I’ve been on statins for probably 30 years, 80 mg/day right now. My dad and both grandads died of heart attacks in their mid 50s, most of my uncles died in their mid 50s. I have very high triglycerides and my cholesterol ratio is way off in the wrong direction. I’m 75 now and never thought I’d make it this far. Given my family history and my own very poor blood chemistry, I think they have played a part in keeping me alive this long. I’ll stick with them.
Which ones are you on, Thomas? I was 10mg Lipitor for the longest time, then went up to 20mg. Somewhere in there he tried switching me to Crestor, but it immediately gave me muscle pains, so I went back to Lipitor. After I had a supposed Transient Ischemic Attack in early 2020, the cardiologist doubled the dosage to 40mg because Lipitor is supposed to stop your platelets from sticking together at that dosage (even though I have no evidence of such a condition.) He told me that the higher doses carry slight incremental risk...the real risk is taking them at any dose in the first place. Still, I'm gonna get my GP to cut the dosage back down to 20mg. When I've gone completely off them, my numbers have skyrocketed. My mother had high cholesterol (was on statins) and lived to 82...she died of complications from dementia. She also had some heart issues, but it's not what killed her. My close male relatives also died in their 50s, but all from cancer.
My father died of a heart attack at 45 and I am in my 70s now. No statins. You cannot simply state that statins are responsible for a longer life span.
I've been in Lipitor and, later, Crestor. After cramping, restless leg syndrome and a few other side effects that may (or may not) have been caused by the statins, I discussed not taking them with my doctor, and she agreed that it was a reasonable choice. My cholesterol levels are sometimes barely over the normal levels, but usually on the high side of average. I've since found that if I fast for a few days before going in for blood screening, they don't nag me about statins.
I’m on atorvastatin now (Lipitor) and have been for a long time. It seems to be the most effective for me. My triglycerides are still high but, like you, off the drugs my levels are literally off the charts. My levels (triglycerides) were so high on one test they could not read them at the time. Also, just a comment about pharmaceuticals vs. natural compounds. Many of the drugs we take are in fact just purified natural compounds, including statins (discovered in yeast broths). We don’t invent these things from scratch, we discover them in living world around us. Labs then seek to isolate, purify and maybe tweak to make a product. We are not nearly clever enough yet to simply make something up and have it work. There really is little need to do so when Mother Nature has already made compounds we can’t even imagine. This is one reason biologists worldwide are in a race to analyse as much as they can from the dwindling reservoirs (e.g. rain forests) where there is so much abundance of undiscovered potential therapeutics.
. I can make that statement on better than the anecdotal evidence you state. Here are just a couple of many studies. “Results Pravastatin treatment for 3.2 years reduced CHD death in the full cohort, hazard ratio (HR) 0.80, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.68–0.95, p = 0.0091 and fatal coronary events or coronary hospitalisations in the Scottish cohort (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.69–0.95, p = 0.0081) over 8.6 years. There was no reduction in stroke or all-cause mortality. Cancer risk was not increased in the full cohort (HR 1.08, 95% CI 0.96–1.21, p = 0.22).” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072642 “Lowering LDL cholesterol and increasing HDL cholesterol with statin therapy prevents myocardial infarctions and other manifestations of coronary artery disease and prolongs life (10,11). Statins also appear to prevent sudden death in patients with coronary artery disease in at least 2 of the randomized trials (12,13), an effect that is also found in meta-analyses (5)…” https://www.jacc.org/doi/full/10.1016/j.jacc.2010.12.048 Can I prove a statin has prolonged my life? No. Can you prove I would have lived this long without it? No. Does a statin work for everyone? No? Are there many people who don’t need statins? Yes. There is nothing I know in biology that is 100% anything. Knowledge vs. belief: we evaluate our knowledge from the world and then form our own beliefs as to what it means. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I believe things which have been confirmed by experimental science. Anecdotal evidence, one way or the other, is not experimental science. In my case, anecdotal evidence has experimental science to support it. Is that science universal in its findings about statins? No, science in general doesn’t work that way.
I think 40 years ago the optimum range for cholesterol was 240-250 but I can’t say for sure. It just seems like I remember that was the number my husband’s doctors was looking for him to reach at that time. As I said somewhere on the forum before, my husband thinks he has always had high cholesterol. He was around 30 years old the first time he was tested and it was high then. He has never been over weight or sedentary. His diet is good. He takes no cholesterol pills or any other meds. I think Pharma and the CDC want everyone on some kind of drug, therefore they lower the range. I think this is true with cholesterol, blood pressure, thyroid and so many more. And I think it also true with a lot of the preventative tests as well. Once they get you thinking it is necessary to have all these tests, your mind goes there too and you get scared not to have them. Don’t get me wrong, I think some tests are very good but I also think some are unnecessary to have so often. There is always money to be made with prescribing long term pills and yearly tests.
I've been on Simvastatin for years. No side effects that I can tell. I'm 80 and still chugging. Docs know more about medicine than I do.
Yep, until the release of statins, the "normal" upper limit was 240-260 mg/dl depending on the method used to measure. Big Pharma, after they discovered the side effect of a new anti-inflammatory was that it lowered cholesterol, needed a way to get people on the drug for life. That way was to lower the reference ranges to levels where most people couldn't attain them without help from drugs. I attended lectures given by the folks who developed the early stains form a natural red yeast extract that had been used as an anti-inflammatory by naturopaths for years--centuries probably since it came from Chinese medicine. This is the man who taught me about statins, their plus and minus, alternatives, etc. A brilliant man. Just as any drug you take should be a personal choice, statins are the same. I really don't care whether anyone takes them or not as long as it is an informed personal choice and not something forced on them by their physician or others. The body needs cholesterol to perform any number of functions, including brain activity and steroid hormones. Your body says you need X amount of it and you are short-circuiting that process with statins. Statins don't prevent the absorption of cholesterol; they prevent the liver from making what it "thinks" you need. They also reduce the production of Co-enzyme Q10, which was discovered after the drugs were released to the market and is now recommended as a supplement to counteract one of the other side effects of the drug. There may be other side effects yet to be found. I won't take them because I fear dementia more than heart attacks.
Yes, the lower the "normal" numbers are, the more people can be put on drugs. They do the same thing with diabetes medications. I have a friend who is 87. He has no history of diabetes. His doctor put him on Metformin because his fasting glucose was around 110, when (according to his doctor) it should be under 100. Absolutely ridiculous to expect an 87 year old to have the same body function as a 20 year old. After the drug caused stomach problems, he questioned the need for it. His doctor then said, "Well....maybe you're not really diabetic.......but the drug will prevent diabetes. He stopped taking it against his doctor's advice.
And good doctors get compromised because it's now a Standard-by-Rumor, so they are exposed to lawyers, insurance companies, and licensing boards (in that order) should a patient with "untreated" high cholesterol have a heart attack. According to the American Heart Association, there are more than 356,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) annually in the U.S., nearly 90% of them fatal. That's a lot of patient-exposure. You better believe the system is as aggressive in testing for statins as they are lax in testing for the vax.
I had a [supposed] TIA, and the cardiologist doubled my Lipitor because it's supposed to stop platelets from sticking together, even though a Vascular Screening I had just paid out-of-pocket for 5 months earlier showed no such problem, and the Doppler scan the hospital did also showed no such problem. Then one day the guy said "I'm not so sure you even had a stroke," to which I replied "Then reduce my statin dosage back to where it was." He refused, telling me that the side effect risk is not dosage-dependent...it's present as soon as you started taking any amount. I told him I did not care, that there was still no medical reason for the doubled-dosage, so please put it back. He actually refused. The looks you get when you ask "What's the standard of care behind that?" is telling. But in scenarios that your friend has, the problem arises when you have "an event" and are incapacitated, and your medical records are inaccurate. Inaccuracies may drive treatment options, they may cause a treatment to be avoided due to interactions, and they will certainly cause the hospital staff to make sure you don't "miss a dose" of something you're not even taking.
I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I had a doctor who said that he thought everyone 40 years old and older should be taking a statin drug.
Sounds like something an allopathic doc would say, they likely get a nice commission on every new patient they get.