The Shocking Stats of Cholesterol
Cholesterol medicine was first officially and legally introduced in 1987, only 30 years ago and was still quite experimental at that point. It was originally made with a focus on people who had hypercholesterolemia. Yet within just a few decades, it’s the highest selling classification of drugs in the world.
Cholesterol, in a natural level, is crucial for your body’s health. It helps produce cell membranes, hormones, digestive materials and even parts of your brain.
In 2002, the American Heart Association, the FDA, and other large medically related companies began a push to double the amount of people on statins (the major compound in cholesterol medicines.) The campaign has been successful and now even more people take the drug.
It’s a big enough issue for well-known doctors such as Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Health to say this increase is “not good” in 2013, the same year that AstraZeneca, the producer of Crestor, made $5.4 billion. “For people with no history of heart disease, but who are trying to prevent heart disease, there is already a tremendous amount of overuse of statins in my view in this country,” says Topol. “So my concern is that the new guidelines will lead to potentially even more promiscuous use of these statins than already exists.”
Many doctors would prefer that patients try diet and exercise before going on statins as most studies of cholesterol medicines were on people who already had a heart disease event. The preventative power of statins is not proven and some believe that it might even have an opposite effect.
Yet, some prominent doctors are even pushing that EVERYONE over the age of 40 should start on statins, reasoning that it helps with inflammation. But why lower normal cholesterol levels to have anti-inflammatory benefits when plenty of supplements like MSM+C can do it instead without any dependency risks or side effects.
Alexander Turchin, MD of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s hospital did a study on the side effects of statins after having a patient report some after taking the medicine. The data was from 100,000 people between 2000 to 2008. 1 in 6 had side effects and two thirds lost the side effects after dropping the medicine. If statins are a safe and healthy options for lowering cholesterol, why so many side effects? Symptoms included muscle and joint pain, spasms, nausea, diarrhea, and constipation.
Today, 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 45 take a statin.
The important fact to know is how the effectiveness of this drug is reported. This could blow your mind. A group of placebo recipients had a 3% occurrence of heart attacks, as compared to the 1.9% occurrence in the Lipitor group. So the study claimed a 30% reduction in heart attack risk. You wouldn’t buy a car that advertised, “Only 30% of wreck victims are severally injured or killed!” That means AstraZeneca got paid $3.5 billion to NOT prevent heart attacks…
For more information on the truth of cholesterol, watch Roy in the videos below:
