I am doing a quick post to my blog on statin drugs, cholesterol, HDL/LDL, and how they have all been misunderstood for years. My interest in this stems from my own family and friends that have high cholesterol and have been prescribed statin drugs. If you are one of these people that fall into this category, I hope you find this useful and informative. The info here can probably change your life. This is going to seem a bit weird, but doctors do not always know the best treatment for issues at hand. Maybe they are ignorant or even lazy, but many practitioners take the easy route of prescribing drugs to mask an issue rather than to fix the actual causation.
How it began
This whole misconception of cholesterol and saturated fat issues stemmed from the history of the sugar industry. If you do not know, the sugar industry in the past had this big scandal of paying off scientists and doctors to fake study results or skew them into favoring sugars and demonizing saturated fats and in turn cholesterol etc. That is a very short explanation of how it went down but you can read more HERE. Since then, there has always been this notion of fats etc. being bad. There has recently been a bit of enlightenment on the subject with fat diets kicking off and people understanding the importance of fats in general.
What is statin/cholesterol?
Cholesterol is one of the most IMPORTANT molecules in the body. It is essential for many things involving: vitamin D, sex hormones, bile production, repair of cells, and just an overall building block of body tissues. Statin drugs are drugs that function to reduce cholesterol in the body. If cholesterol is so essential, so much in fact that the body produces 1300mg a day independent of intake, why should people be lowering it? There is sort of trade off you make when it comes to these drugs. Cholesterol issues often can be fixed by diet while avoiding statin drug side effects.
The Issue
So, why are statin drugs the most distributed drugs to patients in the world? Well, studies do show that high cholesterol can increase heart events such as cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Those studies may or may not be skewed as we mentioned above for an underlining benefit to the industry. What studies also show is that low cholesterol, though it may lower specific heart events, increases the likelihood of illness, and extremely weakens immune systems. It lowers energy to levels some people can barely function on. It lowers sex drive and overall, negatively effects the entire body. Another thing to know is that new honest resulted studies have also shown that cholesterol is not even the cause of CVD. They have begun to realize it is more the oxidation and inflammation. We talked about inflammation in the body a bit in my Fasting Post already. If cholesterol is not even the bad guy whatsoever and is this “life giving” molecule, there needs to be something changed in the statin drug industry and in doctors’ lackadaisical prescribing of statins.
Make a change
With cholesterol being as important as it is, we should focus on keeping proper levels of it in our body and not cutting it down using drugs with an extensive list of bad side effects. There are plenty of ways to change lifestyle giving your body similar effects of lower CVD and still maintaining proper cholesterol. I am doing an article on that specifically HERE for those of you interested. There is new material and studies on the issue coming out everyday so read up on the subject and please get informed. The drug industry has a strong grip on statins because of the money to be made and the older science that backs them up, so it may be hard to find good information but that is why you can come to FitLifeCV. I do the research and find the truth for those interested in knowing and taking action.
JRE Mark Sisson
Please listen to this short 7 minute snip from Joe Rogan’s 3 hour podcast with Mark Sisson, who I have mentioned numerous times on my page. This video was taken from JRE Experience on YT, for fair use, who reserves all rights.