I am suspicious of drugs from reptile or animal toxins. The Prialt is mostly a failure, and the ACE inhibitors from snake venom, did a number on me too! (drug induced lupus and increased bradykinin levels!)

If the sodium channel drugs do get approved soon, we'll have to look at the studies of the other side effects they may have closely.

For example, Lidocaine, which blocks some sodium channels also affects the heart in high doses, or some sensitive people.

It is a fine line between blocking excess actions and all actions, and many organs may be run and controlled by the Nav channels.

Here is an update on the new cholesterol lowering drug, coming out this year, perhaps...

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...gyholnk0000001

And check out that pricetag! EGADS!

at $833 a month for something of dubious value to the patient. not to mention the side effects.

MrsD, I thought of you at 26:13 in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL5-9ZxamXc

"Statins are the most ineffective drugs ever produced by humans."

I found this video as I've been doing a lot of research to understand the science behind a low carb high fat diet, and making sure it makes sense to me.

From Dr. Michael Greger's article Why Do Heart Doctors Favor Surgery and Drugs Over Diet?

"...The physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient.” For example, before starting someone at moderate risk on a cholesterol-lowering statin drug, a physician might ideally say something like:

“You should know that for folks in your situation, the number of individuals who must be treated with a statin to prevent one death from a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke is generally between 60 and 100, which means that if I treated 60 people in your situation, 1 would benefit and 59 would not. As these numbers show, it is important for you to know that most of the people who take a statin will not benefit from doing so and, moreover, that statins can have side effects, such as muscle pain, liver damage, and upset stomach, even in people who do not benefit from the medication. I am giving you this information so that you can weigh the risks and benefits of drugs versus diet and then make an informed decision.”

Yet, how many physicians have these kinds of frank and open discussions with their patients?

Of the 3 Cardiologists and 4 GPs I have seen over the years who have told me I need to be on various Statins - none.

Dave.

New research on behavioral effects of statins:
 

This is in our Health News Headlines this morning:

http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/07...men/86504.html

Dr. Golomb in San Diego does alot of research into these drugs, and it is very worthwhile to Google her to read more if you are interested.

Statins implicated in lowering vaccine effectiveness:
 

http://news.yahoo.com/popular-choles...161903662.html

I saw this today! Interesting....

Stay the course....It is maddening!
 

I just read the article.:mad: How much research is needed before the medical establishment stops pushing this drug? I just love how Dr. Robert Atmar states, "But until more research confirms exactly how statins interact with the vaccines, older patients should stay the course with both their medications and vaccinations." What ever happened to Err on the side of caution?

Does anyone know how to interpret NMR LipoProfile results? I'm trying to sift through mine to understand what they're trying to tell me.

I had some lipid panels done in 2013 and 2014 and learned which areas I needed to adddress and how to address them. Do you have a few specifics.

Doctor in now way had time to go over these tests and help me.

Because of my day job I know a fair bit about NMR and lipids - I would be happy to see what I can make of your results.

I would like to see what Kiwi has to say too.

But this might help understand NMR lipid tests too:

https://www.nhfcpepicentre.org/Porta...id_profile.pdf

There are some nice graphics on that site.;)

I don't know if I posted about Dr. Sinatra's position on statins and heart health in general, but I so much respect and follow his info. I don't take statins and I'm pretty sure never would. On my 2014 lipid panel, my MD tested COQ10 and I see it's a little lower than is optimal, so I've upped my COQ10 regardless and take 200mg at least daily. Some days take 300mg. He talks about COQ10 in his comments. I didn't read thru this whole thread so maybe it was mentioned, but worth mentioning again can't hurt.

Statin Drugs: What They Do & Who Should Take Them | Dr. Sinatra

Thanks everyone. I'll post below what I think are the relevant results out of 31 reported ones. If I'm missing any that would be helpful, please let me know. They flag three results as "high," and I'm showing those.

What I'm basically trying to understand is the real cardiac risk of my supposedly elevated LDL related to particle size. I know the small dense ones are the bad ones. From another source, I learned this about Ldl particle size:

Pattern A - Larger, less dense 20.6 - 22
Pattern B - Small, dense 19.0 - 20.5

Ldl-P 1446 (high)
Ldl-C 157 (high)
Ldl Size 21.1
Ldl Size Percentile 73.5
Small Ldl-P 463 (reference range <=527)
Large Ldl Particle Number 819

Triglycerides 52
Hdl-C 66
Hdl-P (Total) 27.6
Cholesterol, Total 233 (High)


Based on what I'm reading into this, I'm not in too bad shape despite a high Ldl-P. My Ldl particle size is averaging in the Pattern A range, and my Ldl numbers significantly outnumber my small Ldl numbers.

Am I thinking about this right? I have m doc appt on Wednesday, and I just want to be a little educated about this before I hear what she has to say.

Thanks so much!

Janie

The particle count is the biggest driver for atherosclerosis. You are an ApoE4, correct?

Dr. Tara Dall discusses LDL, LDL Cholesterol (LDL-C) & LDL Particles (LDL-P) - YouTube

Dr. Tara Dahl used to practice in Wisconsin and is a lipidologist.

No, thank goodness. e3/e3

So you're saying the particle size doesn't matter? It's the total count?

Watching the video now...

Janieg, I think that mrsD and madisongrrl have provided great comments and links.

I don't know how much background you know but this might help you when you see your doctor:

Lipoproteins are particles which differ in their density - eg, LDL is Low Density Lipoprotein and HDL is High Density Lipoprotein. Each class and subclass of lipoproteins contains different proteins and different proportions of lipids, including cholesterol.

There is reasonable evidence that the amount of cholesterol in LDL ("Ldl-c" in your results) is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, it has become clear that the number of LDL particles ("Ldl-p" in your results) is also important.

This is something which Dr J D Otvos and his colleagues have worked on. They developed a clever NMR method to calculate the number of LDL particles. Dr Otvos is a respected scientist with 134 papers in PubMed.

He and his colleagues looked at subjects in the Framingham Offspring Study, which is a long-term (it started in 1971) study looking at risk factors for cardiovascular disease. They found that the probability of survival was highest in people with low LDL-P and low LDL-C and lowest in people with high LDL-P. The paper is here LDL Particle Number and Risk of Future Cardiovascular Disease in the Framingham Offspring Study - Implications for LDL Management. - PubMed - NCBI - the PDF version of it is easiest to read.

Your LDL-P and LDL-C levels look high to me.

My approach to this (my LDL-C levels are fine so this is prophylactic) is to try to eat in a healthy way - lots of fresh vegetables, fish, eggs, meat in moderation, etc and minimal intake of food/drink with added sugar and foods with highly processed carbohydrates.

Your doctor should be able to advise you about this and I think that it is highly likely that mrsD and madisongrrl can be helpful as well.

So I just watched/listened to a slew of videos on YouTube. The old saying "Opinions are like *******s, everyone has one" is definitely true. :D

Ultimately, I think my favorite video was this one below by Dr. Jonny Bowden..."The Great Cholesterol Myth."

It's over an hour, but here are some important moments

Dr. Jonny Bowden "The Great Cholesterol Myth" - YouTube

37:45 Talks about the particle test
39:00 Talks about the Ldl cholesterol particle size issue
45:00 Talks about inflammation being the real culprit in heart disease
1:04:00 7 steps to heart health (summary slide at 1:06:53)
1:07 :00 Favorite supplements for heart health (Omega 3s, magnesium, CoQ10, Citrus Bergamot, D-Ribose, Curcumin, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Reservatrol
1:10:28 Overall summary slide

Not saying I believed absolutely everything he said, but I enjoyed it. It's a different slant on the cholesterol issue.

Thanks much, kiwi.

The diet you described is the diet I changed to in 2014. I eat tons of fresh vegetables, next to no processed food or grains, lean protein, salmon once a week, no added sugar, etc, etc... And still, you can see my Ldl. The only thing I feel I can improve on is exercise. I used to get a ton when I didn't work...now, not so much except on weekends. I need to work on this.

Also despite this diet and despite my blood sugar being under 90 the vast majority of the day, my A1c is creeping up.

My test results seem to give me more questions than answers.

I'm all about a whole foods paleo lifestyle, eat more healthy fat etc (and that is basically what I practice). However, I keep hearing this community say that cholesterol doesn't matter and that if you have light fluffy particles, then you are okay. This is not really accurate.

There is a study (maybe more than one for all I know) that shows that LDL size loses significance when you adjust for LDL particle number. Therefore, the particle number will be the most important risk factor in your profile, more important than your particle type. Particle type matters also, but it's secondary to the number of particles. It's the whole cars analogy- the more cars (particles) that you have on the road (arteries) the higher the incidence of accidents (atherosclerosis).

Let us know what your doctor tells you.

There are also others things besides diet and exercise that drive that LDL particle count - thyroid, stress, infections etc. Plus you haven't yet figured out a root cause for yours SFN and for all you know, that could be driving those numbers.

You have a tightrope to walk with your insulin issues. And high insulin can drive that your particle count up as well. I was thinking maybe you had some genetics at play, but you are not an ApoE4. I'm stumped....

Here is one more to ponder or not. All I can say in my folks life, none of these tests were done, they lived into 90's. Cholesterol wasn't a word.

Why Your Cholesterol Test Can Lie | Dr. Stephen Sinatra

Thanks. I found this article by Chris Kesser which discusses possible causes of increased LDL. You pretty much nailed it.

What Causes Elevated LDL Particle Number?


A tightrope is definitely what I'm walking with my insulin issues. When I get home from work, my blood sugar is often in the low 70s and sometimes high 60s (which I can usually feel). I'm going to have to start snacking more.

I've seen my new primary care once for a new patient visit, but didn't come away with a great feeling. I'm thinking about asking for a referral to an endocrinologist to see if they might spot something.

I'm also 35 minutes from Johns Hopkins if I could just figure out what kind of doctor to try to see!

While a lot of the ongoing research into lipid particle sizes is very interesting--
 

--from a clinical perspective, I still don't think the researchers really have a handle on exactly what drives cardiovascular risk when it comes to particle size and number.

Certainly, the correlational studies don't provide a lot of strong absolute evidence for any particular size or number of particles resulting in greater infarction risk without other factors being taken into account, such as blood sugar, blood pressure, triglycerides (yours are impressively low), and measures of inflammation such as C-Reactive protein levels. There are plenty of people who go around with pretty high levels of "harmful" particles who because of healthy measures on some or all of these other levels are at relatively low risk for cardiac incidents--and a goodly number who have been found to have "good" cholesterol profiles as currently defined who are at high risk for events due to high blood sugar readings, high blood pressure, high inflammatory levels, and the like.

More reserach is certainly needed, but these situations are complex and multifactorial, and a lot of it is driven by heredity as well as lifestyle--although at least lifestyle is alterable. What makes me wary is how the "acceptable" lab levels have been driven down over time--Total cholesterol normal has gone from less than 240 to less than 200 over the last twenty years, and now many want to set it at 170--without REALLY good solid evidence that these have significant salutary effects. (We do need a certain amount of cholesterol available for our brains and other tissues--hypocholeterolemia is not good for body functioning, either.) I often wonder how often these decisions are driven by the lobbying of big pharma wanting to sell new product rather than by good research into actual health outcomes.

Thanks much for the input, glenntaj. You're concisely stating the feeling I've been getting reading all the conflicting opinions. I just don't think they really have a grasp on things yet.

Your comments on the acceptable levels being set lower and lower is also enlightening. I didn't know that, but am not surprised.

It'll be interesting the stance my new doctor takes on this. She's part of a medical conglomerate here, and I'm sure there are Standards of Care she's supposed to adhere to.

Well, it was interesting today. My new doctor was completely unconcerned about my LDL. She pretty much said, "Yeah, it's a little high, but try getting more exercise." She went on to say that if I had a family history of people keeling over when they were young she might consider a statin, but when I said I wouldn't take one anyway, she just smiled.

So this doctor is part of the big MedStar conglomerate down that is slowly taking over medical practices and hospitals here in the Baltimore/Washington area. I know they have Standards of Care that their docs are supposed to follow, and she actually showed me briefly what MedStar software pooped out about my cholesterol. What I saw was "borderline."

"Your blood work looks good, unless you need me sooner, I'll see you in a year. "

Janieg, your new doctor sounds sensible to me.

As far as exercise is concerned, I walk briskly for about 30 minutes every day - good for my aerobic fitness.

It also gives me a chance to notice, without judging, the sights, sounds and smells of what I experience on my walk (mindfulness).

Maybe something along those lines might work for you as well?

Your doc sounds like a keeper!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is good news. As I've said here or maybe on another group, we are a "new world" of tests, numbers, research, science blah blah blah. Enjoy and get a little more bouncing. My new PT has me doing a rebounder in their gym and bouncing more on the BALL. I dusted my BALL off and bouncing on it more at home.

Due to all the OA mess and hip joint mess, I can't do what I did for years.

new study shows statins increase Parkinson's
 

This is a huge study that refutes other theories that statins "help" Parkinson's.

from Medscape: Medscape Access