The Meat Fix by John Nicholson

Author:John Nicholson [John Nicholson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849543026
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2012-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

In the impressively titled Incremental Decrease in Endpoints through Aggressive Lipid Lowering (IDEAL) trial, almost 90 per cent of participants in both groups had side effects, and in almost half of them they were recorded as serious.

So what side effects might you suffer from? It’s not a pretty list. Lupus (I thought lupus meant you became a werewolf), pneumonia, dyspnea (pain while breathing), muscle pain, renal dysfunction, tendon complications, cognitive dysfunction. That’s a pretty unpleasant list of adverse effects, most of which I think I’ve also suffered from after drinking that cheap white cider.

A 2008 survey of statin patients found that 75 per cent experienced cognitive dysfunction determined to be probably or definitely related to statin therapy. Of 143 patients who reported stopping statin therapy, 90 per cent reported improvement in cognitive problems, sometimes within days of statin discontinuation. In some patients, a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease was reportedly reversed. Severity of cognitive problems were clearly related to statin potency.

Some say a large statin dose also increases your likelihood of getting Type 2 diabetes and even of having a stroke, which would be a bitter irony. If one thing doesn’t get you, another will, it seems.

The Marshall Protocol research concluded that for adults aged between thirty and eighty years old, who already have occlusive vascular disease, statins confer, what they call, a total and cardiovascular mortality benefit. Which, in English, means fewer people die. This doesn’t seem in doubt. However, 75 per cent of people who take statins are not in that category. If you are healthy there is marginal evidence that statins prevent heart attacks or strokes. One meta-analysis (that just means it rolls together lots of different bits of research) showed that in healthy patients there was only a 0.6 per cent reduction in mortality. In other words, physicians would need to treat between 100 and 450 patients with a statin for more than four years to prevent one death.

So there I would be taking this drug for maybe up to fifty more years. I would never know if it had prevented me having a heart attack, but because you’re taking something, you probably assume it has even if you’d have been perfectly healthy anyway. The power of taking a pill is often said to be greater than the power of the actual pill. The placebo effect works and two placebo pills work better than one. Even if you’re told it’s a placebo. We are officially mental, aren’t we?

Interestingly, these drugs become generic in 2012, therefore anyone can make them. The big money will then drop out of the market for those who hold the patent. I wouldn’t mind betting far fewer statins then get prescribed as the big pharmaceutical companies’ marketing departments move on to newer, more profitable drugs.

I was an early adopter of statins back in 2001; today, many feel they are over-prescribed, given to people who have not had a heart attack and have no history of heart disease. More traditionally we call these people h-e-a-l-t-h-y.

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