--this topic is going to come up at our Long Island Neuropathy Group support meeting tonight. And I'm probably going to be called on to explain the oxidation chemistry again, and provide some internet links --not that I think any of the patients really want to hear it, but the medical people who come sometimes do.

The fact, of course, that most of the medical people have no idea that statins should be looked at really carefully in those with neurological and muscular symptoms--I'm willing to say that they should be contraindicated in those with neuropathy and myopathy--is, of course, part of the problem.

Yes, this all smacks of Big Pharma trying to squeeze more money out of existing medications before other competing medications from rivals hit the market--and of those rivals trying to create a bigger market for those new medications coming down the line. I'm not as familiar with the chemistry of some of these newer proposed injectable cholesterol meds, so I suppose I should be doing some research. But a number of them are based on niacin and fish-oil, which we have, of course, discussed for their cholesterol and triglyceride helping properties. (Big Pharma, of course, would like to make into prescription meds those things we can get over the counter.)

We've had a number of discussions on this and other boards that the more important numbers to watch for heart disease risk are triglyceride and C-reactive protein numbers. High cholesterol alone does not result in forming artery-narrowing "plugs"; it takes an injury and inflammation to the vessel wall to start the process of plaquing. I understand why high cholesterol numbers--especially low density numbers of certain levels (LDL) are found more disproportionately in those with coronary artery disease and circulatory disease, but such people have other factors in combination with the LDL numbers that result in adverse events, and while some doctors/researchers are aware of this, too many, and too many media sources, just oversimplify the discussion to "cholesterol=bad".