Lipitor is one of the frequently prescribed statins. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)
High cholesterol exhibits no outward signs—unlike other conditions of the blood, such as diabetes or anemia, diseases that manifest telltale symptoms like thirst or weakness—hypercholesterolemia requires the services of a physician to detect its presence.
Many people who feel perfectly healthy suffer from high cholesterol—in fact, feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol!
Doctors who treat this new disease must first convince their patients that they are sick and need to take one or more expensive drugs for the rest of their lives, drugs that require regular checkups and blood tests.
Such doctors do not work in a vacuum. Their efforts to convert healthy people into patients are bolstered by the full weight of the U.S. government, the media, and the medical establishment, agencies that have worked in concert to disseminate the cholesterol dogma and convince the population that high cholesterol is the forerunner of heart disease and possibly other diseases as well.
Who suffers from hypercholesterolemia? Peruse the medical literature of 25 or 30 years ago, and you’ll get the following answer: any middle-aged man whose cholesterol is over 240 with other risk factors, such as smoking or overweight.
After the Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the parameters changed: Anyone (male or female) with cholesterol over 200 could receive the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. Recently that number has been moved down to 180.
If you have had a heart attack, you get to take cholesterol-lowering medicines even if your cholesterol is already very low. After all, you have committed the sin of having a heart attack, so your cholesterol must therefore be too high. The penance is a lifetime of cholesterol-lowering medications along with a boring low-fat diet.
But why wait until you have a heart attack? Since we all labor under the stigma of original sin, we are all candidates for treatment. Current edicts stipulate cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children.
The drugs that doctors use to treat the new disease are called statins—sold under a variety of names including Lipitor (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin), and Pravachol (pravastatin).
How Statins Work
The process begins with acetyl-CoA, a two-carbon molecule sometimes referred to as the “building block of life.” Three acetyl-CoA molecules combine to form six-carbon hydroxymethyl glutaric acid (HMG). The step from HMG to mevalonate requires an enzyme, HMG-CoA reductase.
Statin drugs work by inhibiting this enzyme—hence the formal name of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Herein lies the potential for numerous side effects, because statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many, if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right.
Consider the findings of pediatricians at the University of California, San Diego, who published a description of a child with a hereditary defect of mevalonic kinase, the enzyme that facilitates the next step beyond HMG-CoA reductase. The child was mentally retarded, microcephalic (very small head), small for his age, profoundly anemic, acidotic, and febrile. He also had cataracts. Predictably, his cholesterol was consistently low—70 to 79 mg/dl. He died at the age of 24 months.
The child represents an extreme example of cholesterol inhibition, but his case illuminates the possible consequences of taking statins in strong doses or for a lengthy period of time—depression of mental acuity, anemia, acidosis, frequent fevers, and cataracts.
Cholesterol is one of three end products in the mevalonate chain. The two others are ubiquinone and dilochol. Ubiquinone or coenzyme Q10 is a critical cellular nutrient biosynthesized in the mitochondria. It plays a role in ATP production in the cells and functions as an electron carrier to cytochrome oxidase, our main respiratory enzyme.
The heart requires high levels of Co-Q10. A form of Co-Q10 called ubiquinone is found in all cell membranes where it plays a role in maintaining membrane integrity so critical to nerve conduction and muscle integrity. Co-Q10 is also vital to the formation of elastin and collagen.
Side effects of Co-Q10 deficiency include muscle wasting, leading to weakness and severe back pain, heart failure (the heart is a muscle!), neuropathy, and inflammation of the tendons and ligaments, often leading to rupture.
Dolichols also play a role of immense importance. In the cells, they direct various proteins manufactured in response to DNA directives to their proper targets, ensuring that the cells respond correctly to genetically programmed instruction.
Thus statin drugs can lead to unpredictable chaos on the cellular level, much like a computer virus that wipes out certain pathways or files.
Squalene, the immediate precursor to cholesterol, has anti-cancer effects, according to research.
The fact that some studies have shown that statins can prevent heart disease, at least in the short term, is most likely explained not by the inhibition of cholesterol production but because they block the creation of mevalonate.
Reduced amounts of mevalonate seem to make smooth muscle cells less active and platelets less able to produce thromboxane. Atherosclerosis begins with the growth of smooth muscle cells inside artery walls, and thromboxane is necessary for blood clotting.
Source: westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/statin.html
