Last week, I explained how the typical pattern of heart disease in the U.S. changed dramatically over the past 30 years.
You see, during our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, hypertension caused the vast majority of cardiovascular disease. We called it hypertensive arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Then, big pharma came up with effective drugs to control hypertension. (Although there is still work to be done.) As a result, hypertensive cardiovascular disease rates declined significantly.
Today, something else causes the majority of heart disease cases: metabolic disorders, such as Type II diabetes.
We call this form of the condition cardio-metabolic disease.
Of course, Type II diabetes causes major complications that affect the blood vessels in the heart, kidneys, eyes, and peripheral nerves. So it makes sense that diabetes eventually causes heart disease too.
Granted, the government hasn’t helped the situation any.
They’re completely obsessed with fats and salt. And they ignored all the clues for decades about the dangers of sugar and carb consumption because the clues went against their politically correct posturing.
So while they gave sugars and carbs a free pass, all the evidence pointed to sugar as the culprit behind not only Type II diabetes…but now behind heart disease as well. On top of that, wise researchers realized that sugar (not salt) even causes high blood pressure, as I reported last week.
Worst of all, the “go to” toxic statin drugs that are supposed to prevent heart disease actually cause Type II diabetes as well. (Of course, doctors dole out statin drugs like candy. So therein lays the irony.)
In fact, new research from Lombardy, Italy, shows the risk of new-onset Type II diabetes increases as adherence with statin drug therapy increases. In other words, the better you follow your doctor’s orders to take a statin, the higher your risk of developing Type II diabetes.
This disturbing research happened in the real world, outside of the artificial, cherry-picked drug trials.
Lombardy’s capitol is Milan, the center of industry, medicine, science, technology, and, incidentally, fashion in the country.
I had the good fortune to spend the summer of 1976 as a research intern at the Istituto Carlo Erba per Ricerche Therapeutiche, which was part of the global conglomerate Montedison. I found thousands of Italian researchers doing high- quality research, including many topics of global significance for diseases in developing countries that the U.S. largely ignored. (Curiously, the translation for this institute is Charles Herbs Institute for Therapeutic Research.)
For this latest study, Italian researchers followed 115,709 residents of Lombardy who started statins for the first time between 2003 and 2004. Over the next seven years, researchers noted which patients began taking a Type II diabetes drug in addition to the statin drug. They also noted which patients were actually hospitalized for the onset of Type II diabetes.
Overall, during those seven years, 11,154 patients–or about 10 percent of the cohort–developed Type II diabetes. This finding makes sense given that Type II diabetes and heart disease have common risk factors.
These next findings didn’t make much sense to the researchers…but they made perfect sense to me…
Patients who only somewhat stuck with their prescribed statin protocol had a 12 percent greater risk of developing Type II diabetes compared to their counterparts who didn’t take the drugs at all. Patients who had intermediate compliance taking the drug had a 22 percent higher risk of Type II diabetes. And those with the highest compliance taking the drug had a 32 percent higher risk.
That’s almost one-third higher than the men and women with the same risk factors who didn’t take statins.
So this new Italian study shows what amounts to a convincing “dose-response” effect, the smoking gun in toxicology. The more of the drug you take, the higher the risk of developing Type II diabetes over just seven years.
In another larger study called JUPITER, researchers came up with similar results. They found an increased risk of Type II diabetes, as well as increased measures of blood sugar among men and women who took statins. Plus, two meta-analyses of all the clinical trials to date on statin drugs showed the drugs clearly increase the risk of developing Type II diabetes.
Amazingly, authors of the early statin studies tried to say the drugs could actually reduce the risk of Type II diabetes. Of course, they used cherry-picked participants and results in artificial, restricted circumstances. I warned you about this problem last month in my Insiders’ Cures newsletter.
Bottom line?
You can confidently add Type II diabetes to the list of problems caused by statin drugs.
Of course, the authors of the Italian study said it’s still worthwhile trying to reduce the risk of No. 1 cause of death (heart disease), even if it means increasing the risk of the No. 3 cause of death (diabetes).
Well, you have to wonder what planet are they really on; is it JUPITER or something even farther out there from planet Earth?
Perhaps this approach would be understandable if any good evidence showed statins actually benefit the vast majority of patients. But we don’t have any. Statins don’t lower heart disease risk. And they certainly don’t lower death rates.
But they do cause a lot of harmful side effects.
Well, in the world of big pharma, if taking a statin causes you to need another drug for Type II diabetes (or even need to have eye surgery for cataracts), that’s all right with them.
Fortunately, you don’t need to take a statin to improve your cardiovascular health. And if you do take a statin, don’t feel like you’re stuck on the carousel of taking it forever. To learn more about how you can avoid these disasters in a pill–and repair the damage they can cause to your body–see my special report titled The Insider’s Guide to a Heart-Healthy and Statin-Free Life.
Source:
1. “Statins and the risk of diabetes: evidence from a large population-based cohort study,” Diabetes Care 2014;37(8):2225-2232