Statins: Kiss of Death? – KathleenBarnes.com

If you listen to Big Pharma’s brainwashing campaign, statin drugs are the best thing since sliced bread. Everybody ought to pop them daily, just because….

Because WHAT?

Well, Big Pharma tells us, we need to keep our cholesterol levels low so we don’t have clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. OK. Nobody wants these, but, first of all, there is a highly questionable link between cholesterol levels (unless they are in the 400+ range) and heart attacks and strokes.

Worse yet, statin drugs have been strongly linked to a host of side effects that are themselves terrible.

Several years ago, the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) issued a warning that statin drugs cause memory loss. This isn’t even the much-vaunted Joe Mercola or some other holistic practitioner. This is the FDA, friend of Big Pharma (some would called it the bedmate of Big Pharma), based on a strong body of evidence.

More than 300 adverse health effects have been linked to statin drugs, including 28 distinct modes of toxicity, according to the reputable research site, GreenMedInfo.com. If you want to look at all the studies, be my guest.

Worse yet, the research upon which Big Pharma (read Bug Biz—the statins drug industry puts a tidy $30 billion or more in its pockets every year) has based its case for FDA approval is suspect in many ways, including the fact that it excluded patients who had negative side effects

Now the FDA has added more warnings.

Diabetes

Statins cause an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes. Wait a minute! Statins are often prescribed for people with diabetes because of their high risk for heart attacks, whether they have actually had a heart attack or not. Now we learn that statins actually cause diabetes!

Muscle damage

The FDA also tells us that statins increase the risk of muscle damage. There have been reports of severe fatigue, twitching and there is even a slow, shuffling, wobbly walk associated with statins that has been dubbed the “statin shuffle.”

Liver damage

A rare side effect of statin use, says the FDA, but one that was taken seriously for many years until recently, when the FDA inexplicably revoked its recommendation for routine liver function testing for people using statins.

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There’s more:

Congestive heart failure: The statins deplete the body’s natural supply of Coenzyme Q10, (C0-Q10), a nutrient that keeps the heart muscle strong and steady. When the heart muscle fails, sudden cardiac arrest and death are the results.

Endocrine disruption: At least 16 studies show that statins interfere with hormone function, especially testosterone in men. (Note: the omnipresent TV ads for pharmaceuticals for men who take statins and experience erectile dysfunction. More money for Big Pharma.

Depression: Low cholesterol has been linked to depression. Statin drugs aim for unhealthy low cholesterol readings, which explains in part why many people on these drugs become depressed.

May cause cancer: Research shows statins promote blood vessel growth of the same type of blood vessels that feed cancerous tumors. One long-term study showed a significant increase in the risk of breast cancer among women who took statins.

The great cholesterol myth:

Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a board certified cardiologist who is an expert in the field of natural cardiology and author of The Great Cholesterol Myth, says:

“Let’s face it, cholesterol is something your body needs. If you look at the MRFIT study [Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial] where they looked at 180,000 men over a period of 13 years (1973-80); men with cholesterol of 330 had less hemorrhagic stroke than men with cholesterol less than 180. If you look at cholesterol numbers, the higher cholesterol number would give you protection from hemorrhagic stroke. (I’m not talking about ischemic stroke now but hemorrhagic stroke.)

… [W]e need cholesterol in our skin to activate vitamin D3 from sunlight. We need cholesterol to make our sex hormones… to make our adrenal hormones. We need it for lubrication. We need it for neurotransmitter function in the brain. When LDL is driven too low, it’s no wonder that a lot of patients develop memory problems or pre-Alzheimer’s, or even total global amnesia, which is really losing one’s memory. It’s very frightful and I have seen several cases.… There are so many other aspects that in my mind play a much bigger role (in causing heart disease) that I put cholesterol down at the low end of the spectrum.”