But what about those of us with statin damage?

Dear Fine Minds on sci.med.cardiology

I've followed the discussion on the new Liquid Drano with interest. I am not a scientist, or even able to hold my own with those in that thread, but I would like to make these points. First of all there were under 30 people in the part of the study that took the chemical.

Then, this is all well and good, a new possible treatment for those of

our arteries because for many of us, no amount of fibre, or fish oil is going to do it.

seemingly irreparable damage to the myelin sheath (multiple sclerosis and guillan barre like symptoms) and mitochondrial damage to muscles, and that continues in former statins users, according to Dr. S.
Phillips (www.impostertrial.com) up to four years after stopping statins.

Where's the heartfelt discussion on sci.med.cardiology for the possible mechanism of this damage, and where's the money for a drug or treatment to reverse the mitochondrial damage caused to some who took statins. Where's the "intelligent, scientific" discussion on this board about that? That's not as easy, is it.

Try something hard.

And remember, there are those who still haven't recovered from yesteday's "Liquid Drano". I and many others would very much appreciate it if you would turn your fine scientific minds to the question of statin damage, and recovery.

Thanks MFG total cholesterol 520

Majority is 51%. Are you condoning destroying the health of up to 49
MILLION people with statin damage? Hippocrates shudders.

You are absolutely and completely wrong! Large body of reports of people 2,
3, and 4 years out, still literally, medically and legally disabled by these drugs.

but not understanding, experience, and certainly no suggestion for remediation treatment

What about the import of the damage to nerve, muscle, mitochondria, brain, cognitive abilities, memory and speech?

Cardiologists unleashed this class of drugs on the newly-defined 'hypercholesterolemia condition' that was previously deemed normal. Do all the good you can, but do not for an instant believe that you have no responsibilty for the harm caused to so many. This damage does not go away with just the passage of time. These people need treatment when they are disabled 2, 3, 4 and more years out. You made the toxic mess, you have an obligation to help clean it up. Now is not too soon to start (actually it is years too late).

Your flippant reply displays your ignorance.

Myopathy? Sure, and myositis, and rhabdomyolysis. You forgot some of the other side-effects of statins:
Stroke, bleeding in the brain. One report of actual shrinkage of the brain to the same degree as the cholesterol reduction - verified by MRI at time of prescription and MRI at end of tolerance upon myriad adverse effects.
Polyneuropathy, peripheral neuropathy.
Mitochondrial damage, with extreme exhaustion due to inability for OxPhos functioning, depletion of ATP and oxidation of glutathion.
Short-term memory loss and amnesia. Speech problems, such as aphasia.

Damage to the degree that statin-damaged patients are commonly misdiagnosed as having MS, ALS, Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophe, and other ailments, all the while their doctors are denying it could have anything to do with the statins.

These are not problems solved by discussion on a molecular biology

pocket-change investigations, they deserve serious funding for serious studies. This is the most widely prescribed class of drugs in the world, and includes the most widely prescribed drug in the world. AND this is a set of side effects inflicted by cardiologists - it is time cardiologists addressed the harm they have inflicted and

1) develop a way of screening patients so that those likely to be disabled are not prescribed, and
2) find a treatment for the folks already damaged.

We are talking about large numbers of people with serious damage to their health. You could be serious and civil in your discussion. Fortune
Magazine's numbers from last fall indicated 106 MILLION people on statins.
Muscle damage is seen on the order of 30%, per Smart Money magazine article of November 2003. Brain effects are from 2% to 4%. That means there are over 32 MILLION people with damage to their health.

No, I use them often, when appropriate. However, recommended LDL levels seem to be on a downward trend, and this has placed financial and physical hardships on many people. LDL by itself is perhaps not the only thing one should focus on. You cannot miss the forest for the trees. If one is wanting to prevent heart attack and stroke, or to potentially reverse the atherosclerosis that has developed, then each plan must be individualized for that person. Not everyone wears a size 9 shoe in other words.

Probably runs about equal, if because of the statin damage I cannot move to exercise, let alone prepare my food and look after myself properly; or work; and must live in less than desirable circumstances (because of lack of money for proper food, health care and dental care) and my already compromised arteries clog up further because exercise is the only possible control but I can't do that. And when I do a face plant will they say cardiovascular disease, or statin-induced morbidity?

And further, back to try something hard: you are all very glib. I am trying to show you a mirror. What you do here, picking the easy and the esoteric, is waste the talent, intelligence and expensive educations you have.

In my next life, I'll do what you suggest, and study science. For this one, now into my seventh decade, with a statin-addled brain, completely depleted resources owing to statin-induced illness (which sorry hasn't followed your flow chart whichever one of you tossed that out)I just hoped to spur you to something more useful than what I have read.

You may publish here all the self congratulatory compliments you like.
I see nothing to indicate you deserve them.

Try something hard. You are all capable of it.

My husband's health status, disabled on all counts mentioned due to 4 years of Lipitor, is proof that I live with every day. His continued disability, with confirmation that many others are in the same ongoing state long after discontinuing the statins are proof that the conditions mentioned on the label in Canada and the condition published in Australia are quite real and a definite threat to health. The lack of label information in the US leads to the lack of research on screening out the vulnerable and lack of research on treatment for the stricken.

Label inconsistencies to you. Shattered lives in constant excruciating pain to many.

Although many cardiologists and other statin-prescribing doctors are in denial, the investment community has been aware of the statin problems and able to take them into account. The Wall Street Journal's Tara Parker Pope has run multiple articles on statin dangers, and now Smart Money magazine's
Eleanor Laise has also warned investors of the life-altering damage.

At this time it is vastly underestimated. We know Baycol killed over 130 people by the time it was taken off the market. We know all the statins had rhabdomyolysis deaths, and the others continue to market. We know that, while the muscle damage is acknowledged, the nerve damage received only brief mention by the AHA, ACC, and NHLBI joint statement, yet it is definitely established for periperal and larger nerves. We know there are brain effects, including reduced cognition and memory, and one who has absolute proof of a literal reduction in the size of the brain by a comparable percentage to the cholesterol reduction. We know there were bleeding strokes in the brain in the initial testing with dogs by all the statin companies, and we know that even the latest studies show brain bleeding and stroke - yet they misreport the brain effects as 'secondary outcomes.'

One brain destroyed is too many - there are between 2 MILLION and 4 MILLION as of mid-October 2003.

I agree, the dice must be rolled. There is no other option.

To clarify our position:

You must decide one of two things - to pursue a treatment or not. There are no other choices. We are not referring to statins only here.

The statement applies to any choice we make in life, not just about statin therapy!

If you have the truth on risks, you can make an informed decision. We were told that for a 50 year old vigorous type-A successful twice CEO male, the
Lipitor would be far better than risk of a bypass.

Had he had the bypass, it is highly likely that he would be healthy and productive today. Bypass is known to sometimes result in cognitive effects.
However, no doctor, not even the Physician's insert, mentioned that Lipitor could cause cognitive deficit, short-term memory loss, mitochondrial damage, muscle wasting, elevated CK, chest pain, aphasia, amnesia, fatigue, weakness, neuropathy, constant pain, etc. No prognosis, no known treatment.

You make an informed decision based upon information. For the most part, statins have been hyped beyond all recognition, and the doctors are bigger believers in the spin than their patients.

There are more people on this class of drugs than any other. These 106 million people deserve to have the information.

Why, for example, does the Canadian label indicate the CoQ10 deficiency caused by statins, but not the US label? Why, for example, when the
Australian Drug administration published in 1998 that statins "Make you
Forget" does the FDA still, to this day, not require memory loss to be added to the label?

How is this conducive to properly concluding anything?

Yes, I agree that we are really still in pre-school when it comes to understanding why the body works the way it does, and how medications interact with boggling array of biochemical pathways and disease interactions. Whenever I think I have something figured out, all I have to do is look at a fractal image, and I am then promplty reminded that there is a long way to go until we do understand everything.

It worries me that changing protocol for cholesterol, blood pressure, exercise, etc by the expert panals may be driven in part by the lobbying efforts of the big pharmeceutical players. I have seen so many patients struggle to meet these benchmarks, both financially and physically, and many throw their hands up in disgust, with the feeling that the game is unfair; like someone moved the goalposts in the middle of the game, when they were about to score the winning goal.

I am terribly sorry that your husband has suffered so much. His problem sounds more complex than I can ever hope to fully understand.

CIMT however, offers an individual the opportunity to understand how much atherosclerosis they have and develop an individualized treatment plan for atherosclerosis. In otherwords, if someone has an elevated LDL above a certain benchmark, then it does not mean they should shoot for the goal of the benchmark. CIMT helps people shoot for their own goal of modifying their atherosclerotic burden without placing themselves at risk for complications of drugs designed to meet a certain benchmark set for someone else.

For example, I do not exercise 1 hour daily. I try to walk the treadmill 30 minutes most days of the week, and I enjoy doing so. I do not enjoy a full hour every day; it is too much time away from my family. If I try to reach an unatainable goal set by committees whose members may have questionable ties to pharmeceutical companies to begin with (regardless if I agree or disagree with the benchmark) and I suffer debilitating side effects, yes, I would become angry and frustrated and left with the feeling of a terrible injustice.

I am not telling you that I know all the answers, because I don't. What I have recognized in my own profession is that atheroslcerosis, the top killer and crippler for industrialized countries, is not well understood by a good number of physicians, let alone lay public. Layered onto misunderstanding is expert-panal waffling as to the importance of this or that. How can anyone make reliable, practical sense of this process?

an exerpt from your last post illustrates the importance of understanding the amount of a disease before someone "hurries up and does something" that may cause undue harm...

"Both tests came out clear..." is something that I hear many times from others in my profession. "The carotid angiogram was normal" "The heart cath was normal" "The carotid ultrasound was normal" "The magnetic resonance angiogram (arteriogram) was normal" "The physical examination was normal" "The echocardiogram was normal" "The heart scan (EBCT) was normal".

I think a most important question to ask any doctor who has performed a test like this is '...just what is normal?'

EBCT and angiograms are not without risk. Not only do the treatments sometimes pose undue risk, so too do the evaluations performed to justify the treatments.

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

There is more than one way to skin the cat, however.

Blanchard says: I agree the dice must be rolled there is no other option

Chinnis says: You can't opt not to play the game.

$tatin$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Dr. Blanchard and Mr. Chinnis:

I would like to respond to this, although the discussion that has ensued is not the one I had hoped to to spur. You say "you can't opt not to play the game." I would like to point out to you that I am 62, have had this astronomical cholesterol level all my life, took statins for less than a total of four years (and have not recovered from the muscle, gastrointestinal, eye, brain and other damage they have caused me, and will never recover from the financial devastation, but that's another couple posts...).

I do not have any cardiovascular disease. None. Not even bruits. I hope fervently this continues. I have also not used hormone replacement therapy, in case that question is poised on your lips and you are as behind in your knowledge of the biochemistry of HRT as you are with statins, thinking that may have helped me in some cardiovascular way.

How then is it that with a cholesterol level over 500, almost 90 per cent of that ldl, that I have not succumbed to cardiovascular disease?
I was given statins entirely for prevention of disease.(HA!)

Could it be that it is something other than high cholesterol that is causing heart disease? Do you think it is possible that you are all barking up the wrong tree?

The first thing one must do, if one is to say "you can't opt not to play the game" is believe the pharma hype about high cholesterol, swallow that bait hook line and sinker.

Could it be that high cholesterol in and of itself is not what the problem is? Could it be that you are not getting at what is the problem, and also compounding your health risks by taking statins?

Hippocrates is dead. Is it your claim that 49 million people have had their health adversely affected by statins?

Without a functioning heart, nerve, muscle, mitochondria, brain, cognitive abilities, memory and speech cease to exist.

My responsibility is to serve God by serving my patients. They are doing quite well on statins, thank you. Those who develop adverse reactions will be taken off of statins as soon as I hear about their problems.

Ime, they have. However, it is my understanding that when adverse reactions have been ignored for many weeks, then the "damage" is slow to reverse even upon cessation of the statins.

Though I did not prescribe statins to your husband, would be glad to see him in consultation to see if there is anything I can do to help.