Cholesterol Pills (Statins) are Probably Really Bad for Your Brain
Dr. Cate gives you the peer-reviewed research revealing cholesterol pills are much more dangerous to your brain than doctors have been led to believe.
Statisticians Can Easily Mislead Doctors About Statin (or any) Drug Safety
Doctors don't go to medical school to become expert at interpreting statistics. Yet most of the articles that tell us how safe drugs might be rely on complex statistical analyses that go far beyond what I learned in my one credit course on Statistics for Medical Practitioners.
Cholesterol Is Good, The American Heart Association is Bad
Are you watching your cholesterol? Then you might be interested to read this story, describing the American Heart Association’s role in creating mass cholesterol-phobia, including evidence that they actively suppressed information that would have changed the course of medical history.
High Cholesterol and Breast Cancer: Is there a connection?
Cholesterol is now blamed for breast cancer. Learn what the science quoted in the media actually says.
Statin side effects: Almost universal and often missed.
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…
Statin Side Effects Slowing You Down? Why your doctor may not be able to help.
When insurance companies pay doctors based on their prescribing patterns, you may not be told about potential medication side effects. This is particularly true when it comes to side effects of cholesterol medications called statins.
Can Arterial Disease be Reversed?
The old model describes arteries as so many mechanical tubes that have no way to protect themselves from the inevitable clogging that comes from the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat. The other, new model sees arteries as living dynamic tissue that, in the context of a healthy diet, is capable of growth, repair, and rising to the challenge of rigorous exercise.
How starting a low-cholesterol diet leads to weight gain
The advice to cut cholesterol almost always leads to eating more carbs, which increases triglyceride and often LDL levels, which leads to being placed on cholesterol pills, which can cause diabetes.
FDA Officially Unconcerned that Crestor Causes Diabetes
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…
Statins and Heart Failure: A Deadly Mix?
If you have been diagnosed with heart failure, statin drugs, which most cardiologists will prescribe to you if your cholesterol levels are not where they recommend, may need to be stopped.
Pay for Performance
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…
Does Every Diabetic Really Need A Cholesterol Pill?
An important study was stopped early, for reasons they don't explain. What has me worried is that the study appears to have stopped just as the death rates rose
