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statins --- the truth is out --- bmj
STATINS --- The truth is out --- BMJ (British Medical Journal)http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64J7B820100520
Cholesterol drug side effects need watching: study
Kate Kelland
LONDON
Thu May 20, 2010 7:07pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - People using cholesterol-lowering statins have a higher risks of liver dysfunction, kidney failure, muscle weakness and cataracts and such side effects of the drug should be closely tracked, doctors said on Friday.
Health
In a study covering more than 2 million people in Britain, researchers from Nottingham University found that adverse side effects of statins, which are prescribed to people with high levels cholesterol to cut the risk of heart disease, were generally worst in the first year of treatment.
The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, are unlikely to affect the use of best-selling medicines like Pfizer's Lipitor and AstraZeneca's Crestor, but the study's authors said patients taking statins should be 'proactively monitored' for side effects.
'Our study is likely to be useful for policy and planning purposes,' said Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland, the two professors who led the study. They said it may also be useful 'for informing guidelines on the type and dose of statins.'
Statins are among the most successful drugs of all time and have been credited with preventing millions of heart attacks and strokes. Heart disease is the biggest killer of men and women in the rich world and is also a growing health problem in developing nations.
In a commentary on the study, senior cardiologists Alawi Alsheikh-Al, of the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in the United Arab Emirates, and Richard Karas of the Tufts University School of Medicine in the United States, said that, like any medical treatment, statins are not completely risk free, but that when used properly, their benefits outweigh their risks.
'It would be wise to interpret the present observations in the context of the confirmed cardioprotective effects of statins and remind ourselves and our patients that these drugs, although considered safe, are, like any intervention in medicine, not entirely free of adverse events,' they wrote.
Coupland and Hippisley-Cox studied data from 368 general practices on 2,004,692 patients aged 30-84 years including 225,922 patients who were new statin users and had been prescribed a range of statins.
They found that for every 10,000 high risk women treated with statins, the positive impact would be around 271 fewer cases of heart disease and 8 fewer cases of oesophageal cancer.
On the other side, there would also be 74 extra patients with liver dysfunction, 23 extra patients with acute renal failure, 307 with cataracts and 39 with a muscle weakness condition called myopathy.
Similar figures were found for men except rates of myopathy were higher, they said. They noted that some of the effects might be due to better detection rates since patients taking statins are likely to consult their doctors more often.
The adverse effects were similar for all different types of statins, except for liver dysfunction, where the highest risks were found for fluvastatin, which is sold by Novartis under the brand names Lescol and Lochol.
'All of the increased risks persisted during the treatment, but were highest in the first year,' they wrote.
(Editing by David Cowell)
I would like to place on record that many patients who have been using Statins like Lipitor for many years as if their life depended on this drug have finally discovered that they have achieved the same reduction of their Cholesterol and Triglycerides by taking Arnica 30c in the Wet dose twice daily as I have done for the last 15 years with outstanding results which I have referred to in other threads on this and other Homeopathic Forums.
♥ Joe De Livera on 2010-06-14
This is just a forum. Assume posts are not from medical professionals.
Here is another report on the DANGER of using Statins which cause more problems than just reducing Cholesterol.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z028988_statin_drugs_side_effects....
Big Pharma lies about statin drugs finally exposed in British Medical Journal
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) To hear Big Pharma tell it, statin drugs are 'miracle' medicines that have prevented millions of heart attacks and strokes. But a recent study published in the British Medical Journal tells a completely different story: For every heart attack prevented by the drug, two or more people suffered liver damage, kidney failure, cataracts or extreme muscle weakness as a result of taking the drug.
Statin drugs, in other words, harm far more people than they help.
Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland led the study which examined data from over two million patients, including over 225,000 patients who were new statin drug users.
They found that for every 10,000 women being treated with statins, there were only 271 fewer cases of heart disease.
And yet, at the same time, the statin drugs caused 74 cases of liver damage, 23 cases of acute kidney failure, 39 cases of extreme muscle weakness and 307 cases of cataracts.
Statin drugs, in other words, helped 271 people but harmed 443 people. This demonstrates how they are wreaking havoc with the health of those who take them, causing damage that far outweighs any benefit they might offer.
Big Pharma's highly deceptive advertising implies that statin drugs help everyone who takes them. So if 10,000 people took the drugs, we're promised, heart attacks would be prevented in all 10,000 people. That's the implied message in the drug ads, anyway.
But this is just a wild exaggeration and distortion of the facts. Most drugs don't work on most people, and statin drugs only 'work' on about 2.7% of those who take them. Yet they cause serious damage in about 4.4% of those who take them.
So if you take statin drugs, your odds of benefiting from them is less than 3 out of 100. But your odds of being harmed by them are more than 4 out of 100. For 96 out of 100 people, statin drugs do nothing except make the drug companies rich and pollute the waterways every time you flush the toilet.
Statin drugs, then, are basically a crap shoot with your health.
Keep the pharma profits rolling
From the point of view of Big Pharma, they have the added benefit of causing other diseases that often result in yet more drugs or medical procedures being prescribed. Kidney dialysis makes big money for hospitals, by the way. It's a multi-billion-dollar business all by itself. Statin drugs are therefore a way for the sick-care industry to recruit new patients into kidney dialysis, knowing that some percentage of statin drug users are going to end up with full-blown kidney failure.
What's really interesting about all this is how easy it is to fool doctors into prescribing statin drugs. Doctors mistakenly think these are miracle drugs, but they're never read the research. They've been convinced by drug reps, misleading medical journal articles and Big Pharma advertising -- and they bought it!
Mainstream doctors, you see, are perhaps the most gullible people on the planet. They'll gladly prescribe a drug that harms more people than it helps -- by the millions -- because they can be almost effortlessly swayed into pushing poison pills through 'science babble' language used by drug companies to promote their pills.
Doctors are literally walking around today thinking statin drugs are such miracle lifesavers that some doctors openly talked about dripping the drug into the public water supply! That's how convinced they are about the drug's benefits. They think everyone should be taking statins whether they need them or not!
It's downright loony. But that's characteristic of western medicine, isn't it? Proclaim your poison to be 'miracle medicine' while utterly ignoring the truth that those drugs harm far more people than they help (and they simply don't work on more than 90% of people who take them).
The statin scam
Statin drugs are a scam, plain and simple, and the doctors who prescribe them are puppets used by Big Pharma to sell high-profit drugs to people who for the most part won't even benefit from them. That this research exposing the truth about statin drugs even appeared in the British Medical Journal is a minor miracle all by itself, by the way. But it does indicate that the wall of lies constructed about statins by Big Pharma is starting to crack.
If the truth about statins were openly known, the drugs wouldn't be prescribed to anyone, and drug companies would be sued for billions of dollars for their false advertising and marketing manipulations.
Until that happens, just remember this: Any doctor who recommends a statin drug is a con man drug pusher. If they don't have the honesty to research the truth about these drugs and stop prescribing them, they certainly cannot be trusted with your health. If they're pushing statin drugs on you, they're really just working for Big Pharma, not for you, and they're not interested in real science and the real impacts of drugs on patients.
It brings up another hugely important question in modern medicine: Why don't doctors have the capability to question the false beliefs of their own industry? As you might have guessed, that's the topic of another story altogether.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z028988_statin_drugs_side_effects....
Big Pharma lies about statin drugs finally exposed in British Medical Journal
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) To hear Big Pharma tell it, statin drugs are 'miracle' medicines that have prevented millions of heart attacks and strokes. But a recent study published in the British Medical Journal tells a completely different story: For every heart attack prevented by the drug, two or more people suffered liver damage, kidney failure, cataracts or extreme muscle weakness as a result of taking the drug.
Statin drugs, in other words, harm far more people than they help.
Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland led the study which examined data from over two million patients, including over 225,000 patients who were new statin drug users.
They found that for every 10,000 women being treated with statins, there were only 271 fewer cases of heart disease.
And yet, at the same time, the statin drugs caused 74 cases of liver damage, 23 cases of acute kidney failure, 39 cases of extreme muscle weakness and 307 cases of cataracts.
Statin drugs, in other words, helped 271 people but harmed 443 people. This demonstrates how they are wreaking havoc with the health of those who take them, causing damage that far outweighs any benefit they might offer.
Big Pharma's highly deceptive advertising implies that statin drugs help everyone who takes them. So if 10,000 people took the drugs, we're promised, heart attacks would be prevented in all 10,000 people. That's the implied message in the drug ads, anyway.
But this is just a wild exaggeration and distortion of the facts. Most drugs don't work on most people, and statin drugs only 'work' on about 2.7% of those who take them. Yet they cause serious damage in about 4.4% of those who take them.
So if you take statin drugs, your odds of benefiting from them is less than 3 out of 100. But your odds of being harmed by them are more than 4 out of 100. For 96 out of 100 people, statin drugs do nothing except make the drug companies rich and pollute the waterways every time you flush the toilet.
Statin drugs, then, are basically a crap shoot with your health.
Keep the pharma profits rolling
From the point of view of Big Pharma, they have the added benefit of causing other diseases that often result in yet more drugs or medical procedures being prescribed. Kidney dialysis makes big money for hospitals, by the way. It's a multi-billion-dollar business all by itself. Statin drugs are therefore a way for the sick-care industry to recruit new patients into kidney dialysis, knowing that some percentage of statin drug users are going to end up with full-blown kidney failure.
What's really interesting about all this is how easy it is to fool doctors into prescribing statin drugs. Doctors mistakenly think these are miracle drugs, but they're never read the research. They've been convinced by drug reps, misleading medical journal articles and Big Pharma advertising -- and they bought it!
Mainstream doctors, you see, are perhaps the most gullible people on the planet. They'll gladly prescribe a drug that harms more people than it helps -- by the millions -- because they can be almost effortlessly swayed into pushing poison pills through 'science babble' language used by drug companies to promote their pills.
Doctors are literally walking around today thinking statin drugs are such miracle lifesavers that some doctors openly talked about dripping the drug into the public water supply! That's how convinced they are about the drug's benefits. They think everyone should be taking statins whether they need them or not!
It's downright loony. But that's characteristic of western medicine, isn't it? Proclaim your poison to be 'miracle medicine' while utterly ignoring the truth that those drugs harm far more people than they help (and they simply don't work on more than 90% of people who take them).
The statin scam
Statin drugs are a scam, plain and simple, and the doctors who prescribe them are puppets used by Big Pharma to sell high-profit drugs to people who for the most part won't even benefit from them. That this research exposing the truth about statin drugs even appeared in the British Medical Journal is a minor miracle all by itself, by the way. But it does indicate that the wall of lies constructed about statins by Big Pharma is starting to crack.
If the truth about statins were openly known, the drugs wouldn't be prescribed to anyone, and drug companies would be sued for billions of dollars for their false advertising and marketing manipulations.
Until that happens, just remember this: Any doctor who recommends a statin drug is a con man drug pusher. If they don't have the honesty to research the truth about these drugs and stop prescribing them, they certainly cannot be trusted with your health. If they're pushing statin drugs on you, they're really just working for Big Pharma, not for you, and they're not interested in real science and the real impacts of drugs on patients.
It brings up another hugely important question in modern medicine: Why don't doctors have the capability to question the false beliefs of their own industry? As you might have guessed, that's the topic of another story altogether.
♡ Joe De Livera last decade
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