as the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins). This category of pharmaceuticals includes statinlike drugs, such as Lovastatin, Simvastatin, and Pravastatin (to mention but a few) that are often used to treat high cholesterol levels.
These drugs work by inhibiting the work of the cellular enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (known as HMG-CoA reductase). |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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 Yet the suggestion that taking cholesterol-lowering drugs lowers your chances of an early death has been one of the key messages promoted far and wide, even in countries where direct drug advertisements are still banned and mass marketing takes the form of "disease awareness-raising." The use of the fear of death to market the statins has provoked outrage from independent scientists, consumers, and physicians around the world. The concern is twofold. |
| Schwartz and Woloshin, based at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, support the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs for people who have already suffered some heart disease, and others at high risk of future disease, but they worry that for otherwise healthy people at low risk, long-term use of the statins may offer little benefit and unknown harms. Obsessing unnecessarily about cholesterol levels may also bring unhelpful anxiety for many. |
Kevin Trudeau
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| These cholesterol-lowering drugs do not in any way reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke. They do in fact give you more sickness and disease.
Go back and read that again. Think of how idiotic this scene is. You walk into a doctor's office and say, "Doctor, I'm concerned about clogged arteries." Your doctor then says, "Well, let's check your cholesterol. Whoops! Looks like you have high cholesterol. If you are concerned about clogged arteries, take these cholesterol-lowering drugs to lower your cholesterol. This will lower your risk of getting clogged arteries and having heart disease. |
Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.
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 Ask about the bile acid binder WelChol
Despite the billions of dollars spent each year on cholesterol-lowering drugs, heart disease remains our country's number one killer. More than 650,000 Americans—about one person every minute—die annually from a "coronary event."419 More than 1 million people will have a heart attack this year, and 175,000 probably will not even realize that they suffered "silent" damage to the heart muscle.420
Although these stats may seem overwhelming, we are making some progress. Deaths from heart disease have been trending downward over the last 30 years. |
| If you watch the ads for cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor (atorvastatin), Crestor (rosuvastatin), and Zocor (simvastatin), you would think that about the only thing that matters is getting your cholesterol under 200. For decades Americans have been told that cholesterol is the most important risk factor for heart disease. The cholesterol theory evolved from experiments carried out in the middle of the 20th century. Scientists found they could force rabbits to develop plaque in their arteries by feeding them butter and cheese. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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| Sponsoring advocacy groups that tend to keep messages simple, and keep the focus on the fear of high cholesterol, will inevitably help to maximize the sales of cholesterol-lowering drugs.40
Up at White River Junction, set amongst the green mountains of Vermont in the north east of the U.S., the fear-mongering around cholesterol is starting to unsettle practicing physicians like Dr. Lisa Schwartz. "Patients worry a lot about cholesterol," she says, "and a lot of them come in wanting their cholesterol checked. |
| He argues that the guideline panel painted an overly positive picture of the scientific evidence about the risks and benefits of the cholesterol-lowering drugs, and that it has ultimately misled doctors and the public.31 "This is a perversion of science," he says. "I think they've gone way too far."32 Abramson is a strong supporter of using these drugs for people at high risk of heart disease, particularly those who have, for example, already suffered a heart attack. |
| Canadian consumption of the new cholesterol-lowering drugs jumped by a staggering 300 percent over a similar time period.7 Many of those prescriptions enhanced or extended life. But there is a growing sense that too many of them are driven by the unhealthy influences of misleading marketing rather than genuine need. And those marketing strategies, like the drug companies, are now well and truly global.
Working from his midtown Manhattan office in New York City, Vince Parry represents the cutting edge of that global marketing. |
Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.
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| As a bonus, fibrates raise good HDL cholesterol better than some other cholesterol-lowering drugs.
There is one other category of cholesterol medication. Although these drugs are not prescribed very often, they can lower cholesterol when other medicines are not appropriate. These drugs bind to bile acids, precursors to cholesterol. By preventing the reabsorption of cholesterol from the digestive tract, the body eliminates it more effectively. These drugs include cholestyramine (LoCholest, Questran), colestipol (Cholestid), and cole-sevelam (WelChol). |
by Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.
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| The clinical studies have included comparative studies versus conventional cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as lovastatin, pravastatin, simvastatin, gemfibrozil, and probucol. In these studies, policosanol in dosages ranging from 5 to 20 milligrams per day has demonstrated significant improvements in lowering cholesterol levels on a par with these drugs, typically 20 to 30 percent.
In addition to its effects on cholesterol levels, policosanol exerts additional positive effects in the battle against atherosclerosis. |
The Editors of FC&A
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| Some studies show a connection between Alzheimer's and high cholesterol, but in this study, other cholesterol-lowering drugs didn't reduce AD risk.
Health professionals don't recommend taking statins just as protection against AD. And if you do take statins for high cholesterol, they urge you to report any numbness, tingling, or pain in your hands and feet to your doctor. These are symptoms of nerve damage, which can be a side effect of statins.
Healthy habits
You can lower your Alzheimer's risk with an active, challenging lifestyle. |
| This amazing bread works exactly like cholesterol-lowering drugs, but without the side effects. One study found that people who ate six slices of flaxseed bread a day significantly lowered their cholesterol.
More good news. This tasty little seed fights cholesterol and cancer. Researchers are recognizing it to be a tiny double powerhouse in disease prevention. When you eat flaxseed, you not only protect your heart, you also guard against breast, prostate, and colon cancers. Introduce flaxseed to your diet gradually. |
| Remarkable way to outsmart Alzheimer's
Protection from Alzheimer's disease may come from a surprising source - cholesterol-lowering drugs. According to a study at the Boston University School of Medicine, commonly prescribed drugs called statins could lower your risk of developing Alzheimer's.
"This study confirms and extends previous reports and is the largest study on this topic in the U.S.," says lead researcher Dr. Robert C. Green. Following 2,581 people for six years, researchers found that people taking statins had an amazing 79 percent reduction in risk of AD. |
David Heber, M.D., Ph.D.
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 It contains substances called "monacolins," one of which is identical to mevinolin (lovastatin), one of the most widely sold cholesterol-lowering drugs in the world over the last twenty years. At pennies per day, this yeast could decrease deaths from heart disease by 30 percent. Not only is red yeast cheaper than cholesterol-lowering drugs, it is also safer. At over 500 times the human dose in rats and rabbits, no toxic effects have been observed. With cholesterol-lowering drugs, both muscle pain and changes in liver function can occur. |
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