Sorry if this has been posted before, I did search, but didn't immediately find it. Yet I think the news is rather huge.

I'm also surprised it took me 3 months before I saw a mention of it. Short is: what many of us have been saying about statins (and that's why this is linked in the PN section) and cholesterol now seems to become "mainstream".

If you have PN and are using statins, please discuss this article with your doc.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...ol-limits.aspx

From the article:*

* MrsD, I hope a short quote does not pose a copyright problem?

I think that quote is fine...
as long as it has the link to the original.

This news item was in our US news recently too. Thanks for putting this one up...it is interesting that the UK is now publishing this too.

The new non-statin cholesterol drugs are poised now in the US...they are very expensive and injectables. Big Pharma is expecting huge $$ coming in. I think they will bomb however.
The basic premise of cholesterol lowering has been attacked and found to be fraudulent by more and more researchers.

Yes, and I have read some pretty impressive books about why statins don't work (like The Statin Damage Crisis) or can actually be detrimental to your health. But in the back of my mind I always kept the "surely it can't be totally right (even though it appeared 100% convincing), because that would be a scandal of epic proportions, maybe I'm missing something" doubt. I hope you know what I mean; it always feels strange to go against the grain of the medical powers-that-be.

But with this it becomes officially acknowledged that people have been taking the wrong advice for 5 decades, even though the evidence was very weak. "Heart problems? Oh, just take statins and avoid salt".

To keep it to this section: people who have gotten PN because of statins probably feel quite a bit of anger when they hear this news.

Unfortunately they've only revised restrictions on eating cholesterol-laden food and have not overhauled cholesterol guidelines.

As a matter of fact, last week new guidelines were announced that would result in MORE people being put on statins if followed.

http://blog.heart.org/new-heart-dise...ines-released/

"More Americans could benefit from statins

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs could be prescribed to an estimated 33 million Americans without cardiovascular disease who have a 7.5 percent or higher risk for a heart attack or stroke within the next 10 years. That’s according to a new cholesterol guideline from the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology.

This is a dramatic change from the 2002 federal cholesterol guideline, which recommended that people should only take a statin if their 10-year risk level exceeded 20 percent. The old guideline only considered a person’s risk for heart disease, leaving out the risk for stroke.

Statins are drugs that lower the amount of cholesterol circulating in the blood. Seven statin drugs are currently available in the U.S.

“We’ve been undertreating people who need statin therapy in this country,” said American Heart Association volunteer Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., one of 20 experts on the committee that wrote the new guideline."


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This is so disheartening (pun accidental). Thanks for the link though. I'll now go think of puppies before I actually let this enrage me (further). This is getting absurd.

Incidentally, I was talking to a good friend, who's a doc, about this. He told me that 35 years ago, his Dean hammered on the fact that if you lower cholesterol intake, the liver will just make more. So it's not like nobody knew back in the day.

I am sorry, but this organization touted low fat diets for almost 20 yrs and destroyed the health of millions of Americans.

Wide-O is spot on about the morality of continuing statin use.

One should read Dr. Beatrice Golomb MD and Dr. Stephanie Seneff for other points of view. Dr. Kendricks MD from UK also has much to say about the cholesterol topic.

As the patents expire on the statins, the negative studies are coming to the fore. Today we know more about the damage these drugs cause than every before.

I've never personally known a physician to ask the question "What do you really think of statins?" I can't help but wonder how much liability plays a role in their ongoing use. If a physician doesn't follow the guidelines, is s/he at increased risk of malpractice if a patient has a heart attack and an autopsy reveals the cause of death is coronary artery disease?