Statins Cause Serious Structural Muscle Damage
August 28th, 2009
(NaturalNews) – If there is a super star in Big Pharma’s list of money making drugs, it may well be the group of medications known as statins. The New York Times reported last year that statins are, in fact, the biggest selling drugs in the world. Their names, like Lipitor and Crestor, are familiar from countless television and magazine ads and almost everyone knows someone taking a statin. Promoted widely as safe, they are actually known to cause a litany of potential side effects. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) web site notes that about one in 1,000 of those taking statins suffer from muscle pain. Usually, these aches go away. But not always. And now new research shows that in some people statins cause serious structural damage to muscles.
The study, just published in CMAJ (the Canadian Medical Association Journal) suggests that patients who are taking statins and who complain to their doctors about muscle tenderness or pain could well be describing severe muscle problems due to the drugs. Although muscle damage is usually associated with elevated levels of an enzyme called creatine phosphokinase, the CMAJ research shows that’s not always the case. And it may take muscle biopsies to show that underlying structural injury has occurred.
The study was conducted by scientists from the University of Bern, Switzerland and the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. The research team investigated muscle biopsies from 83 patients. Twenty of these had never taken statins. The results showed significant muscle injury only in people who had taken statin drugs. Perhaps what was most surprising is that several people who were no longer taking statins were found to still have significant structural muscle damage.
“Although in clinical practice, the majority of patients with muscle symptoms improve rapidly after cessation of therapy, our findings support that a subgroup of patients appears to be more susceptible to statin-associated myotoxicity, suffering persistent structural injury,” Dr. Annette Draeger from the University of Bern and her coauthors wrote in the CMAJ article.
The study did not address whether statins might cause other significant body-wide damage. However, it is interesting to note that the very organ statins are supposed to protect, the heart, is a muscle. And that raises troublesome questions about possible long term, not-yet-known side effects statin drugs may have on the heart itself.
The researchers did note in a statement to the media that there is “a need to evaluate alternative treatment strategies for patients with significant muscle symptoms.” As Natural News readers are well aware, there are already well-known natural health strategies that lower cholesterol levels safely, without any possibility of muscle damage. For example, previous research has shown certain foods, including tofu, almonds, cereal fiber and plant sterols, can lower total cholesterol and LDL, the “bad” cholesterol, better than statins (http://www.naturalnews.com/008310.html). Weight loss, increased intake of Omega-3 fatty acids and exercise are also drug-free strategies that lower cholesterol safely (http://www.naturalnews.com/025715.html)/
For more information:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full…
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/chd/meds1.htm
Source: Natural News
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August 4th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
The “one out of a thousand” rate of side effects the doctors are being told about is, in my opinion, a blatant lie.
I’ve talked to 18 people who have taken statins. 7 of them quit because of severe muscle pain. 2 of them continue to take statins in spite of severe muscle pain. That’s 9 out of 18 who had the side effect, which is 50%. Either it was a statistical anomaly that I ran into a much higher percentage of people with side effects than the studies done by the drug companies, or they are manipulating the statistics in order to get more people on these drugs. I suspect the latter.
And if the latter is true, then that makes the statistics that allegedly prove the value of statins for the prevention of heart disease suspect as well. If they lie about one thing, why wouldn’t they lie about another?
And their motive to lie? How about money …
Here are more of their probable lies:
Statins prevent cancer – look at the package insert. Statins cause cancer in mice. If mice are that different genetically than humans, why did they test statins on mice?
Statins reduce ED – statins, in fact, lower testosterone, because cholesterol is necessary for the manufacture of testosterone. One of the side effects of statins *is* ED.
Statins reduce Alzheimer’s – statins cause memory loss in some. They claim statins reduce Alzheimer’s based on alleged autopsies. Consdering all the other lies, I wouldn’t rush to believe this one either. And the brain is made of a large percentage of cholesterol. It’s reasonable to assume lowering cholesterol can have a negative impact on an organ that depends on it.
Statins are good for MS – MS is a demyelination disease. Because statins lower lipids, statins cause similar side effects – and in fact may cause demyelination themselves. The myelin sheath that gets attacked by T-cells in MS is made of lipids.
These people will say anything to get you to take their so called miracle drugs. Don’t be fooled. Ask questions. Do research. And if you’re healthy and your doctor says he wants you on statins as a preventative, I suggest you think very hard about your decision to accept that. I didn’t, and I have paid for it with months (so far) of pain that I did not have prior to taking statins.