Healthy Bytes

Cholesterol: problem or symptom

read time: 216 words, about a minute

I’m sure you’ve seen TV commercials that say – er, I mean imply – that if you take statins to lower your cholesterol, you’ll be heart happy, live a long life, frolic in the waves.

Meanwhile, back in the land of reality: statins have become the most prescribed – and profitable – drugs, and death by heart attack… still the #1 cause of deaths in America.

So what are you paying for?
The effects of statins are:
Lower cholesterol, fatigue, muscle soreness, muscle weakness, peripheral neuropathy, cognitive impairment, short temper and some others.

Now following the premise of pharms…
High cholesterol causes heart attacks. Statins lower cholesterol.

They do show that statins lower cholesterol.
However, heart attack deaths are not really lowering.
Additionally, a majority of heart attack victims have normal cholesterol.

So statin drug makers are making big bucks,
statin user are dealing with significant side effects,
statin users and their insurance companies are paying big bucks
and heart attacks are… about the same.

The word sham comes to mind.

Oh yea, magnesium is a natural statin…
Cholesterol is produced in the liver.
Statins – and magnesium – inhibit the enzymatic pathway.
Magnesium also prevents calcification in the arteries which can result in blood clots, which can cause heart attacks.

So if cholesterol isn’t the ticket what is?
Come back tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Mon, 12.Feb.2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under Health, Pharmaceuticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.