FDA: Statin Drugs Carry a Risk of Side Effects
Today, the headline writer for the Science Times, which comes out in the New York Times on Tuesdays, used the “weasel word” MAY on the headline.
A Heart Helper May Come at a Price for the Brain by Tara Parker-Pope (Tuesday March 6, 2012) is a measured article on last week’s Food and Drug Administration pronouncement. Parker-Pope’s article is redolent with anecdotal stories of folks who have had cognitive troubles of one kind or another. Her words about the FDA statement: “Last week, The FDA finally acknowledged what many patients and doctors have believed for a long time: Statin drugs carry a risk of cognitive side effects. The agency also warned users about diabetes risk and muscle pain.”
Since the scary problem with a certain prescription statin came on my radar some years ago because of a client’s experience with her elderly family members, I have been being a non-compliant high-cholesterol patient, and even got kicked out of one doctor’s practice. In my client’s admittedly anecdotal story, both her and her husband’s mothers had serious cognitive difficulties after taking a popular statin for close to 2 years, each. Fortunately, she and her husband were scientists, and were able to parse out the troublesome drug from the relatives’ medications, and their cognitive abilities slowly came back.
I know what cognitive difficulty looks like, it has been revealed on both sides of my parents’ generation of my relatives. They did not take statins as far as I know, but I figure if there is something genetic there, it doesn’t need any more help like a statin drug.
Here’s another statement from the article: Nobody knows how many statin users have had cognitive troubles. It is easy to discover what the percentage is of certain age groups that have cognitive problems. It is not so easy to discover what the factors are in the problems.
However, I’ve seen enough. When I told my current doctor that I was still not willing to take statin drugs, he texted me a notice of Colin Campbell PhD speaking at Pennsylvania University on his book, “The China Study”.
I didn’t go. I was busy reading, “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, which has a foreword by Colin Campbell.
This is about all I am going to write today, as I am very grouchy from eating nothing but vegetables with no salt and no fat for a week. I am going to give it a good try, 6 months anyway. Following, more than you wanted to know about the kinds of dementia: http://www.brain-injury-therapy.com/articles/dementia.htm
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A new article by Tara-Pope about the problems of the muscles on statins also says, toward the bottom, quoting a doctor: if you have intractable high or cholesterol or a history of heart disease or stroke you should be on cholesterol medication.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/do-statins-make-it-tough-to-exercise/