Question Statins
I have learned a vast amount over the past 3 months since taking control of my health by changing my lifestyle. No longer do I blindly accept what my doctor prescribes, nor do I always agree with his assessment or opinion. I am not a doctor, but I do feel I am healthier now than I have been in probably the last 10-15 years. Many of the nagging ailments I had are diminished or complete gone. My blood test results show me improving and the bathroom scale has me down 31 pounds as of this morning!
What frustrates me further are doctor’s championing their cause, while patients are starting to question treatment issues. This after the FDA said they would require further safety warnings on the labels of the cholesterol-lowering drugs. “This news will make the care of my patients more difficult and less effective,” said Dr. Richard Honaker in a recent ABC World News report.
I was somewhat frustrated when I was told I would not be able to lower my cholesterol on my own and would require statins the rest of my life. This is what I was told in July, 2011 when I had my physical and the doctor went over my blood test results. I did what many Americans would, I started researching cholesterol on the Internet. That is what probably frustrates doctors more. “Some patients are always reading up on their medications on the Internet, and it seems like they only read the negative and not the positive,” said Honaker. “It’s going to be an uphill battle.”
As I have said in the past, healthy people don’t need doctors, so it comes as no real surprise that people, like me will stress the negative and not the positive when I read about a drug on the Internet. I was told by my doctor up front that the statin I was being prescribe could cause liver failure. Great side effect! Why in the hell would I want to start taking medication if it could cause a bodily organ to fail?
I will consider myself very lucky that my total cholesterol (TC) was only 263. Still against the advice of my doctor I took myself off the statin and changed my diet. I proved to myself and more importantly to my doctor I could get my cholesterol under control and be able to manage it without the use of medication. To date I am down 64 points on my TC and continuing to eat a plant-based, whole food diet.
Unfortunately my doctor doesn’t believe cutting out meat, dairy and oil are the correct way to go about improving my health (and blood). Yet he wanted me to eat more fat (30%) and not cut foods, like meat out of my diet. I tried that, it didn’t work. I followed a plant based lifestyle that Dr. John McDougall supports and I am eating my way to health.
I fully expect to have even better results when I get my blood tested at the end of March. I am hoping to see my TC down another 25-30 points, with a decrease in LDL and an increase in HDL. Hopefully my Triglycerides continue to fall, as they were still a bit high, something that could be related to the weight loss I had experienced leading up to the blood test. So from here on out I will question ANYTHING prescribed by my doctor. That goes for the 50,000 IU Vitamin D supplement I was prescribed in January.
NOTE: I found this comment while reading through some of McDougall’s Newsletters as it relates to red yeast rice compared to statins (with their side effects), “A recent study, using an electron microscope and biochemical tests, examined the muscle tissues of patients on statins, and found evidence of muscle cell damage in over 70% of people on statins, even when they had no complaints of muscle pain” (source).
