Patients continuing to feel pressured by other doctors to take drugs for healthy cholesterols constantly surprise me. Statins are now the most prescribed class of drugs in history. The newest Crestor is the most dangerous of all.
Today you’ll see how Crestor can actually harm your health. You’ll also learn how scientific studies prove you don’t need to have low cholesterol as long as you are doing a few other things for your cardiovascular health. I’ll show you simple, proven ways you can improve and maintain the health of your heart.
The cholesterol-lowering drugs have side effects such as muscle aches, joint pain, stomach discomfort and memory and cognitive impairment.(1) Side effects are a major reason why 60% to 75% of people quit taking these drugs.(2) You also have to worry about liver toxicity and death. Then there’s the nerve damage, which can be severe and permanent.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs also give you an increased risk of rhabdomyolysis.(3) This nasty condition causes destruction of muscle tissue and can lead to fatal kidney failure. For Crestor alone, the FDA has reported 117 cases of this muscle condition and 41 cases of kidney failure, 11 of which caused death. This rate is higher than for any other statin drug on the market.
But what uniquely singles out Crestor is the fact that your risk for kidney failure is 75 times higher than for all other statins! So why is it still on the market? Could it be that its maker, AstraZeneca, has paid the FDA millions of dollars this year for drug approval?
All the marketing over cholesterol lowering has ignored one very big fact. The Framingham study shows that if your HDL is above 85, you have no greater risk for heart disease if your total cholesterol is 350 than if its 150. This fact is shocking to most of my patients.
HDL is the “good” cholesterol. It prevents plaque build-up in your arteries. LDL is the “bad” cholesterol that clogs your arteries. Having a high HDL reduces your risk of heart disease, no matter what your LDL.(4) Get your HDL high enough and it “trumps” all other cholesterol concerns.
What you want to do is raise your HDL. Then you don’t need to worry about your total cholesterol.
You can improve your HDL by eating a diet high in plant sterols. These foods will improve your HDL:
Olives Almonds Eggplant Eggs
Olive Oil Walnuts Okra Fresh fruit
The right kind of exercise will also boost HDL. You can read much more detailed strategies for boosting your HDL in my latest book, The Doctor’s Heart Cure. You will find here at my website. Click on “Products” or the link on the homepage.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Physician’s Desk Reference, 57th Edition, Montvale, NJ: Medical Economics Company, 2003
2 Jackevicius CA, Mamdani M, Adherence with statin therapy in elderly patients with and without acute coronary syndromes, JAMA 2002;288:462-67; Benner, JS, et al., Long-term persistence in use of statin therapy in elderly patients, JAMA 2002;288:455-61
3 AstraZeneca website: crestorfacts.com/sideeffect.
4 Castiglioni A, Neuman WR, HDL Cholesterol: What Is Its True Clinical Significance? Emergency Medicine, January 2003:30-42.