New US Guidelines Will Lift Limits on Dietary Cholesterol
 

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."


__________________________

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?

Yes, possibly. It is called "standard of care". And the Big Pharma companies worked very tirelessly to get statins into that category.
Ghost written studies, and some very complex mathematical tinkering to show more benefit than originally was present.
Very few people are statistically educated enough to find these tricks, but they have been found eventually and revealed in various books and papers. So doctors just relied on sales reps to tell them what to do. My own doctor believed that Lipitor REVERSES plaque.... when that is just not true, but presented in a seminar with bogus ultrasounds.(Lipitor and other statins are implicated in causing hemorrhage strokes BTW.) I found the critique of that researcher's assertions years ago online. But she still BELIEVED.
She still asks me at each checkup if I would accept statins, for the record, and I still refuse. I am only borderline anyway if one believes the fabricated statistics.

Doctors were "bribed" to write more and more RXs for statins.
Drug reps get monthly numbers of RXs for their products filled at most drug stores. These are presented to doctors at the visits, and those doctors showing good "numbers" get trips, reference books, cash etc as "rewards". I used to talk to a drug rep who explained it all to me years ago. In fact the main whistle blower in this regard came from Canada....
http://ethicalnag.org/2012/08/13/big-pharma-persuasion/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ushers/304714/

http://www.propublica.org/article/wh...tor-prescribes

I can only speak for my own country (Belgium), but there are a few things in play. First of all, we have incredible access to health care and we can pick and choose our GP's. I live in a rural area, but I have about 11 GP's in a 5 mile radius that - if I call them today - I can see them this evening or tomorrow at the latest. The downside is that people start "shopping". People also expect pills here. If a GP doesn't give you pills, it's not a good doctor.

I'm lucky to have a very good relation to my GP. I have been with her for 15 years now, and because I can make her laugh (I tend to make fun of my ailments) but also provide good info and feedback, and am honest about my lifestyle (I told her of my alcohol problem, which enabled her to help me...), we often have a chat when I need to go see her. Last time - even before I mentioned it - she was shaking her head when she was reading new guidelines. I asked why she was looking rather angry, and she said if she had to follow the new statin guidelines (this was 4 years ago), she would have to give them to 70% (her words) of her patients, which is obviously ridiculous. I asked her about her opinion on statins overall, and in all honesty she didn't think they helped, but - like you say - when it's a guideline you don't just play cavalier seul and ignore it. So she just tries to minimize the number of patients that have to take them, and tries to give info about additional lifestyle changes. Patients take the pills and forget the lifestyle changes. (or go find another doc who gives them the pills)

Can't even blame them without being a hypocrite. "We are busy, we need a quick fix, the diet can wait". It's just that she could do a lot more if those guidelines weren't there in the first place.

I think I told this story before on here, and I got a violent reaction about "her being a hypocrite and a bad doc for still giving scripts for statins". Hmmm, that's not how I see it, it's not black and white.

She listens to her patients, she makes time for them, she does for example refuse to give a script for D2 (despite the guidelines...) and tells her patients to get over the counter D3 ("D2 doesn't even work"), she does listen to/acknowledges my stories about B12 and cyanocobalamin, methylcobalamin fixing potential methylation problems etc. so I think she is a fantastic doc as long as you don't force her into giving you medication she doesn't really believe in (but has to because of the guidelines).

Post is getting to long (sorry) but I do think it throws a light on how statins still get the light of day even when GP's don't believe they are helpful.

Don't miss this link:

http://ethicalnag.org/2009/09/12/astrazeneca/

It explains how the drug industry got doctors to prescribe off label Seroquel, to patients. This drug is only indicated for schizophrenia.