Study Creates Cholesterol Confusion

[canoeist52]

Study Creates Cholesterol Confusion
Newspaper Columns, Editorial February 4, 2008

"Even for tried-and-true cholesterol-lowering drugs, the benefit for any given individual may be smaller than people imagine. Lipitor, for example, has been shown in studies to prevent heart attacks.

Newspaper ads capitalize on this, announcing that Lipitor reduces the risk of heart attack by 36 percent. There is an asterisk next to that number, however, and here is the fine print: “That means in a large clinical study, 3 percent of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2 percent of patients taking Lipitor.” (See Business Week, Jan. 17, 2008.)

In other words, if you had 100 people taking Lipitor and another 100 people taking an inactive placebo, there would be one less heart attack after several years among the folks on Lipitor. That certainly matters a great deal if you are the one who was spared. But if you are one of the other 99, the cost and risk of side effects may seem high."


http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/editorial/study_creates_cholesterol_confusion.php

[mac2]

1. Yes...and many of the "studies" are paid for by the drug

company themselves. Do you think the results might be slanted?

Statistics can be manipulated to come out as you desire depending on the type of study, population involved, and questions asked.

I worked in Cholesterol research many years ago. We warned people but the don't listen. It is painful but a low Cholesterol diet has to be followed if it is high. Exercise helps also.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Depends

What are the side effects, and what is the frequency?

[goclark]

I am allergic to all of the drugs ~ OATMEAL

Severe cramps, weak limbs etc.

The doctors would not believe me. They all said it could not be from the medications.

I got off all of the meds and did what a friend told me to do.

At first I had Oatmeal three times a week. Numbers went lower.

Now I have Oatmeal everyday and they are almost normal.

Lots of olive oil, fruit and water etc.

Not saying it works for everyone but it helped me more than Lipitor.

[MindMatter]

5. Severe short-term memory losses are common too

There are lots of reports of that, but somehow the mainstream medical community seems to have missed that.

Taking Vytorin, my daily concentration had gotten so weak I began to wonder if I was starting to have Alzheimer's symptoms. Working on a computer most of the day, my short term memory became so poor that I often found I couldn't even remember why I had switched from one application window to another, and that was just 1/10 of a second in most cases.

I had a chance conversation with a friend who had been on Lipitor for a year. His memory loss was so bad that several times he found himself driving in what should have been familiar areas and he totally lost track of where he was, how he got there, and why. He had to stop and call home to get his bearings. Talk about scary.

He discovered this well-kept secret about statins. He immediately got off the stuff. 10 days later, he felt his memory had returned almost to normal, and 30 days later he felt 100% normal.

After hearing that, I cut my Vytorin dosage in half. 3 days later, I had mostly normal concentration at work. I have continued to take the half dose, even though I feel there is still some impairment. I'm scheduled for a blood test this month. After that, I'm planning to present this situation to my doc.

[grasswire]

12. the carbs in oatmeal are too much for me

I know from experience that oatmeal works on cholesterol. But I just can't handle all the carbs. Maybe there's a way to get the benefit of oatmeal without the carb content. I'd like to hear about it, if so.

[happyslug]

3. One of the commentators on the site had a HDL count of 250.

Why is such a person given medication? When I was put on Lipitor (Actually Lopid, then Lipitor a few years later) my HDL count was over 800 (And I was walking to and from walk about a mile a day at that time, and every 2-3 days I would take a brisk 10-15 miles walk up and down one of my local mountainside). It took me years of continuing to exercise and Medication to get me to 250. Through I should point out since I have been taken my medication (Lopid for several years then Lipitor for several years and for about the last two years Zetia) I no longer had Angina within the first months of me taking my Medication. Why is a person with a 250 reading on any medications? Ideal is 100 for HDL, but the affects of a level of 250 are minor, and generally controllable by diet and exercise (i.e. eliminate all meats, Cheese and Milk products and certain plant food that increases Cholesterol, take in Vitamin B-12, the only known item known to convert HDL to LDL Cholesterol, and exercise about 2 hours a day, ideally exercise that forces you to breath heavily at times, Not all the time, just at times, I bicycle, but at least walk around, exercise is also know to convert HDL to LDL).

HDL Cholesterol is considered "Bad" Cholesterol, LDL is "Good" Cholesterol, you need both to a limited degree, Exercise converts HDL to LDL Cholesterol, so exercise is the best thing you can do about high HDL. You do NOT need to do heavy exercise, biking is ideal at times you have to take deep breaths, but most of the time it is no more than walking. Walking is also good, minimal damage to your knees and feet compared to Jogging. Jogging is very good, but most people can NOT give it the time that is needed. The ideal situation is to bike to work. You work do a good bit of Exercise and replace driving time with exercise time. People forget that once they are home, your mind knows it is a place to relax, so you do. To be effective Exercise MUST be part of your daily life, just like driving to work. Thus replacing driving with biking, even if it takes twice as long, will make exercise part of your daily life, and you will do it every day, unlike people who say I will do it after work, and then drive home. You can NOT exercise at home (Some people can , but most people can NOT), Your mind say it is a safe place, time to eat and relax (and maybe some sex with your mate). Home is NOT a place to go and do a work out, and once you are home you will NOT want to leave till it is time to go back to work. People have to learn what our ancestors did, exercise to and from work and even at work (Heavy labor was the norm prior to WWII). We can NOT convert how we work, but we can change how we get to and from work, and if someone does so he or she will see their cholesterol drop.

As to medications, the biggest problem with medications is the people who truly need them (Myself for example, I have been on Lopid then Lipitor since 1989) are NOT in sufficient numbers to make these drugs profitable. Thus the big push to market them to people who can CONTROL their Cholesterol through diet and exercise. Furthermore many people when told they MUST exercise at least 2 hours a day (Which can include walking) just can NOT do so without changing their lifestyles (Our Lifestyle is heavily depended on the Automobile). The change in Life-styles hurts how corporate america operates, you watch less television (So you do NOT learn the latest MUST HAVE item), you realize that the best exercise is to walk, and by walking you meet your neighbors and get a chance to talk about how things are going in your neighborhood and start to organize to make it better, as oppose to NOT understanding your neighborhood and accept all the problems on hoodlum teens and Dishonest Politicians. You start to realize politics is local and the effort to improve the parks where you can exercise become more important to you then lover taxes. How can Corporate America keep their taxes low if people DEMAND that the local, state and Federal Government do something, anything, to improve the local parks. Once the park is improved other things come up, Sidewalks in Suburbia, bike trails etc, all of which are to small for most corporation to profit by, but demanded by people once they found other people who also demand such improvements.

No, Corporate America wants us to take a pill, and the pill will help us, for then we are happy with poor local parks, no sidewalks and to fear what we do not know (i.e. the local teens) for we are isolated and do NOT know others think like we do because we go around in an isolated box called an Automobile, we live in an isolated cave, known as a Suburban home, we get our news about the local teens from the fear selling Newspapers then by talking to the teens themselves.

[Hannah Bell]

7. LdL is "bad," hdl "good".

but i agree with you about over-drugging.

with numbers that high, you might have familial hypercholesteremia.

btw, you might want to research zetia:

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/heart-and-cardiovascular/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100188008

"cholesterol drug doesn't curb heart attack risk"

[happyslug]

10. Not Family related, my triglycerides are also elevated.

High Cholesterol, Triglycerides are divided into Five Groups:
Type 1- High Cholesterol, Low Triglycerides
Type 2- The same as type1, but family related
Type 3 - High Cholesterol, High Triglycerides
Type 4 - Low Cholesterol, High Triglycerides
Type 5 - Same as 4, but Family Related.

As you can see I have Type 3, the only one that is NOT known to be Family related (I have read a recent report that a researcher has found some that are Family related, but that is just one report not confirmed by any other source). Furthermore no one is my family has the same problem (including Cousins). My family has a tendency to live to a ripe old age, and get hit by a Car (at age 86), a train (in his 60s. the idiot jumped off a train as it stopped and started to walk home and was hit by the train as the train recoiled backward, as trains do, sometime in the 1920s). No my problem is NOT family related.

[Hannah Bell]

11. Not trying to be contrary, or even comment on your situation

which of course you know better than i do.

This is just for the record; there are a number of varieties of familial hypercholesterolemia, & in some there's no increased mortality from heart problems - actually seems to be protective. There are also varieties coincident with high TGs.

Just wanted to put this on the record, not to you particularly, only because general info on cholesterol way over-simplifies the picture.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. It's A Little More Complicated

First, let me put on my asbestos suit... Ah, that's better, here goes:

1. The percentage of people who have a heart attack is low over a few years, but not so low over, say, 30-40 years.

2. Side effects can be both negative and positive. Lipitor and other drugs in the same class (known as statins) also substantially decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, and the bad side effects are rather negligible.

3. Overall, I believe that large studies of people taking Lipitor have found that the total death rate drops by 30% over a few years in groups who take statins vs. those who don't.

There are certainly plenty of bad drugs out there, but statins are actually quite good. Incidentally, groups who take fish oil lower see their death rates drop by slightly more than those who take statins, so take your fish oil!

Aspirin seems to cut heart attacks, but doesn't change death rate. Go figure.

[Hannah Bell]

8. do you have a source for that 30% reduction in death?

i've not seen that in the research i'm familiar with.

[Celebration]

9. Protection from Alzheimer's has been debunked

http://www.naturalnews.com/022726.html

Now comes word, however, that claims statins can prevent AD are just plain wrong. According to research published in the January 16, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, scientists conclude statins offer no protection against Alzheimer's disease.

The research team, headed by Zoe Arvanitakis, MD, MS, Associate Professor of the Department of Neurological Sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, studied 929 Catholic clergy members with an average age of 75. The research subjects, who agreed to have their brains autopsied when they died, participated in the Religious Orders Study, an ongoing study of aging and Alzheimer's disease.

All were free of dementia symptoms when the research project began; they were given annual cognitive tests for up to 12 years to check for developing memory problems. When any participants died, their brains were biopsied in order to definitively find out who had AD.

In all, brain biopsies were performed on 262 individuals - 47 statin users and 215 nonusers. The scientists documented that statin use at any time during the study had no influence on which person had developed the tell-tale plaques of amyloidal beta and neurofibrillary tangles that mark AD. What's more, taking statins played no role in preventing any of the research subjects from having strokes.

[Palermojohnson]

6. cholesterol is confusing.Bad choleterol, good cholesterol

What means what?

[mac2]

13. FDA allows them to lie to us.