Reinventing the Fountain of Youth
Posts tagged Cholesterol
Protect your cardiovascular system
0380 days
The toxic amino-acid homocysteine — produced by the breakdown of protein during normal metabolism and physical activity, and by high-protein diets — is among the leading causes of heart disease, blood clots, arterial plaque, blood-vessel hardening, arterial blockages and strokes. More dangerous than high cholesterol, homocysteine may explain why otherwise healthy people unexpectedly drop dead from cardiovascular failures. Elevated homocysteine levels correlate with a 3.4 times greater risk of heart attack, and are linked with severe carotidartery obstructions. And it only gets worse!
As many as twenty percent of people with heart disease have high homocysteine levels, as may those suffering from osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and depression. Because homocysteine is transported throughout the body in LDL or “bad” cholesterol, it might be the true cause of heart disease, instead of the cholesterol itself. This theory explains why cholesterol-lowering drugs do not always reduce the risk of heart disease or stroke. Homocysteine levels are forty times more accurate than cholesterol levels in predicting cardiovascular disease, and research shows that keeping levels low — with supplements like Lifelink’s TMG-15 — is crucial to good health.
But TMG-15 does far more than just detoxify homocysteine. It protects DNA against damage, reduces the risk of premature aging and cancer, shields the liver and kidneys against damage from chemicals and toxins, increases fat and lipid metabolism, and raises the levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and the metabolic-catalyst carnitine. Athletes rely on it to improve oxygen use and reduce lactic acid build-up, increasing energy and stamina, while reducing fatigue. That’s quite a lot for one supplement to do!
TMG-15, or trimethylglycine, is so beneficial because it supplies the body with plenty of methyl groups. These molecules are crucial for creating vitamins, neurotransmitters, enzymes, hormones, antibodies and DNA; simply put, without them, we’ll die. Methyls also convert toxic homocysteine into SAMe, or S-adenosylmethionine, a potent anti-inflammatory reducing pain and arthritis symptoms, and elevating mood. Without adequate methyl sources the body has trouble neutralizing homocysteine and building components critical for life. That’s why supplementing with TMG-15 is so important.
Derived from sugar beets, LifeLink’s TMG-15 is fortified with B-6, B-12, and folic acid to deliver maximum homocysteine detoxification. If you have heart disease or are at risk because of your family history, suffer from auto-immune disorders, or are on a high-protein diet like Atkins, you really need TMG-15. Even if you are otherwise healthy and not an athlete, you still need TMG-15 protecting your body from toxic homocysteine, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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Effectiveness of statins is called into question
0530 days
The drugs clearly help patients who have already had a heart attack. But their use has skyrocketed in patients hoping to prevent a first heart attack. In those cases, the benefits are dubious.
As the world’s most-prescribed class of medications, statins indisputably qualify for the commercial distinction of “blockbuster.” About 24 million Americans take the drugs – marketed under such commercial names as Pravachol, Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor and Crestor – largely to stave off heart attacks and strokes.
At the zenith of their profitability, these medications raked in $26.2 billion a year for their manufacturers. The introduction in recent years of cheaper generic versions may have begun to cut into sales revenues for the brand-name drugs that came first to the market, but better prices have only fueled the medications’ use: In 2009, U.S. patients filled 201.4 million prescriptions for statins, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription drug trends. That’s nearly double the number of prescriptions written for statins in 2001, four years after they arrived on the American pharmaceutical landscape.
But in recent months the drugs’ touted medical reputation has come under tough scrutiny.
Statins were initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of repeat heart attacks and strokes in patients with high cholesterol who had already had a heart attack. And used for that purpose – called “secondary prevention” – the drugs are powerful and effective medications, driving down patients’ risk of another heart attack or stroke by lowering their levels of LDL (or ‘bad’) cholesterol.
Then physicians came to believe statins could also reduce the risk of a first heart attack in people who have high LDL cholesterol but are nonetheless healthy. This use of statins – called “primary prevention” – has driven the growth in the market for statins over the last decade.
Today, a majority of people who use statins are doing so for primary prevention of heart attacks and strokes. It is this use of statins that has come under recent attack.
“There’s a conspiracy of false hope,” says Harvard Medical School’s Dr. John Abramson, who has cowritten several critiques of statins’ rise, including one published in June in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “The public wants an easy way to prevent heart disease, doctors want to reduce their patients’ risk of heart disease and drug companies want to maximize the number of people taking their pills to boost their sales and profits.”
The stakes of many
Heart patients and their physicians are not the only ones to pin their hopes on statins. The drug companies that brought statins to the market have explored the medications’ benefits in prevention or treatment of such conditions as Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, prostate and breast cancer, kidney disease, macular degeneration and diabetic neuropathy. Although clear proof that statins could forestall or treat any of these diseases might bring in millions of new, paying customers, results have largely been mixed, inconclusive or disappointing.
In an ideal world, debate over the clinical virtues or vices of a drug would be long settled by the time the medication saw a meteoric rise in use. But in a healthcare system that relies on commercial incentives to spur drug development, prescription medications are a product like any other.
The FDA assesses drugs’ safety and effectiveness for specific use; but its judgments are based on preliminary data, most of it generated by a drug company seeking approval for its product. Once the agency approves a drug for marketing, the company that makes it will move quickly and aggressively to expand the universe of patients taking its product.
Sometimes, by the time the deliberate pace of medical research and debate suggests that a drug is not all it’s been cracked up to be, it’s already become a bestseller. Statins, say some who study the relationship between medicine and the drug industry, seem to fit that pattern.
Statins appear to drive down the risk of heart attack or stroke by lowering the levels of fatty deposits circulating in the bloodstream. Research suggests that the drugs dampen inflammatory processes that can prompt deposits of plaque to break away from blood vessel walls and cause sudden blockages of arteries leading to the heart or brain.
And yet, the relationship between cholesterol-lowering and heart disease is not perfectly understood, and the precise role of inflammation in heart disease is also uncertain.
Statins certainly decrease rates of heart attack in people who have clear signs of cardiovascular disease, but it’s not so clear they work that way in people who are healthy. In spite of that uncertainty, statins’ use for primary prevention has skyrocketed.
Behind the numbers
That’s the issue in the latest round of debate, which spilled onto the pages of the Archives of Internal Medicine in late June: whether statins prevent, safely and at a reasonable cost, the development of cardiovascular disease in people who are still healthy but are considered to be at high risk of a heart attack or stroke.
In the first of three studies published in the Archives last month, medical researchers found that, contrary to widely held belief, statins do not drive down death rates among those who take them to prevent a first heart attack. A second article cast significant doubt on the influential findings of a 2006 study, called JUPITER, that has driven the expansion of statins’ use by healthy people with elevated blood levels of C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation. A third article suggested potential ethical, clinical and financial conflicts of interest at work in the execution of the JUPITER study and concluded the widely hailed trial was “flawed” and raises “troubling questions concerning the role of commercial sponsors.”
“Tens of billions of dollars of revenue for the sponsor over the patent life of the drug were at stake in the JUPITER trial, as well as potentially millions of dollars in royalties for the principal investigator,” wrote Dr. Lee Green of the University of Michigan Medical School in an editorial accompanying the trio of studies. “Doubtless, both sponsor and investigative team believe they made their design decisions for the right reasons,” Green added. “But social psychology research provides abundant evidence that we human beings both respond strongly to self-interest incentives and firmly believe that we do not.”
Statins still have ardent admirers, including cardiologist Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. For many patients on a clear collision course with heart disease but not there yet, he said, statins make a difference. And even though recent studies question whether statins reduce heart attack deaths, Nissen added, many patients’ lives are clearly improved by pushing a heart attack further into the future.
The stakes of this debate are big and continuing to grow (see related story, “Pinning down the side effects of statins“). As many as three-quarters of patients currently taking statins haven’t yet had a stroke or heart attack; they have diabetes or high LDL cholesterol, conditions widely thought to put them at high risk of having one.
Those patients largely joined the ranks of statin consumers after 2001, when the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute adopted guidelines on the treatment of patients with high cholesterol. The guidelines, updated again in 2004, suggested that as many as 36 million Americans should take statins – essentially tripling overnight the potential American market for the drugs. Of the nine experts involved in drafting the cholesterol treatment guidelines, the National Institutes of Health later acknowledged that eight had substantial financial ties to statin makers – links that may have predisposed them to view evidence of statins’ benefit in its most positive light.
Said Abramson, the author of “Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine”: The best way to drive down the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the first place is to exercise regularly, not smoke, drink in moderation and eat a healthy Mediterranean-style diet. But, he added, “this message gets drowned out by the commercial interests” of pharmaceutical companies who stand to benefit from increased sales.
melissa.healy@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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Does Cholesterol Really Matter?
0673 days
I’d like to shine the spotlight on one of medicine’s sacred cows- the belief that lowering cholesterol with drugs protects against heart attacks and premature death. Our obsession with cholesterol began in the 1950s when studies linked high consumption of animal fat with high rates of heart disease. This opened the door for clinical trials that laid the foundation of a new paradigm: the cholesterol theory of cardiovascular disease.
This theory has had profound ramifications. It changed the way we eat (fats bad, carbohydrates good) and contributed to our problems with obesity and diabetes. It wormed its way into “clinical practice guidelines”- cholesterol management has become a “standard of care” that doctors are expected to follow. It spawned the invasive heart surgery industry, based on the presumption that cholesterol-laden blockages must be bypassed or propped open. And it led to the creation of the best-selling class of medications in history: cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, which generate more than $15 billion in worldwide sales every year.
But it’s all a house of cards. No matter what you’ve been led to believe, a high cholesterol level is not a reliable sign of an impending heart attack. In fact, growing numbers of experts question whether cholesterol matters at all. As for statin drugs, for most of the 40-plus million Americans recommended to take them for the rest of their lives, they’re an ineffective, expensive, side effect-riddled fraud.
Statin-Free Zone
When a patient taking Lipitor, Zocor, or another statin drug comes to Whitaker Wellness, we discontinue it at once. “But my cholesterol level is 240.” “My doctor told me I’ll have a heart attack if I don’t take this drug.”My father died of heart disease, so I have to take it.” I’ve heard all these justifications and more, and I still recommend that my patients get off statins. Here’s why.
First, they’re not very effective. These drugs do lower cholesterol, but so what? We’re not treating lab numbers. We’re treating patients, and the ultimate goal in cholesterol management is to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. Except for a very limited number of people, there is absolutely no evidence that statins protect against heart attack or premature death.
Are you over age 65? Not a single study suggests you’ll receive any benefits, even if your cholesterol goes down substantially. A woman of any age? Same story. A man younger than 65 who has never had a heart attack? Ditto, no help at all. For middle-aged men who have had a heart attack, statins may lower risk of a repeat heart attack, but that’s the extent of it.
I know this is hard to buy in light of the multiple drug advertisements and glowing endorsements from doctors. But keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies do a superb job of pulling the wool over the eyes of consumers and physicians alike by withholding unfavorable study results and making false, misleading, and often deceptive claims.
A Statistic We Can Understand
That’s why I want to step around confusing statistics and tell you about an easy-to-understand measure that you’ll never hear about in drug ads. It’s called “number needed to treat,” or NNT, and it describes the number of patients who would need to be treated with a medical therapy in order to prevent one bad outcome. Experts consider an NNT over 50 to be “worse than a lottery ticket.”
Lipitor ads claim that it reduces risk of heart attack by 36 percent. Sounds pretty good until you look at the fine print, do the math (which John Carey did in a great article in Business Week), and figure out that the drug’s NNT is 100. This means that 100 people must be treated with Lipitor in order for just one heart attack to be prevented. The other 99 people taking the drug receive no benefit.
To put this into perspective, the NNT of antibiotics for treating H. pylori, the underlying cause of stomach ulcers, is 1.1. These drugs knock out the bacteria in 10 out of 11 people who take it, making them a reliable, cost-effective therapy. At the other end of the spectrum are statins, which as a class have an NNT of 250, 500, or higher depending on the study you look at. What a deal for drugs that can cost more than a thousand bucks a year and are almost guaranteed to cause problems.
Goodbye Drugs, So Long Symptoms
Statins lower cholesterol by suppressing the activity of an enzyme in the liver involved in the production of cholesterol. But this enzyme has multiple functions, including the synthesis of coenzyme Q10. CoQ10 is a key player in the metabolic processes that energize our cells. No wonder statin users often suffer from fatigue, muscle pain and weakness, and even heart failure- the cells are simply running out of juice.
The second most frequent adverse effects of statins are problems with memory, mood, suicidal behavior, and neurological issues. Other common complaints include sexual dysfunction, and liver and digestive problems. Symptoms range from minor (achiness, forgetfulness) to serious (complete but temporary amnesia, permanent memory loss) to lethal (congestive heart failure, rhabdomyolysis or complete muscle breakdown). One statin drug, Baycol, was taken off the market a few years ago after it caused dozens of deaths from rhabdomyolysis. Several studies have also linked statin drugs with an increased risk of cancer.
Because physicians rarely warn of these side effects, few patients suspect their drugs may be the reason they begin feeling bad- and it’s often a revelation when they put two and two together. Simply discontinuing these medications can result in tremendous improvements in health and well-being. Texas cardiologist Peter Langsjoen, MD, published a study showing that when symptomatic patients got off their statins and started taking 240 mg of CoQ10 per day, they had significant decreases in fatigue, myalgias (muscle aches), dyspnea (shortness of breath), memory loss, and/or peripheral neuropathy.
Not a Drug But a Program
As you can see, we need to shift away from this myopic focus on statin drugs and lowering cholesterol, and take a more holistic view. Folks, you don’t need statins- you need a program that addresses all the known risk factors for heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular disorders.
Inflammation, not high cholesterol, is the primary cause of heart disease. Harvard researchers have discovered that a high blood level of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, is more predictive of heart disease than cholesterol. To get a handle on inflammation, lose weight- especially if you carry excess fat in the abdominal area. Exercise. Stop smoking. Eat plenty of vegetables and several weekly servings of salmon, sardines, and other omega-3 fatty acids, and avoid sugars and starches.
The beauty of this program is that it targets not only inflammation but other conditions that contribute to cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, diabetes, even cholesterol. Best of all, it’s a foundation for overall good health.
Necessary Nutrients
Your program should include a well-rounded nutritional supplement regimen, as well. My number-one suggestion for inflammation in all its guises is fish oil. This supplement also improves blood flow, discourages excess clotting, helps normalize heart rhythm, and saves lives by reducing risk of sudden cardiac death.
Folic acid and other B-complex vitamins are important because they lower levels of homocysteine, a toxic substance that damages the arteries. The mineral magnesium relaxes the arterial walls, which improves blood flow, lowers blood pressure, and helps prevent arrhythmias. And antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, provide protection against damaging free radicals- another contributor to cardiovascular disease.
Supplements that boost the heart’s energy are recommended as well. One is coenzyme Q10. In addition to serving as a potent antioxidant, CoQ10 also increases the heart muscle’s efficiency and protects against the adverse effects of statin drugs. Another is D-ribose, a natural sugar that is the structural backbone of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy that fuels cellular function.
Don’t Fret About Cholesterol
As far as cholesterol lowering is concerned, there are a number of natural therapies that work well, including flaxseed and other sources of fiber, niacin, plant sterols, and policosanol.
In short, do what you can to manage your cholesterol, but don’t worry about it if your level is particularly stubborn. The average cholesterol of people who have heart disease isn’t much higher than the level of those who don’t. If high cholesterol runs in your family, concentrate on what you can control, and remember, numbers aren’t everything.
Julian Whitaker, NaturalNews, Mon, 15 Mar 2010
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Red Yeast Rice: A safer alternative to expensive cholesterol-lowering drugs.
13711 days
What is it?
The red-colored yeast Monascus purpureus is a traditional Chinese food coloring and herbal remedy. It has been used medicinally in China for at least several hundred years and has been a food ingredient for about 2000 years. The yeast is grown on wet white rice, which becomes permeated with the colored yeast. Red yeast rice (RYR) is a dietary staple in many Asian countries and may account for the low level of cardiovascular disease found in these countries.
Modern RYR supplements are extracts of Red Yeast Rice – unneeded starches and gums have been removed to make the powdered product more potent, less perishable, and easily dosed.
How it works. RYR affects cardiovascular disease because it:
- inhibits the body’s synthesis of cholesterol
- inhibits the body’s production of C-Reactive Protein
Compounds called ‘monacolins’ in the dried yeast inhibit an enzyme that makes cholesterol in the body. These inhibitors are similar in chemical structure to the expensive ‘statin’ drugs that are sold as remedies for high cholesterol. In addition, the red yeast contains a variety of other medically active compounds, including flavonoids and sterols, that contribute to the yeast’s cholesterol-regulating activity.
The monacolins in RYR also suppress the body’s production of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) – a protein involved in inflammation. Inflammation is considered to be the primary process that causes plaques to develop in arteries. By suppressing CRP, red yeast rice suppresses the inflammation responsible for atherosclerosis.
The efficacy of RYR.
Ten or more clinical studies of RYR have been performed; all have shown that RYR supplementation brings about significant reductions in LDL cholesterol and triglycerides – reductions of at least 30% in patients with high lipid levels. Animal experiments have shown that RYR can actually shrink atherosclerotic plaques in arteries.
Recent studies have convinced researchers that RYR is at least as effective as statin drugs, while causing far fewer side effects. Why should this be? The lack of side effects is explained by the fact that prescription statin drugs contain a large amount of a single compound, whereas RYR supplements contain only small amounts of several compounds; consequently RYR users typically experience no side effects from any compound. As for efficacy: the various compounds provided by RYR, working together, dramatically enhance each others effectiveness.
Cost comparison.
The expensive way to lower the body’s LDL cholesterol levels is to use brand-name ‘statin’ drugs. Typical prices for the six prescription statins currently on the market in the U.S. are: Lipitor® $78/month * Lescol® $64/month * Mevacor® $60/month * Pravachol® $95/month * Zocor® $83/month * Crestor® $91/month. Compare that with LifeLink’s Red Rice Yeast Extract, which costs about $17/month.
For a more detailed discussion of RYR and the medical studies that support its use, see the articles at:
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High cholesterol puts 1 of 5 teens at risk of heart disease
0724 days
by Jake
in Heart Disease
One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.
A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.
Previous studies had indicated that unhealthy cholesterol levels, once a condition thought isolated to the middle-aged and elderly, were increasingly becoming a problem among the young, but the new data document the scope of the threat on a national level.
“This is the future of America,” said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who heads the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. “These data really confirm the seriousness of our obesity epidemic. This really is an urgent call for health-care providers and families to take this issue seriously.”
Earlier research found that the obesity epidemic has been accompanied by an increase in a host of health problems in youths that were previously found mostly among adults, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. The new data detail the obesity’s effect on cholesterol levels, which can increase the risk for a variety of illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease.
“The current epidemic of childhood obesity makes this a matter of significant and urgent concern,” said Ashleigh May, an epidemic intelligence service officer with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division for heart disease and stroke prevention, who led the analysis.
Although the latest government data suggest that the obesity epidemic might be leveling off after increasing for decades, at least one-third of youths are overweight or obese, and the heaviest boys continue to get heavier.
“People are worried that this generation is going to grow up to have more cardiovascular disease than the current generation,” said Denise Simons-Morton of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. “This problem is poised to negate all of the advances we’ve made in cardiovascular health.”
In the new study, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers analyzed data collected from 3,125 youths through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is conducted every two years.
According to data from surveys conducted between 1999 and 2006, 20.3 percent had abnormal “blood lipid” levels, which includes low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or the “good cholesterol”; high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the “bad cholesterol”; and high levels of triglycerides, which can also clog arteries.
The percentage of teens with an abnormal blood lipid level varied by weight, ranging from 14.2 percent of those whose weight was normal to 22.3 percent among those who were overweight to 42.9 percent among those who were obese.
The findings support a 2008 recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that children and adolescents get blood tests to see whether they need to be treated for abnormal lipid levels if they are at risk for heart disease because of a family history of high blood cholesterol or early heart disease or if they are at risk because they smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes or are overweight.
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 22, 2010
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