Cholesterol and Statins – Aggregation of Resources

Below is part of an email I sent the other day when someone wrote to me asking for help to lower and balance his cholesterol before his doc put him on statins. This person was expecting to be on statins some day, but just not yet. Here is part of my response (as with this person, you should consider the information and ultimately make the decision that is right for you).

The Email

I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with this. Before answering, I need to give a little perspective. 

High or out of balance cholesterol means that your body is trying to repair insults/injuries to it. Medication will reduce the cholesterol but it will not take care of the insult/injury that may eventually lead to heart attack, stroke or death. Statins save almost ZERO lives, weaken the body's musculature dramatically, including the heart, and can kill people. 

Check out this link from my blog: http://movingstronglyforward.typepad.com/moving_strongly_forward/2009/01/victory-cholesterol.html 

Cholesterol "problems" can be hereditary, but it doesn't mean that they have to be problems. Chances are that your parents ate processed food that aggravated their problem, requiring medication. Further, the standard cholesterol numbers are not scientifically based, and the 200 number was pulled out of a hat. Read this post:

http://movingstronglyforward.typepad.com/moving_strongly_forward/2009/02/conference-with-sally-fallon-day-1.html

The history of the cholesterol and statins is mindboggling based on the information provided by Sally Fallon. But don't take Sally's word for it, read Norman Hadler's book (MD from UNC Chapel Hill), mentioned in the first blog post above. It would be interesting to see what your doc would say if debating Dr. Hadler.

Further, your cholesterol may have lowered when you took fat out of your diet because you took the illness causing fats from processed foods out, thus removing the processed foods that hurt the body and raise cholesterol. Keep this in mind from Sally Fallon's lecture: "Lower rates of heart disease are associated with higher levels of saturated fat in the diet: The French, Swiss, Dutch, Icelandic, Belgium, Finnish and Austrian paradoxes!!"

And this point: "The Japanese developed statins, found them to be poison and rejected them. They sold the patent to Merck, and now the rest of the world is being poisoned."

So, I don't know your numbers - they might not even be that BAD. Out of whack cholesterol screams inflammation. Take out the inflammation causing foods and you should normalize your cholesterol - AND AMAZING OTHER CHANGES WILL OCCUR THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. You will start getting rid of problems you didn’t even know you had until they are gone.

Take out grain, all sweeteners (except a bit of honey if you need a little something), all dairy (except the kefir you make at home, cheddar cheese and other hard raw cheeses), all beans (except navy, lima and green). That will cool your inflammation quickly. Go to www.gapsdiet.com to learn more.

Finally, check out these links from another MD:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/the-cholesterol-myth-that_b_676817.html

Natural therapy: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/06/tips-to-lower-cholesterol-naturally.aspx

And here is an MD that eats all the "wrong things." I learned about him from a radiologist I met a couple of weeks ago - there are clear-thinking, open minded, non-drug beholden MDs out there. http://www.archevore.com/

Hope all of that helps. If you need more reassurance, I URGE you to go see my doctor of Oriental medicine.

I hope you do all you can to avoid the statins. I watched them take apart an adopted grandpa we have. He was a ripped 70 year old guy who suddenly lost his muscle tone when they put him on statins. It occurred to him that his heart was losing tone too, and he took himself off. His cholesterol was not out of whack and below 200, but you know...prevention. Needless to say, at 73 he is ripped again and doing inverted pushups to show off in front of Colson just 2 weeks ago.