Health and Fitness Express Newsletter

It's hard to know what to believe about cholesterol these days.

It's just as hard knowing who to believe.

All I know is that an elevated cholesterol level is usually associated with a body that's in poor shape - along with elevated blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, elevated body fat and low levels of aerobic fitness.

An elevated cholesterol is a symptom of metabolic dysfunction. Treat the cause, not the symptom.

I read an interesting quote from Robert Mercola recently

To infer that statin drugs are somehow related to preventive medicine is again a grossly misleading statement. There is nothing preventive about these drugs; they do not fix any underlying health issues that might cause problems in the future. Instead they raise your risks of other serious health complications that might cost you your life far sooner than your high cholesterol might have.

Mercole is on my list of USEFUL LINKS. You can read more about this debate on his website.

http://articles.mercola.com:80/sites/articles/archive/2008/1/31/lipitor-ads-spark-congressional-probe.aspx

WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU

Another website on my list of USEFUL LINKS is WDDTY.

Here's a few links to what they have to say about statin drugs.

STATINS THE DOWNSIDE

http://www.wddty.com/03363800370088283220/statins-the-other-downsides.html

•	The major side-effects of statins include muscle pain and weakness (myopathy), liver and kidney damage, and a potentially fatal muscle-wasting disorder called rhabdomyolysis.

•	Minor adverse effects include skin rash, constipation and headache.

•	The evidence indicates that as much as 65 per cent of those taking statins experience adverse side-effects (Am J Cardiol, 2003; 92: 670-6).

A longer article, published on the 31st of January this year

http://www.wddty.com/03363800370319111023/cholesterol-lowering-the-statin-wonder-drugs.html

reported the following: -

•	The chances of not dying from a heart attack over four to six years for patients with CHD and high cholesterol is about 92 per cent without statin treatment and increases to 95 per cent with statin treatment.

•	For healthy individuals, the figures are even less impressive. In the WOSCOP trial, for instance, the chances of not dying from a heart attack during the five years of the study was 98.4 per cent without statin treatment and 98.8 with statin treatment. In the AFCAPS/TexCAPS trial, the chances of surviving was 99.55 per cent without treatment and 99.67 with treatment.

•	In the 4S trials, 289 patients had to be treated for five years to prevent one fatal heart attack. So, while one of the patients benefited from the treatment, the others took the drug in vain because they would have survived anyway.

•	To prevent one fatal heart attack in healthy people, 235 individuals with high cholesterol and 826 with normal cholesterol would have to take a statin drug for four to five years.

•	In France, a team of researchers found that old women with very high cholesterol live the longest. The death rate was more than five times higher for women who had very low cholesterol, and the report actually warned against lowering cholesterol in elderly women (Lancet, 1989; i: 868-70).

•	A Canadian study of 120 men 10 years after recovery from a heart attack showed that those with low cholesterol had a second coronary as often as those with high cholesterol (Can Med Assoc J, 1970; 103: 927-31).

•	High cholesterol has no importance in Australian men over 74, according to an Australian study (Atherosclerosis, 1995; 117: 107-18).

•	The most likely interpretation is that high cholesterol is not dangerous in itself, but a marker for something else.

I think that's true. That something else is 'you're in poor physical condition'. But there's not many physicians in this country who will take their customers out the back and measure how fit they we are. It's easier to write a prescription - millions of them.

Anyhow, you can measure your own level of aerobic fitness. Mark out two lines, 20m apart and see how many laps you can complete in five minutes. If you can get 40 you're not in bad shape. I know of one 50 year old woman who improved her score from 22 laps to 35 laps in two years - and lost 30Kg to boot in the same time.

OVERDO$ED AMERICA

One of the best references for this stuff is John Abrahamson in his book Overdosed America. He teaches primary health care in the clinical faculty at Harvard.

His thesis is that real scientific evidence shows that the things you can do to protect and preserve your health are far more effective than anything you can buy from drug companies.

Click on the cover to

purchase the book

•	He reports a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in which researchers concluded the an inexpensive test that measures the level of inflammation in the body - C-reactive protein - can predict a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease (heart attack, ischemic stroke, coronary revascularization, or cardiovascular death) even better than cholesterol levels.

•	Elevated total cholesterol levels correlate with an increased risk of death only through the age of 40, and not once the age of 50 is reached.

•	Statins have never been shown to significantly reduce the cardiovascular disease in women without heart disease.

•	In a five year study involving 6600 people with moderately elevated LDL cholesterol levels, treatment with a statin did not decrease overall mortality. in fact a few more people who took the statin(80) died than those who took the placebo (77).

	In order to prevent one death, 100 people would have to be treated with a statin drug for 25 years.

•	There is no evidence from primary prevention trials that cholesterol lowering affects total mortality in healthy women.

•	There are more effective ways to decrease of heart disease.

•	The real goal of medical care is, after all, to improve overall health - in this case to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, serious illness of all kinds and premature death from all causes - and not simply to lower blood levels of LDL cholesterol.

	(A lack of) physical activity is highly correlated with overall mortality rate.

AVOID PHARMACEUTICAL SWIFTIES

So from what I read the evidence is pretty clear, steer clear of junk medicine, the medicine that seeks to substitute a symptom-masking pill for a lifestyle makeover. It's a tawdry service based on tawdry science and one that comes with a tawdry, selective-evidence based government subsidy.

You can read more about these swifties by clicking though to the Junk Medicine shelf in the Health and Fitness Bookstore.

In the meantime stay tuned, highly tuned and remember; if you continue to do what you've always done you'll continue to get what you've always got.

Regards

John Miller

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