The incredible, edible egg?

[kinnip]

EC, it could be that quitting smoking puts you into the fringe of the risk group, and maybe you can stop taking them. I know some folks don't have an easy choice when it comes to statins. They are better than dying. I've watched my mom and sister take statins for years. They both started in their late twenties and both have had to continually increase dosages and add new meds to the cocktail. The genetics affecting my system may be different from what's going on with them, but I'm older than my sis and have never taken a statin. My cholesterol has been holding steady for five or six years now at 270. It's high and I have had docs tell me I must take the drugs. I found another doctor.
There are so many factors that contribute to heart disease. For example, plaque only builds up on the artery walls when there's texture for it to cling to. This means that unless you have a congenital defect or hypertension that causes splitting in the artery walls, it's unlikely you'll have a significant build up. There's also the issue of high density cholesterol, the good stuff. It breaks up any accumulation of low density cholesterol. This is why olive and other veg oils are so darn good for you . It's also why I never eat fat free dressing on my salads, as long as the fat is unsaturated.
The bottom line is I just don't trust statins. They have a huge impact on important systems, and they haven't been on the market long enough for anyone to know for sure what their impact will be on the geriatric health of folks who've taken them since their twenties. All that being said, I'm not a doctor. All of this research was done with me in mind.

 

[Rosalind]

cholesterol is too big to penetrate the blood-brain barrier

No, it gets through just fine. Cholesterol is a fairly small molecule, and there's plenty of membrane and leukocyte trafficking between neurons to transfer lipid rafts full of the stuff. We often manage to get much larger molecules across the blood brain barrier--small proteins, sometimes, and in certain inflammatory conditions (e.g. Alzheimer's Disease, encephalitis, TSEs) the barrier becomes very porous to let white blood cells through. Your brain for sure is the recipient of many sterols produced by other organs: cholesterol, estradiol, testosterone, progesterone, etc. they're all similar. There's actually specialized cholesterol receptors on many cell types, including on the BBB itself, to uptake larger molecules as needed--your BBB is able to scavenge extra cholesterol, heme, and growth factors from the blood if the brain needs more than it happens to have convenient. That's how it repairs itself.

Statins are unique drugs in that they are fairly benign with a low tox profile; they don't hurt very much, even if they don't always help. But they don't work for everyone due to lots of genetic quirks, so this is an area where personalized medicine and genetic diagnostics can make some headway. It'll take a while, though--the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was only recently passed, so it'll be at least 10 years before molecular diagnostics hit the clinic.

Agree, though, that exercise and LOTS of it is really the best thing. Most of the folks I know who claim, "I tried to exercise and I never lost any weight! It must be genetics and there's nothing I can do! Woe is me!" then sit down to a restaurant meal that could serve at least two or three people, stuff themselves sick, then admit that they thought "a lot of exercise" was walking two miles on flat, paved-trail parkland at a relaxed pace mid-afternoon. For sure, there's a lot of emotion that goes into eating and exercise--eating as a comfort and happiness, exercise as a form of "punishment" or the stress of competition and losing in games. Who doesn't remember the gym teacher forcing us to run laps or do extra pushups or whatever when we did something clumsy or uncoordinated? I'm glad there are more anti-competitive trends in exercise like yoga and Tai Chi nowadays, I think it's good for public health.

ETA:

This means that unless you have a congenital defect or hypertension that causes splitting in the artery walls, it's unlikely you'll have a significant build up.

Eh...You don't need a congenital defect or hypertension to make a little bump of scar tissue in a blood vessel wall. Injury, infection, a tiny bump in normal angiogenesis, they can all provide sites for plaque formation. Who hasn't had at least one big bruise or one serious infection in their whole life? Who can vouch that their personal developmental signaling proteins never screwed up even once? Hardly anyone. It's not unreasonable that probably everyone has some level of plaque formation, but some plaques seem to be stable and others not; we don't know why there's a difference, although some researchers think that plaques resulting from infection are especially unstable. Others think that there is some developed autoimmunity (as opposed to heritable autoimmunity) that causes plaque instability. We just don't know.

Sorry for being long-winded on this subject, but it's one of my projects and I have a paper coming out in 2009.

 

[kinnip]

Interesting. I still don't trust a statin.

 

[Mahonri]

I have patients that have had to go off of statins because they would get severe back pain within two weeks of starting it. I've always found that interesting.

 

[Wifezilla]

That "study" is a load of hooey.

As for statins...check out spacedoc.net. Former NASA doctor that was prescribed statins and it caused permanent neurological damage.

Statins have only been shown to help 1 CLASS of people....males under 50 who have already had a heart attack. For females, lower cholesterol levels are associated with HIGHER MORTALITY.

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
That's the kidney damage it causes at an alarming rate. My mom is a recent victim of too much medication. Her kidneys are damaged. The one I take is for ONLY triglycerides.... the one that runs in my family no matter what diet they eat. My other side is fine.... like 110

 

[English Chick]

I am going to read all this tomorrow...I have just had a burger!! homemade though...and now I feel guilty....but it was nice and we don't have them very often...about once every three months....(SIGH)..........

 

[Wifezilla]

The burger isn't unhealthy. The BUN...now that is a different story.