Statins are a class of lipid-lowering drugs prescribed to patients under the pretext of preventing heart disease in those with high cholesterol levels.
In 2013 the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines on when to recommend statin therapy to patients. This change, which eliminated treating to target lipid-level goals based on patient risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and instead identified four subgroups of patients for whom high-, moderate-, or low-intensity statin therapy would be recommended, created a wealth of new potential statin drug patients for Big Pharma to exploit.
Estimates of the number of U.S. adults who suddenly became eligible for statin use under the new guidelines ranged from 12.8 million to 45 million, according to Medscape.com. In other words, 1 in 3 U.S. adults and about 1 billion people worldwide suddenly became potential candidates for statin treatment.
Total sales of statin drugs is on a pace to reach $1 trillion by 2020, according to Dr. John Ioannidis, in an editorial he wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JANA). This makes statin drugs big business. But it’s business built on fraud and deceit.
The cholesterol myth proves that super fortunes can be built on the sale of products based on medical myths. This has absolutely nothing to do with medicine or the treatment of disease. It is commerce, pure and simple. It is crime incorporated. The cholesterol myth is so well established and so completely accepted by doctors that there is almost no inquiry into this crime of commerce.
The cholesterol myth is based on the Lipid Hypothesis created by Ancel Keys in the 1950s. The Lipid Hypothesis is a theory that saturated animal fats and cholesterol in our food raise cholesterol levels in the blood. Then the theory goes that high blood cholesterol causes atherosclerosis—leading to obstruction of blood vessels of the heart, and resulting in coronary heart disease.
This reversed the American diet of good omega-3 fats to the consumption of liquid vegetable oils and margarine substituting for coconut oil and animal fat that did our ancestors so well. Well, as profits skyrocketed, deaths from heart disease and cancer did, too.
What is cholesterol?
Cholesterol is actually a heavyweight alcohol with a hormone-like structure that behaves like a fat — being insoluble in water and in blood. Cholesterol has a coating compound called a lipoprotein, which makes it water soluble so it can be carried in the blood. As we will see, cholesterol plays a critical role in body chemistry. To suppress cholesterol levels with cholesterol drugs is to create degenerative disease.
Your body needs cholesterol. It is necessary because:
- Your body uses cholesterol to make hormones that help you deal with stress and protect against heart disease and cancer.
- Your body needs cholesterol to make all the sex hormones, including androgen, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and DHEA.
- Your body uses cholesterol to make vitamin D, vital for the bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction and immune system function.
- The bile salts are made from cholesterol. Bile is vital for digestion and assimilation of dietary fats.
- Cholesterol acts as an antioxidant, protecting us against free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.
- Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain.
- Since serotonin is the body’s natural “feel-good” chemical, it’s not surprising that low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior, depression and suicidal tendencies.
- Mother’s milk is especially rich in cholesterol and contains a special enzyme that helps the baby utilize this nutrient. Babies and children need cholesterol-rich foods throughout their growing years to ensure proper development of the brain and nervous system.
- Dietary cholesterol plays an important role in maintaining the health of the intestinal wall. This is why low-cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.
- Finally, the body uses cholesterol to repair damaged cells. This means that higher cholesterol levels are actually beneficial. Meyer Texon, M.D., a well-known pathologist at New York University Medical Center, points out that indicting fat and cholesterol for hardening the arteries is like accusing white blood cells of causing infection, rather than helping the immune system to address it.
A number of studies have shown that 1) use of statin drugs does not lead to the lowering of the rate of heart attacks and 2) low cholesterol levels cause you to jump from the frying pan of heart disease risk into the fire of death by all sorts of other diseases.
What kind of diseases? Cerebral hemorrhage, gall bladder disease and many types of cancer; falling cholesterol is a marker for several types of cancer.
Cholesterol drugs are bad for human health. They destroy CoQ10 and they complicate general health in many ways. They have been shown to cause type II diabetes, memory loss and other cognitive disorders. They cause muscle pain, memory loss, rashes, body aches, bladder pain, constitpation, dry mouth, headaches, panic attacks and a host of other side effects. Go to askapatient.com to see what statin users are saying about the effects of their drugs.
And deaths from heart disease and all other causes increased 11 percent for each 1 percent drop in cholesterol according to a 30-year follow-up of the famous Framingham Study.
You’ve probably heard this before from me. That’s because it seems no matter how many times and how many ways I write it, this information keeps getting drowned out by all the moneyed interests.
On trillion dollars is a lot of money, but 1 in 3 Americans is not enough for the medical-industrial complex. There’s even a push to make statins available over the counter in order to draw in another 27 percent of patients who have not yet been victimized.
So I feel like I have to keep talking about it because despite the evidence from even prestigious mainstream sources, the problem keeps getting worse and more people go on statin drugs even though they will not do a thing for your heart.
Now a new study is out showing that 92 percent of people with high cholesterol levels lived longer. Published in BMJ Open journal, the study involving nearly 70,000 people found there was no link between what has traditionally been considered “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of over 60-year-olds from cardiovascular disease.
Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. The fixation on cholesterol as a major cause of heart disease defies the last 20-plus years of science and deflects from real causes such as the damage (via glycation) that sugars such as glucose and fructose inflict on tissues including the lining of arteries, causing chronic inflammation and resultant plaque.
Says Ron Rosedale, M.D., “Using the same conventional medical thinking that is being used for cholesterol would lead one to believe that doctors should reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by taking out everybody’s brain.”
My trusted friend Dr. Michael Cutler understands this mentality all too well.
Michael is a medical doctor, but after years of working in a conventional medical environment he felt compelled to change direction. He was tired of being smothered by dictated protocols that didn’t help his patients. He reveals the truth about what he saw as a young doctor in his book, A Doctor’s Treasury of Hushed-Up Natural Heart Cures and Deadly Deceptions of Popular Heart Treatments. In it, he speaks the truth about:
- Natural alternatives for avoiding a heart attack and reversing disease,
- The biggest heart treatment deceptions and rip-offs in American today,
- And the sobering facts about traditional heart treatments nobody — other than me — has dared tell you.
I recommend this book often. Otherwise people continue to get the same old mouthful of deceit from their doctors.
For more on this subject:
Statin drugs at best ineffective, at worse deleterious
Cholesterol drugs can deplete CoQ10 and increase heart failure risk
Cholesterol and low-fat madness
Forget statin drugs – you need cholesterol
