You may not have heard of some recent news that is happening across the pond in the mother country concerning taking statins. You know statins as those drugs that are recommended to every man, woman, and child to “prevent heart attack due to all that pesky plaquing in the arteries.” For the past 40 years, our national government has had a vendetta against the little waxy substance called cholesterol.
Even dietary changes are happening. Hopefully it’s not another 40 years before they change the medical management of elevated cholesterol. Before you decide to take a statin or if people you know and love are on statins, you may want to consider a couple things.
Type 2 Diabetes
Taking statins can increase your chance of Type 2 diabetes by almost 50%, while doing NOTHING to prolong the lives of those at a low risk heart attack. In England, close to 8 million Brits take statins. It’s closer to 25 million Americans taking the essential molecule blocking drugs. Is it really working to reduce heart disease?
Researchers in Finland studied 8,749 non-diabetic men to see whether taking two of the most popular statins increased the chance of developing Type 2 diabetes.
They found those who took simvastatin or atorvastatin were 46 per cent more likely to develop the condition and those on higher doses were at even greater risk.
Last year, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issued guidance making 40 per cent of adults eligible for statins.
It said anyone thought to have a greater than 10 per cent chance of a heart attack or stroke within 10 years should be offered the drug on the NHS. It means virtually all men aged over 55 and women over 65 are encouraged to take statins to stave off fatal cardiovascular disease.
Back in 2013, the American College of Cardiology created new guidelines that would increase statin use in the states by an additional 13 million Americans.
If that study that involved 8700 people in Finland translates into 38 million Americans, we should see an increase in diabetes by at least 19 million Americans as well as a drastic increase in heart disease in the coming decades.
“Ironically diabetes triples the risk of heart disease for men and multiplies it by five for women, so the very drugs given to prevent heart disease may well be causing it in, potentially, millions of people. Many researchers have been aware for many years that the true rate of side effects from statins have been hidden and under-reported.”
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Parkinson’s
Dr Kailash Chand, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, was speaking following research which found those who take the cholesterol-lowering drugs are more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease in later life than those who do not.