Statins: Detrimental to Health? You decide.

Evidence shows that statins may be one of the most harmful medications with numerous side effects. They're also incredibley profitable for Big Pharma.

Happy Tuesday! It’s a wonderful day to learn about the importance of educating yourself about health, particularly when it comes to statins. After reading today’s post, I think you’ll agree that the more you know about sugar’s effects, the more motivated you’ll be to reduce it.

Are Statins Detrimental to Health?

This is a bold question. But buckle up; I’m prepared to defend it as a legit question.

Sometimes when you’re researching a subject, you come across some real humdingers. Here’s one for you:

If nearly all credible evidence no longer points to high cholesterol causing heart disease (see this post), why are statins (cholesterol-lowering medications) still the highest-prescribed medications?

Check out this graph:

See that winner at the top, the most highly prescribed medication in 2020 at 114.5 million prescriptions? That drug, Atorvastatin, brand name Lipitor, is a statin.

Statista.com says, “For around a decade cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor was one of the company’s top blockbusters.”

Again, if all the evidence points away from cholesterol causing heart disease, why are most doctors still prescribing a pill to lower cholesterol, especially when this pill has terrible side effects in many patients?

Since doctors genuinely want what’s best for their patients, I’m assuming they’re prescribing it because pill pushers, er, I mean drug reps, have studies the drug companies funded showing them it does something.

And who has time to do their own research on Pubmed? Well, actually I do, though I don’t work full-time as a doc. Citizen journalism—it’s the wave of the future. On the other hand, I also don’t get paid to know what’s best for patients. 🤔

Thankfully, there are a growing number of cardiologists who have bothered to do their own research and are completely opposed to statins.

The British cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhatra wrote a book called A Statin Free Life where he argues that the side effects of statins far outweigh any debatable benefits.

Furthermore, there is a group of over 100 medical and academic doctors who formed a society called THINCS: The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics. Here’s what their landing page reads:

Members of this group represent different views about the causation of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, some of them are in conflict with others, but this is a normal part of science. What we all oppose is that animal fat and high cholesterol play a role. The aim with this website is to inform our colleagues and the public that this idea is not supported by scientific evidence; in fact, for many years a huge number of scientific studies have directly contradicted it.   

This coalition published two books both of which are a collection of essays from different scientists, researchers, and cardiologists:

Fat and Cholesterol Don’t Cause Heart Attacks and Statins Are Not The Solution by Dr. Malcom Kendrick and eight other medical and academic doctors.

Lipid Lunacy: Diet Delusions and What Really Causes Heart Disease by Paul Rosch, editor, and nine other medical doctors and PhD scientists.

Here are a couple of other titles to check out and to give to your doctor to read if he recommends a statin:

How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol: And Kill You One Cell at a Time by Dr. Hannah Yoseph

A Statin Nation: Damaging Millions in a Brave New Post-health World by Dr. Malcom Kendrick.

The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It by Dr. Malcom Kendrick.

Should I be worried about high LDL (the “bad” cholesterol?)

Not according to the newest guidelines:

Unfortunately, they forgot to hold a press conference to inform everyone that what they’ve been saying for the last 60 years is completely wrong.

But I want to turn the question around and ask the opposite question: Should I be worried about having too low LDL?

According to this review study, perhaps. Especially if you’re older.

The British Medical Journal published a systematic review of 19 cohort studies including 68,094 people over age 60 to determine the correlation between high blood levels of LDL (the supposed “bad” cholesterol) and mortality. The review concludes:

High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. [The higher the levels of LDL, or "bad cholesterol" in a person, the lower their chance of dying.] This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic [causing plaque build-up in arteries]). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis. Moreover, our study provides the rationale for a re-evaluation of guidelines recommending pharmacological reduction of LDL-C [aka statins] in the elderly as a component of cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.¹

Everyone agrees it’s good to have high HDL. But this study found that those with higher LDL lived longer. Why are LDL-lowering statins the most widely prescribed drug again? 🤷🏼‍♀️

The BMJ study continues by asking:

Is high LDL-C beneficial?

One hypothesis to address the inverse association between LDL-C and mortality is that low LDL-C increases susceptibility to fatal diseases. Support for this hypothesis is provided by animal and laboratory experiments from more than a dozen research groups which have shown that LDL binds to and inactivates a broad range of microorganisms and their toxic products.²⁷ Diseases caused or aggravated by microorganisms may therefore occur more often in people with low cholesterol, as observed in many studies.²⁸ In a meta-analysis of 19 cohort studies, for instance, performed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and including 68,406 deaths, TC [total cholesterol] was inversely associated with mortality [the higher the cholesterol the lower the mortality rate] from respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, most of which are of an infectious origin.²⁹

So, LDL inactivates microorganisms and their toxic products, and there is no evidence that it causes heart disease, but many Americans are still on LDL-lowering statins? 🤔

Here are some of the crucial roles LDL (aka “bad” cholesterol) plays in the body:

Since LDL synthesizes vitamin D, some doctors now wonder if one reason for chronically low vitamin D levels is related to people not getting enough cholesterol from eating fewer eggs and less fatty red meat than people used to.

Again, if LDL does not cause heart disease and has many important functions in the body, and higher levels are associated with longer life, why again are we taking statins to lower LDL cholesterol? Is it because statins have no side effects so we just take them in case they have some magical benefit that we don’t yet know about? Oh wait, but statins do have side effects, dangerous side effects.

List of side effects of statins:

Increased Risk of Diabetes: A study titled Statins and Diabetes: What are the Connections? says,

Randomized trials suggest moderate-intensity statins increase type 2 diabetes risk by around 11% with a potential further 12% moving to high-intensity statins, such that high intensity may increase risk by 20% or more relative to placebo.²

The following list of side effects is from an article on the Weston A. Price Foundation website written by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD. It’s titled Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven’t Been Told About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines. It goes very in-depth into the history of statins and is well-documented.

• Muscle Pain and Weakness: "Dr. Beatrice Golomb found that 98 percent of patients taking Lipitor and one-third of the patients taking Mevachor (a lower-dose statin) suffered from muscle problems."³

• Neuropathy: “Taking statins for one year raised the risk of nerve damage by about 15 percent... For those who took statins for two or more years, the additional risk rose to 26 percent.⁴”

• Heart Failure: “Cardiologist Peter Langsjoen studied 20 patients with completely normal heart function. After six months on a low dose of 20 mg of Lipitor a day, two-thirds of the patients had abnormalities in the heart’s filling phase, when the muscle fills with blood. According to Langsjoen, this malfunction is due to Co-Q₁₀ depletion [from statins]. Without Co-Q₁₀, the cell’s mitochondria are inhibited from producing energy, leading to muscle pain and weakness. The heart is especially susceptible because it uses so much energy.⁵^”

• Dizziness: particularly common in elderly people on statins.

• Cognitive Impairment "A study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh showed that patients treated with statins for six months compared poorly with patients on a placebo in solving complex mazes, psychomotor skills, and memory tests."⁶

• Cancer: "In every study with rodents to date, statins have caused cancer."⁷

• Depression: This one may not be related to the statins directly, but to its effect of lowering cholesterol. "A study of over 29,000 men in Finland found that low cholesterol levels were associated with an increased risk of hospitalization due to depression and of death from suicide."⁸

If you’re into true crime, you can scroll to the bottom of the above-linked post and read the 176 comments. They are replete with people’s statin stories about ending up in a wheelchair from chronic pain, suddenly having nightmares, kidneys shutting down, waking up in the middle of the street, panic attacks, vertigo, loss of speech, sudden spelling problems, tingling in limbs, nausea, loss of appetite, chronic constipation, muscle spasms, sudden cataracts, and more. These are effects that began for the first time shortly after beginning statin use and sometimes lessened after stopping statins.

One doctor commented on Price’s post: “Doctors are often clinically rated by oversight organizations on how they address heart disease, diabetes, and elevated lipids, cardiologists in particular. Prescribing a statin is a quick and easy checkmark for this rating.”

This interview with Dr. Hannah Yosef has a lot of helpful information about the particular harm statins do in the body to cause so many side effects. Dr. Yosef wrote a book called How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol: And Kill You One Cell at a Time. The book documents the coverup and fraud that led to statins getting FDA-approved despite overwhelming evidence of harm.

In Conclusion

I know that some people will have a hard time accepting that our lord and savior Pfizer could do something so evil as to sell us statin drugs that do tremendous harm to people, especially the elderly, simply for profit. But I want to remind everyone of this headline from the Department of Justice in 2009: Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History in which Pfizer was fined $2.3 BILLION for pleading guilty to fraud.

This statement is particularly interesting to me:

The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs.

Their past fraud by itself doesn't necessarily implicate them in current fraud. However, when so much evidence points to the harm of statins, and the only studies that exonerate them are funded by big pharma, I know who I’m personally going to believe.

Have you had side effects from statins? If so

What Americans Looked Like 100 Years Ago:

It’s hard to spot a single obese person in this video. Not only that, but most people are rail-thin. Even the older men walking by don’t have the slightest gut. What if this is how we were meant live, not for looks, but for health?

The ultra-processed foods (UPFs) started taking over grocery stores in the 50s. There are likely other compounding factors besides just UPFs like the rise of fast food chains, a great increase in consumption of industrial seed oils (corn, soybean oil, etc), government-subsidized high-fructose corn syrup, increased food advertising for soda, and sugar replacing “bad” saturated fat in foods.

1. Ravnskov U, Diamond DM, Hama R, et al. Lack of an association or an inverse association between low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in the elderly: a systematic review. BMJ Open 2016;6:e010401. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010401 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401

2. Sattar, N. (2023). Statins and diabetes: What are the connections? Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 101749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beem.2023.101749

3. Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD on Statin Drugs, March 7, 2002. https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/modern-diseases/dangers-of-statin-drugs-what-you-havent-been-told-about-popular-cholesterol-lowering-medicines/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwwtWgBhDhARIsAEMcxeAsUiBB0htPIIS9SDU3Kph3RV8xCN4QUeyMtS4L3UD4j_OzNEjreWoaAm8jEALw_wcB#gsc.tab=0

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1. Gaist D and others. Neurology 2002 May 14;58(9):1321-2.

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1. Langsjoen PH. The clinical use of HMG Co-A reductase inhibitors (statins) and the associated depletion of the essential co-factor coenzyme Q10: a review of pertinent human and animal data. http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/02/May02/052902/02p-0244-cp00001-02-Exhibit_A-vol1.pdf

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1. Duane Graveline, MD. Lipitor: Thief of Memory, 2004.

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1. Sacks FM et al. N Eng J Med. 1996; 385; 1001-1009.

1. Partonen T and others. British Journal of Psychiatry. 1999 Sep; 175:259-62.

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