A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins increase the risk of getting diabetes by 71 percent in post-menopausal women. Since diabetes is a major cause of heart disease, this study calls into question current recommendations and guidelines from most professional medical associations and physicians. The recommendation for women to take statins to prevent heart attacks (called primary prevention) may do more harm than good.

-Team@CMHF

• If a post-menopausal woman with high cholesterol, is recommend cholesterol-lowering medication or statins by the doctor it just might kill her.
• Statins have been proven to prevent second heart attacks, but not first heart attacks. Take it if you already have had one, but beware if your doctor recommends it for you if have never had a heart attack.

New Study Shows 48 Percent Risk of Diabetes in Women Who Take Statins

• This study examined the data from the large government sponsored study called the Women’s Health Initiative, the same study that disabused us of the idea that Premarin prevented heart attacks in postmenopausal women.
• In fact, based on this randomized controlled trial, estrogen replacement therapy, once considered the gold standard of medical care for the prevention of heart disease, was relegated to the trash bin of history joining medicine’s many other fallen heroes including DES, Thalidomide, Vioxx, Avandia and more.
• In this new study researchers reviewed the effect of statin prescriptions in a group of 153,840 women without diabetes and with an average age of 63.2 years. About 7 percent of women reported taking statin medication between 1993 and 1996. Today there are many, many more women taking statin medications, thus many more are at risk from harm from statins.
• During the 3-year period of the study, 10,242 new cases were reported — a whopping 71 percent increase in risk from women who didn’t take statins. This association stayed strong at a 48 percent increased risk of getting diabetes, even after taking into account age, race/ethnicity, and weight or body mass index. These increases in disease risk were consistent for all statins on the market.
• This effect also occurred in those with and without heart disease. Surprisingly, disease risk was worse in thin women. Minority women were also disproportionately affected. The risk of diabetes was 49 percent for white women, 57 percent for Hispanic women, and 78 percent for Asian women.
• In a large meta-analysis published in the Lancet last year, scientists found that statins increased the risk of diabetes by 9 percent.
• Other studies have recently called into question the belief that high cholesterol levels increase your risk of heart disease as you get older.
• For those over 85 it turns out having high cholesterol will protect you from dying from a heart attack and, in fact, from death from any cause.

Low Cholesterol May Kill You

• A recent study showed that in healthy older persons, high cholesterol levels were associated with lower non-cardiovascular-related mortality. This is extremely concerning because millions of prescriptions are written every day to lower cholesterol in the older population, yet no association has been found between higher cholesterol and heart disease deaths for those aged 55 to 84; and for those over 85, the association seems to be inverse higher cholesterol predicts lower risk of death from heart disease.
• The pharmaceutical industry, medical associations and academic researchers whose budgets are provided by grants from the pharmaceutical industry continue to preach the wonders of statins
• Cardiologists recommend putting statins in the water and giving them out at fast food restaurants and having them available over the counter. They believe in driving cholesterol as low as possible. Statin prescriptions are handed out with religious fervor, but do they work to prevent heart attacks and death if you haven’t had a heart attack already?

Statins Don’t Work to Prevent First Heart Attacks

• Recently, the Cochrane Group did a review of all the major statin studies by an international group of independent scientists.
• The review failed to show benefit in using statins to prevent heart attacks and death. In addition, many other studies support this and point out the frequent and significant side effects that come with taking these drugs
• But this is not the case with statins. These drugs frequently cause muscle damage, muscle cramps, muscle weakness, muscle aches, exercise intolerance (even in the absence of pain and elevated CPK), sexual dysfunction, liver and nerve damage and other problems in 10-15 percent of patients who take them
• They can also cause significant cellular, muscle and nerve injury as well as cell death in the absence of symptoms.
• There is no lack of research calling into question the benefits of statins.
• Unfortunately, that research doesn’t get the benefit of billions of dollars of marketing and advertising that statins do.
• JUPITER trial showed that lowering LDL without a reduction in inflammation (measured by C-reactive protein) didn’t prevent heart attacks or death.
• Statins happen to reduce inflammation, so the study has been touted as proof of the effectiveness of these medications.
• It wasn’t lowering the cholesterol that helped (which is the intended purpose of statins), but the fact that they lower inflammation.
• What is ignored by people who use this study to prove that statins work is the fact that there are so many better ways to lower inflammation than taking these drugs.
• Some studies even show that aggressive lowering of cholesterol can cause more heart disease. The ENHANCE trial showed that aggressive cholesterol treatment with two medications (Zocor and Zetia) lowered cholesterol much more than one drug alone, but led to more arterial plaque and no fewer heart attacks
• Other research calls into question our focus on LDL or the bad cholesterol. We focus on it because we have good drugs to lower it, but it may not be the real problem. The real problem is low HDL that is caused by insulin resistance (diabesity).
• Studies show that if the LDL cholesterol is lowered in people with low HDL cholesterol that is a marker of diabesity the continuum of obesity, prediabetes and diabetes there’s no benefit.
• Most people simply ignore the fact that 50-75 percent of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol.
• The Honolulu Heart Study showed older patients with lower cholesterol have higher risks of death than those with higher cholesterol.
• Some patients with multiple risk factors, or who have had previous heart attacks do benefit, but when you look closely the results are underwhelming.
• For high-risk males (those who are overweight and have high blood pressure, diabetes, and/or a family history of heart attacks) and are younger than 69 there is some evidence of benefit, but 100 men would need to be treated to prevent just one heart attack.
• That means that 99 out of 100 men who take the drug receive no benefit. Drug ads say the risk is reduced by 33 percent. Sounds good, but that just means the risk of getting a heart attack goes down from 3 percent to 2 percent.
• Despite the extensive data showing that statins are a questionable therapy at best, they are still the No. 1 selling drug in the US.
• Why would respected scientists go against the overwhelming research that statins don’t prevent heart disease in people who haven’t already had a heart attack?
• You can find the answer if you follow the money. Eight of the nine experts on the panel who developed these guidelines had financial ties to the drug industry. Thirty-four other non-industry affiliated experts sent a petition to protest the recommendations to the National Institutes of Health saying the evidence was weak.

What Should Women Do?

• It is time to push the sacred cow of statins overboard.
• If you have had a heart attack, or have heart disease, the evidence shows they do in fact help protect against a second heart attack, so keep taking them.
• However, you should be aware that most prescriptions for statins are given to healthy people whose cholesterol is a little high. For these folks the risk clearly outweighs the benefit.

For further reading log on to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/women-cholesterol-medication_b_1219496.html