The Truth About Deadly Cholesterol Lowering Drugs.

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The Truth About Deadly Cholesterol Lowering Drugs. JoAnn Guest Mar 15, 2005

15:05 PST

http://www.thenhf.com/articles_08.htm

By NHF President

 

Maureen Kennedy Salaman

 

June 2003

 

 

 

Daily, the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry sells us on

" one-shot, " " one-pill " cures through seductive, cheerful,

government-subsidized advertisements offering good-health fairy tales at

the pop of a pill.

 

 

Our citizens are brainwashed daily into believing that pharmaceutical

drugs are the path to vitality and a symptom-free life, while in fact

they are killing us in numbers that compete with the loss of life of our

troops in World War II.

 

 

Data from such mainstream sources as the American Association of Poison

Control Centers, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Journal

of the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control,

and the FDA reports 140,000 people a year die from adverse drug

reactions! That's the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every single

day.

 

 

And it makes prescription drugs the fourth leading killer in the U.S.,

after heart disease, cancer and stroke.

 

 

The fact that pharmaceutical companies are determined to offer answers

to our epidemic of heart problems is not surprising considering the

potential for financial gain. Coronary artery disease is the number one

killer of men and women in the United States. It is the leading cause of

death among women after the age of 60 and in men after 40.

 

 

Pharmaceutical marketing campaigns have been tragically successful. The

sale of prescription drugs has more than doubled in the U.S. during the

past ten years. In 1990, Americans spent $37.7 billion on prescriptions.

In 1997, national spending on prescriptions reached 78.9 billion.

Prescription drugs are the fastest-growing portion of health-care costs,

having risen at the rate of 17 percent per year for the past few years.

 

The Coenzyme Q10 Cover-up

 

It isn't bad enough that many heart medications don't work. It isn't bad

enough that their side effects maim and kill. Now we discover that

cholesterol-lowering drugs deplete the body of a nutrient vital to a

healthy heart and body - Coenzyme Q10.

 

 

Depriving the heart of Coenzyme Q10 is like removing a spark plug from

your engine -- it just won't work. Low levels of CoQ10 are implicated in

virtually all cardiovascular diseases, including angina, hypertension,

cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure.

 

 

Merck, the manufacturer of Mevacor and mevinolin (lovastatin), has known

this for years. In 1990, Merck sought and received a patent for Mevacor

and other statin drugs formulated with up to 1,000 mg of coenzyme Q10 to

prevent or alleviate cardiomyopathy, a serious condition that can cause

congestive heart failure.

 

 

However, they haven't brought these combination products to market, nor

have they educated physicians on the importance of supplementing CoQ10

to offset the dangers. And because they hold the patent, other drug

companies are prevented from coming out with a statin/CoQ10 product.

 

Deadly Lies

 

Why are some of these drugs even on the market? If you knew the half of

it, you'd never be in line at the drug store again. Statins, a class of

cholesterol-lowering drugs, not only do not help prevent heart problems,

but are blamed for an increase in congestive heart failure noted since

they've been on the market.

 

 

Just because the doctor offers you a prescription doesn't mean you have

to take it. When you visit your doctor and he hands you a page from his

prescription pad, don't be afraid to ask why. Don't be afraid to throw

it away on your way out. Don't be afraid to find another doctor who

knows how to help the body heal itself. You won't lose your health

insurance and your doctor probably won't know you didn't have it filled.

You have the choice.

 

 

Despite what should be common knowledge, health-compromising statins

were prescribed almost 100 million times in the U.S. last year. The

consumer watchdog group Public Citizen analyzed the Food and Drug

Administration's side-effect registry and linked 72 fatal and 772

non-fatal cases of muscle breakdown, known as rhabdomyolysis, to all six

of the statins sold between October 1997 and December 2000.

 

 

Medical consumers and the FDA have been led by the nose so long that

pharmaceutical companies aren't afraid to admit their drugs kill. Bayer

AG and the FDA revealed that 31 people had died after taking Bayer's

product, cerivastatin.

 

Driving Under the Influence

 

Do you know someone who takes cholesterol-lowering drugs? Don't get in

the car with them! Lovastatin was found to affect people's ability to

drive or perform other everyday tasks by affecting attention and

reaction speed. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh told at a

meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA) that patients whose

cholesterol had been lowered with Lovastatin paid less attention and had

delayed psychomotor reflexes.

 

 

Now its time to let the Highway Patrol in on it.

 

Cancer Causing

 

Which would you rather have, high cholesterol that may or may not

contribute to heart disease, or cancer? If you take the

cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin (Zocor), you may be opting for

cancer. Tests in human cell samples and in rabbits show that Zocor acts

very similar to naturally-occurring growth factor, and can subsequently

increase the growth of blood vessels in cancerous tumors.

 

 

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in

1996 (275:55-60, Jan. 3, 1996) found that all members of the two most

popular classes of lipid-lowering drugs (the fibrates and the statins)

cause cancer in rodents, in some cases at levels of animal exposure

close to those prescribed to humans.

 

Muscle Destruction

 

Pharmaceutical companies are fond of withholding information. They

believe we only have to know what to take, and when. Then someone pulls

the plug on their Merry-Go-Round and they take the brass ring off the

market.

 

 

Last year the Bayer Corp. of Pittsburgh voluntarily pulled from the

market its cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol (cerivastatin), which was

initially approved in the United States in 1997

(www.bayerpharma-na.com). The drug was removed from the market, with the

support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

(www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html; search for Baycol), because its use

was significantly associated with a type of acute, severe muscle

destruction known as rhabdomyolysis.

 

 

Rhabdomyolysis, which not only destroys muscles but can lead to death as

a result of the effects on kidneys and circulation of muscle breakdown,

has long been associated with statins. However, Baycol has shown a

greater association with this problem than have other statin compounds.

 

The Dangers of Low Cholesterol

 

Dr. Alan Gaby, one of the most knowledgeable physicians I know, believes

that conventional medicine's idea of high cholesterol is exaggerated. He

counters convention by saying a cholesterol level of 300 is high, 270 is

OK, and 250 is borderline.

Some doctors today are convinced that the lower one's cholesterol, the

better. If your cholesterol is too low you have an increased risk of

mood disorders, depression, stroke and violence. Artificially lowering

cholesterol is dangerous because we need cholesterol to manufacture sex

hormones, vitamin D, DHEA and cell membranes. Lowering cholesterol

artificially affects mental acuity and severely disables the ability to

cope with physical and mental stress.

 

 

Studies have shown a three to 13-fold rise in violent deaths among

people taking cholesterol lowering drugs. This is not surprising when

you realize that cholesterol is vital to the nervous system and too-low

cholesterol triggers brain chemistry changes. Cholesterol levels

directly affect the activity of serotonin, a brain neurotransmitter

implicated in the control of violent behaviors. Indications are that

lowered cholesterol levels lead to lowered brain serotonin activity and

this can lead to increased violence.

 

 

Low cholesterol is also linked to stroke risk. In one study researchers

compared the cholesterol levels of stroke patients to 3,700 other

people. They found that as cholesterol dropped, the risk of hemorrhagic

stroke increased significantly.

 

The lesson here is that we should not take conventional medical advice

to heart, especially when it comes to cholesterol-lowering drugs. Just

because everyone says it doesn't mean it is true.

 

If you have high cholesterol, circulation issues and/or heart problems,

look to natural interventions that boost your body's ability to cope and

heal.

 

The cholesterol lowering drug you take could cost you your life.

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

DietaryTi-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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