Earlier this year in my Daily Dispatch, I reported on an important statin drug study led by Dr. Robert DuBroff of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. I recently heard personally from Dr. DuBroff himself. I’ll tell you all about his comments in a moment. But first, a quick reminder of his original report published in the journal Evidence Based Medicine.
According to Dr. DuBroff’s investigation, drug researchers manipulated meta-analyses to overstate the supposed benefits of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. Plus, they underestimated the dangers of developing Type II diabetes while on these drugs.
We should all applaud Dr. DuBroff for his diligence and courage in reporting the facts regarding cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. Especially when you consider how much power big pharma wields. They have unlimited budgets to make sure doctors and patients alike hear about the bogus benefits of these toxic drugs. You may have seen the latest ad with a woman strutting happily around town, claiming “I’m down with Crestor.”
I’m here to present the other side of the story and give voice to the many dangers of drugs like statins. I also spend a lot of time reporting on the many safe and effective non-drug approaches to heart health. But none of those approaches directly involve lowering cholesterol. And for good reason.
Every cell in your body needs cholesterol
Cholesterol is an essential substance. The human body needs it to survive. So artificially lowering it with statin drugs has many health implications.
On a metabolic level, these drugs interfere with mitochondria (the energy-producing fires of the cells), CoQ10 (which stokes those fires), and ATP (the energy storage battery and delivery system for all metabolic processes). They also interfere with selenium compounds that act as cellular antioxidants.
We also now know lowering cholesterol artificially with drugs does not improve mortality rates from heart disease, as both Dr. DuBroff and I point out. And mortality rates are the ultimate gauge whether a treatment works. Statisticians can’t manipulate mortality data. Someone is either dead or alive.
I began learning about the problems with the cholesterol myth in 1976 from solid studies in veterinary medicine. You see, in primates (humans’ closest relatives biologically), cholesterol in the diet has zero impact on cholesterol in the blood. Furthermore, blood cholesterol has zero impact on cardiovascular outcomes.
And as it turns out, people with higher cholesterol levels actually live longer. Conversely, people whose cholesterol is too low die younger. And the older you are, the more beneficial it is to have a higher cholesterol level.
In fact, about two years ago, I reported on an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the importance of cholesterol as we get older. Geriatricians and general practitioners found no reason to prescribe statins to patients over 70 years old, so they were stopping the practice. They still assumed, however, there must be some evidence the drugs benefit younger patients.
That assumption was wrong.
Higher cholesterol = better health and a longer life
No evidence suggests younger patients benefit from taking statins. And there’s lots of evidence to the contrary.
Still — many primary care physicians assume high cholesterol causes atherosclerosis, which underlies cardiovascular diseases. This false, unproven hypothesis has led to a major big pharma industry. But many experiments, observations, and studies conducted over the past 50 years challenge this assumption. I have told you about them for years. (Next month in a Daily Dispatch, I will give you more details about what is, and isn’t, associated with atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases.)
Take the example of Japan — a large, modern, industrialized population with highly trained physicians, researchers and statisticians. As reported by most Japanese epidemiological studies in the general population, death rates decrease with higher total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels.
The hypothesis that lower cholesterol levels benefits health is completely reversed in the case of Japan. The exact opposite is true: Higher cholesterol confers better health and improved longevity.
Back in 2013, the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired an exposé on the statin drug scandal. They interviewed doctors in the industry who exposed the truth about these drugs.
The medical authorities couldn’t stop ABC from airing the broadcast, but they then forced ABC to remove it from its website. I remember being interviewed on ABC when I traveled to Sydney to provide the keynote address of the first Australian conference on complementary/alternative medicine in May 1997. I found ABC to be very professional and courageous broadcasting live onsite in the midst of protests.
Cholesterol cartel continues to cash in
In fairness to Dr. DuBroff, he pointed out in his recent message to me that statins still present a “conundrum” for doctors, since a few studies did apparently show some benefits.
Well, here is where we part ways. For me, there is no “conundrum.” Those few studies can’t overtake the mounds of evidence that point to the dangers of cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Dr. DuBroff has another report coming out soon in the American Journal of Medicine, which attempts to show that the current cholesterol guidelines are based upon false assumptions. Dr. DuBroff said these guidelines basically don’t work in the real world.
I’ll be sure to let you know about his latest findings as soon as they are published or become otherwise accessible, from a colleague who is standing up for the truth about cholesterol, statins and heart disease. He is working diligently to provide his medical colleagues with data to take a more enlightened stance on the use of these drugs. In the meantime, I have been going straight to the consumers (like the drug companies are doing) to expose the cholesterol myth.
Until then, stay off of statins.
Remember — the push to lower cholesterol was never about health. The cholesterol cartel created the myth, and then proceeded to make trillions of dollars from it.
To learn more about natural approaches to heart health, read my report The Insider’s Guide to a Heart-Healthy and Statin-Free Life.