The Great Cholesterol Myth (18 page)
Read The Great Cholesterol Myth Online
Authors: Jonny Bowden
Besides being far less effective than you’ve been led to believe, statins have myriad unpleasant, and in some cases acute—or even fatal—side effects, such as many of those Seneff’s husband experienced. These include muscle pain, weakness, fatigue, memory and cognition problems, and—as you will soon see—very serious problems with sexual functioning.
The executive summary of what statin drugs do is this: They cut off cholesterol production in the body. That’s pretty obvious, right? But to understand why the side effects of this seemingly “innocent” action are so severe and troubling, you have to understand how statin drugs cut down on the body’s production of cholesterol. When you do, you’ll see that cutting off
cholesterol production in the way that statin drugs do is like trying to stop the growth of a branch at the top of a tree by starving the roots at the trunk. The “side effect” of starving the roots is that you destroy the rest of the tree. The irony is that there was no need to remove the branch in the first place.
Besides being far less effective than you’ve been led to believe, statins have myriad unpleasant, and in some cases acute—or even fatal—side effects.
Let us explain.
Cholesterol is synthesized in the liver through a pathway called the
mevalonate pathway
, also known as the
HMG-CoA reductase pathway
. Don’t worry about those long names, but do pay attention to what this pathway does. The HMG-CoA reductase enzyme is the one directly responsible for initiating the manufacture of cholesterol, and it is this enzyme with which the statin drugs interfere. (Statin drugs are technically known as HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors.)
But HMG-CoA reductase is at the base of the mevalonate pathway, much as the trunk of the tree is the base from which all branches grow. In the case of the mevalonate pathway, a lot more branches “grow” than just the cholesterol “branch.” The mevalonate pathway produces cholesterol, but it is also responsible for the production of coenzyme Q
10
, one of the most vital nutrients for the heart. Cutting off the mevalonate pathway at the root also blocks or lowers the production of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB)—more on this in a moment—and disrupts the activities of pathways that regulate the production of tau proteins, dolichols, and selenoprotein.
Now don’t worry. We’re not going to go into all these branches and what they do. Suffice it to say that these are all-important pathways producing all-important compounds for the body, and the long-term effect of messing with such a complicated system is unpredictable at best. But we are going to go into a bit of detail when it comes to four of the actions of cholesterol drugs that may account for the lion’s share of their effects, including, unfortunately, their significant and numerous side effects.
The first of these actions is the most obvious one: Statin drugs lower cholesterol, and they do a great job of it. So good, in fact, that they lower cholesterol in the brain, and that is very far from a good thing.
The brain absolutely depends on cholesterol for optimal functioning. Although the brain makes up only about 2 percent of the total weight of the body, it contains 25 percent of the body’s cholesterol. Cholesterol is a vital part of cell membranes in the brain, and it plays a critical role in the transmission of neurotransmitters. Without cholesterol, brain cells can’t effectively “talk” to each other, cellular communication is impaired, and cognition and memory are significantly affected, usually not in a good way! (See the sidebar, “SpaceDoc: The Strange Case of the Missing Memory.”)
Cognitive and memory problems are one of the most dramatic and frequent side effects of statin drugs, and a 2009 study from Iowa State University demonstrates why. Yeon-Kyun Shin, Ph.D., a biophysics professor in the department of biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular biology at Iowa State, tested the whole neurotransmitter machinery of brain cells in a novel experiment. (Neurotransmitters affect data-processing and memory functions.) He measured how the system released neurotransmitters when cholesterol was removed from the cells and compared that with how the system functioned when cholesterol was put back in.
Chart by Michelle Mosher.
Cholesterol increased protein function fivefold.
“Our study shows there is a direct link between cholesterol and neurotransmitter release,” said Shin. “Cholesterol changes the shape of the protein to stimulate thinking and memory.”
4
In other words—how smart you are and how well you remember things.
5
Note to parents: Now that you understand this, the fact that some groups are currently advocating statin drugs for children, whose brains aren’t even fully developed until they’re twenty-five, should be as utterly frightening to you as it is to us.
Adults should be no less sanguine. Speaking at a 2008 luncheon discussion put on by Project A.L.S.—a nonprofit dedicated to raising money for brain research and the understanding of Lou Gehrig’s disease—the vice chairman of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Orli Eingin, M.D., had this to say regarding the number-one-selling statin drug in the world, Lipitor: “This drug makes women stupid.”
6
Here is one noncontroversial and incontrovertible fact: Statin drugs significantly deplete your body’s stores of coenzyme Q
10
(CoQ
10
).
If you don’t already know what CoQ
10
is, this would be a great time to become familiar with it. Once you understand the importance of CoQ
10
to human health, you’ll immediately appreciate why the depletion of CoQ
10
by statin drugs is such a big deal. The depletion of CoQ
10
is one of the most important negative effects of statins, and the one that is pretty much responsible for a host of common side effects involving muscle pain, weakness, and loss of energy.
CoQ
10
is a vitamin-like compound found in virtually every cell in the human body, and when your CoQ
10
levels fall, so does your general health. CoQ
10
is used in the energy-producing metabolic pathways of every cell. It’s a powerful antioxidant, combating oxidative damage from free radicals and protecting your cell membranes, proteins, and DNA. In a previous book, Dr. Sinatra has referred to CoQ
10
as “the spark of life,” and Dr. Jonny has written about it at length in
The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth.
Without CoQ
10
, our bodies simply can’t survive.
The production of CoQ
10
happens in one of the branches of the mevalonate pathway tree that is blocked by the action of statin drugs. When cholesterol production is interfered with in this way, so is the production of CoQ
10
. Interestingly, the most important muscle in the body—the heart—contains the greatest concentration of CoQ
10
. The severe reduction in CoQ
10
caused by statin drugs damages not only the heart but also the skeletal muscles that rely on CoQ
10
for energy production. How ironic that a drug given to prevent heart disease—which it barely does, and then only in extremely limited circumstances—substantially weakens the very organ it’s meant to protect!
The fact that statin drugs cause depletion of CoQ
10
levels has been known for decades. Merck, the manufacturer of Zocor (one of the bestselling statin drugs), has had a patent on a combination statin-CoQ
10
drug since around 1990 but never manufactured it. Although no one knows for sure why, it’s widely believed that Merck never produced this drug because there was no real economic incentive to alerting the public to the CoQ
10
problem and then “solving” it with a combo drug. No one else was doing it, so why should Merck bother?
In 2006, magician and performance artist David Blaine decided to do a stunt in which he was immersed in water for seven days. To prepare for this grueling event, he decided to train with a man named Duane Graveline.
Graveline has a particularly interesting resume: He’s both an M.D. and an astronaut, one of six scientists selected by NASA for the Apollo program. He’s also a renowned expert in the field of zero gravity deconditioning research. The reason Blaine chose him as a consultant was because Graveline himself had once spent seven days immersed in water as part of his own zero gravity conditioning program.
Ask Graveline how terrifying it was to be immersed in water for seven days, and he’d probably tell you it was a walk in the park compared to what he went through when he suddenly lost his memory.
Graveline’s story began in 1999, when he took his annual astronaut physical. The doctors said his cholesterol was too high and prescribed Lipitor, the biggest selling drug in the history of medicine.
But shortly after starting the medication, Graveline experienced a six-hour episode of transient global amnesia (TGA). TGA is the medical term for a rare phenomenon that can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to twelve hours. TGA sufferers suddenly lose the ability to retain new memory and often fail to recognize familiar surroundings. Often they can’t even identify members of their own family, and they frequently become confused and disoriented. People experiencing TGA will literally regress in time—hours, days, weeks, or even years—and not have any memory of their life after the time they’ve regressed to.
Following the episode, Graveline discontinued the statin. But during his next physical a year later, he was persuaded to restart the statin at half the previous dose. Two months after doing so, he experienced another episode of TGA. This time it lasted for twelve hours. His awareness was tossed back fifty-six years to when he was thirteen years old—he knew the names of every teacher and kid in his classes, but he had no memory of his subsequent life. He didn’t even recognize his wife, who was with him when the incident occurred. Decades had been erased from his mind as if they had never happened.
Fortunately, the amnesia lifted, and his memory reverted back to normal. He stopped taking the statin again, too—this time for good.
Graveline began his own personal search for the facts about statins, and what he found was more than a little disturbing.
He learned that TGA had befallen hundreds of other patients taking statin drugs. He also discovered that the side effects of statin drugs in general were both potentially serious and vastly underreported—they included elevated liver enzymes, muscle wasting, sexual dysfunction, and fatigue. He began digging a little deeper into the whole issue of statin drugs and heart disease. He started questioning some of the accepted notions about cholesterol, ideas he himself had once embraced wholeheartedly: for example, the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease and the idea that lowering cholesterol is one of the most important things you can do to protect your heart.
“I came to realize that cholesterol was in no way the heinous foe we had been led to believe it was,” he wrote. “Instead, I realized that cholesterol was the most important substance within our bodies, a substance without which life as we know it would simply cease to exist. That billions of dollars have been spent in an all-out war on a substance that is so fundamentally important to our health is undoubtedly one of the great scientific travesties of our era.”
3
As we age, we make less CoQ
10
, so keeping what we have is even more important during our middle-age and older years, when statin drugs are prescribed the most. Lower CoQ
10
means less energy production for the heart and muscles. Stephanie Seneff and her associates at MIT collected a large number of subjective reports by patients on various drugs. They gathered more than 8,400 online reviews by patients on statin drugs and compared them for mentions of side effects with the same number of age-matched reviews randomly sampled from a broad spectrum of other drugs.
You can see the comparison of side effects from statin and non-statin drugs in the chart on the opposite page.
To this day, many doctors are completely clueless about the CoQ
10
connection and are unaware of its
significance. One of us, Dr. Jonny, played tennis for years with a terrific eighty-year-old named Marty. Although in great shape, Marty was always winded, had trouble catching his breath, and frequently experienced muscle pain and fatigue, which he (and his doc) attributed to “getting older.” It turns out that Marty’s doctor had put him on a statin drug for his cholesterol; his symptoms marked a classic case of CoQ
10
depletion. When Dr. Jonny pointed this out to him and suggested he immediately start supplementing with CoQ
10
, Marty said, “I’ll ask my doctor about that!”
PATIENT REPORTS ON STATIN AND OTHER DRUG SIDE EFFECTS
Side effects | Number statin reviews that mention side effects | Number nonstatin reviews that mention side effects | Associated p-value |
Muscle cramps | 678 | 193 | 0.00005 |
General weakness | 687 | 210 | 0.00006 |
Muscle weakness | 302 | 45 | 0.00023 |
Difficulty walking | 419 | 128 | 0.00044 |
Loss of muscle mass | 54 | 5 | 0.01323 |
Numbness | 293 | 166 | 0.01552 |
Muscle spasms | 136 | 57 | 0.01849 |
Source: Stephanie Seneff. “How Statins Really Work Explains Why They Don’t Work,”
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/why_statins_dont_really_work.html
.
*
P-value (probability value) is a measure of the likelihood that such results could be found by chance. In statistics, a probability of 0.05 or less means the result would be obtained by chance five (or fewer) times in a hundred. When this happens, statisticians consider the results not to be due to chance. All of the above findings meet this criteria (some of them by a long shot), meaning they are considered statistically significant.