One of the most distressing things about practicing medicine these days is the blind faith that most people, doctors and patients, have in cholesterol pills like Lipitor, Crestor, Vytorin, and Zocor, just to name a few of the most popular. This faith comes not from gullibility, but from carefully crafted drug company misdirection. There's no question statins reduce your LDL levels. The question is, do we really need to reduce your LDL to 100 or less? Sean Croxton invited me onto his show yesterday to clear up this confusion over the value of statins and shed some light on their…
Imagine a world where everyone is on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs. Not just sick people. Everyone. Astra Zeneca has imagined it, and now they're going to see their dream come true. On December 16, the FDA announced their approval of Astra Zeneca's cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor for use in people without high cholesterol despite the fact that a new study showed conclusively that the drug causes diabetes. By a vote of 12 to 4, the panel judged that even people at very low risk of heart disease should take the cholesterol medication anyway. "I do think the diabetes problem is real, but…
Your Doctor May be Paid to Prescribe Cholesterol-Lowering Statins Do you know what a HEDIS measure is? Most patients don't, and few doctors do. It's a measure of how well your doctor is following certain practice guidelines. 90 percent of insurance companies grade doctors using HEDIS. And it's important to know that these markers include getting your LDL cholesterol numbers down with drugs. If you have diabetes or cardiovascular disease, your doctor can be rewarded for following these rules. On the other hand, doctors who don't will be financially penalized. This is one reason why I do not work with…
You know cholesterol pills will lower your cholesterol. But do you know cholesterol pills don't prevent heart attacks by lowering cholesterol? They work by what the pharmaceutical companies call "a pleitropic effect" meaning they have so many effects we can't understand or predict them all. Isoprene: A Building Block for Cellular Health Cholesterol pills called statins lower cholesterol by blocking the enzyme that forms a chemical required for the earliest steps of cholesterol manufacture, the making of isoprene units. If you can't make isoprene units, you can't make cholesterol. But your body uses isoprene units for a whole bunch of…
