Who takes statins? Which ones?
- Thread starter BUM
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I am not sure what lowered my numbers.
but
Jan 2001 I weighed 220 lbs cholesterol = 256, triglycerides =300
Aug 2001 I weighed 200 lbs cholesterol = 160, triglycerides =49
I began weighlifing so I probably lost 20 to 25 lbs of fat and gained 5 to 10lbs of muscle. I stopped eating a ton of free cream cheese and bagel I got at the office.
Began eating oatmeal daily and lots of raw garlic and onion. I luv the stuff so it was easy.
Last med exam
Nov 2004 I weighed 180 lbs cholesterol = 148, triglycerides =42
Although I cut back on eggs originally, I am now eating 9 eggs a week again.
I cannot be sure which of the above helped to lower my cholesterol and triglycerides.
Maybe I just willed it.
but
Jan 2001 I weighed 220 lbs cholesterol = 256, triglycerides =300
Aug 2001 I weighed 200 lbs cholesterol = 160, triglycerides =49
I began weighlifing so I probably lost 20 to 25 lbs of fat and gained 5 to 10lbs of muscle. I stopped eating a ton of free cream cheese and bagel I got at the office.
Began eating oatmeal daily and lots of raw garlic and onion. I luv the stuff so it was easy.
Last med exam
Nov 2004 I weighed 180 lbs cholesterol = 148, triglycerides =42
Although I cut back on eggs originally, I am now eating 9 eggs a week again.
I cannot be sure which of the above helped to lower my cholesterol and triglycerides.
Maybe I just willed it.
wabmester
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My money is on the bagels. I love them, but they are evil.Permanently Unemployed said:
Eggs are fine. Mostly protein. Your serum cholesterol is mostly made by your liver -- it's not the amount of cholesterol in your food that matters so much.
cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Sparky said:
Is that anything like "I'm from the government, i'm here to help you"?
Mr._johngalt
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wabmester said:
Hey Wab, if I live a while longer maybe it will be due to your diet.
Interesting? I used to be guilty every time I ate an egg. Thanks to
you I now suffer no angst. As far as the other stuff you suggested I avoid (juices, bread , rice, pasta, potatos) it's been fairly easy,
except for the sugar. Need a little sugar fix every now and then.
Even the bagels are history, and I used to love bagels. When I was
traveling sometimes I would start every day with Starbucks and a
bagel with cream cheese. Yummy! Now I have the cheese and the Starbucks
and throw the bagel away
JG
Mr._johngalt
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Man, that's a huge drop in a short time. I don't think you "willed it". Whatever one man can do another can do.Permanently Unemployed said:I am not sure what lowered my numbers.
but
Jan 2001 I weighed 220 lbs cholesterol = 256, triglycerides =300
Aug 2001 I weighed 200 lbs cholesterol = 160, triglycerides =49
I began weighlifing so I probably lost 20 to 25 lbs of fat and gained 5 to 10lbs of muscle. I stopped eating a ton of free cream cheese and bagel I got at the office.
Began eating oatmeal daily and lots of raw garlic and onion. I luv the stuff so it was easy.
Last med exam
Nov 2004 I weighed 180 lbs cholesterol = 148, triglycerides =42
Although I cut back on eggs originally, I am now eating 9 eggs a week again.
I cannot be sure which of the above helped to lower my cholesterol and triglycerides.
Maybe I just willed it.
I am not lifting weights though. Not ever!
JG
OP
OP
BUM
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wabmester said:Well, generally your doc will dispense better medical advice than an ER board, but it's your call
Can you give us a breakdown of your numbers? Some docs are still under the misconception that a high total cholesterol count is bad. John Galt is a perfect example where that is not the case. He has a high total count, but his HDL is very high, and he has no family history of CHD. Those last two factors are strong *contra* indicators of CHD.
If you also have high triglycerides, I would recommend you look into low-carb diets. There is a direct correlation between high TriG, high LDL, and carb intake. Look up "metabolic syndrome" if your numbers indicate high TriG and high LDL.
Hi Wab,
I was hoping you'd weigh in. These numbers are from last year.
Choles. 286
LDL 181
HDL 81
Trigly 118
Electro Normal
New numbers avail next week. Maybe along with new perscriptions.
BUM
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OP
BUM
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Sparky said:
Sparky,
Drug rep, eh? When can you bring in lunch for the board? Ate a lot of drug rep Penne ala vodka in the day. Hey, wait a minute! DOH! You taunt-a me with the food, get my numbers all jacked up then sell me the drugs to get the numbers back under control!
Pretty slick. Wish I had thought of it myself.
BUM
wabmester
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BUM said:Hi Wab,
I was hoping you'd weigh in. These numbers are from last year.
Choles. 286
LDL 181
HDL 81
Trigly 118
Electro Normal
New numbers avail next week. Maybe along with new perscriptions.
I'm no expert -- I just read up on this stuff after my own doc raised a red flag on my lipid profile a while back.
First, I'm surprised that your doc is already talking about giving you statins without seeing a recent lipid profile. But as far as your numbers from last year go:
Total: 286 is considered high (they want you below 200)
LDL: 181 is considered high (which is why your total is high), they want this below 130 for most people.
TriG: 118 is normal (anything below 150 is considered normal)
HDL: 81 is considered to be FANTASTIC (anything above 60 is helpful)
It's people like you (and John Galt) with high HDL that made docs reconsider looking just at LDL and total cholesterol. They came up with a ratio of total / HDL just for your type of profile.
A ratio of 3.5 or lower is considered IDEAL. Yours is 3.5.
I'm sure your doc is considering other risk factors, but if my doc recommended drugs to me, I'd really want to understand what was going on with my body and what the drug's mechanism of action was. If he's just going by your lipid profile and you have no other risk factors, I'd either get a second opinion or ask for more discriminating blood tests (e.g., they can get a breakdown of your LDL, only some types of which are bad).
Mr._johngalt
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wabmester said:
Even when my total score peaked at 301, the place where I get my
routine physicals only rated my "risk" as "average".
JG
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BUM
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Thanks Wab,
2005 physical is sked for Tuesday. We'll see what the new numbers look like.
BUM
2005 physical is sked for Tuesday. We'll see what the new numbers look like.
BUM
sailaway
Dryer sheet aficionado
The determinates of heart disease are:
1. Family history of heart disease
2. Lipid profile
3, Nicotine in the blood
4. High blood pessure
5. Diabetes
and now a sixth.. underlying silent inflammation of the coronary arteries which many doctors are now measuring as part of the heart check by getting an "hs-CRP"
All doctors that regulatly make decsions on treatment are aware of these 6 causes and weigh all together when making a decision to suggest active treatment. With respect to lipids, we now know the lower the better and medicine has not been agressive enough in the past especially with these great new statin meds. Both triglycerides and cholesterol is important in the plaque formation. But more specifically the cholesterol componet LDL is the culpret. HDL "the good cholesterol" can be considered the dump trucks carrying away the plaque while LDL is in fact the major part of the plaque. You want the LDL as low as possible and HDL as high as possible.
The decision to treat looks at all these above six parameters, not just one or two alone. Other considerations such as insurance coverage to buy the drugs or any other disease state such as diabetes affects the decision. No doubt diet and weight loss are beneficial, not just in dyslipidemias but when this is not successful, meds should be considered.
In my opinion these are great meds. Cardiologist feel we are not being aggressive enough and many can be found taking them even in the face of normal values as it is now accepted that "the lower the better' My lipid profile on no meds is wonderfully low. Even in spite of this, I take a low dose statin and Zetia. I can assure this is the trend and many heart specialists accept the same belief.
Sailaway
1. Family history of heart disease
2. Lipid profile
3, Nicotine in the blood
4. High blood pessure
5. Diabetes
and now a sixth.. underlying silent inflammation of the coronary arteries which many doctors are now measuring as part of the heart check by getting an "hs-CRP"
All doctors that regulatly make decsions on treatment are aware of these 6 causes and weigh all together when making a decision to suggest active treatment. With respect to lipids, we now know the lower the better and medicine has not been agressive enough in the past especially with these great new statin meds. Both triglycerides and cholesterol is important in the plaque formation. But more specifically the cholesterol componet LDL is the culpret. HDL "the good cholesterol" can be considered the dump trucks carrying away the plaque while LDL is in fact the major part of the plaque. You want the LDL as low as possible and HDL as high as possible.
The decision to treat looks at all these above six parameters, not just one or two alone. Other considerations such as insurance coverage to buy the drugs or any other disease state such as diabetes affects the decision. No doubt diet and weight loss are beneficial, not just in dyslipidemias but when this is not successful, meds should be considered.
In my opinion these are great meds. Cardiologist feel we are not being aggressive enough and many can be found taking them even in the face of normal values as it is now accepted that "the lower the better' My lipid profile on no meds is wonderfully low. Even in spite of this, I take a low dose statin and Zetia. I can assure this is the trend and many heart specialists accept the same belief.
Sailaway
Thanks Sailaway. I am looking forward to Pfizer's new HDL raising drug coming onto the market. The Lipitor lowers my LDL to acceptable parameters, but my HDL is still a bit low. My doctor will probably put me on torcetrapib to complement my current atorvastatin, if it passes its clinical trials.
I've seen studies that show that there is no difference in "total mortality" for statin users vs. non statin users. They have a slightly lower CHD risk, but die of other things. Dead is dead as far as I can tell, so I'll take my chances & avoid the serious potential side effects...liver problems, cognitive defects, muscle pain/weakness, etc.
I wonder if it ever dawned on the geniuses in the medical community that your body produces cholesterol for a reason and that artificially lowering it could be deleterious to your overall health. We'll see, as we're conducting long term experiments on millions of statin users.
You have been warned!
I wonder if it ever dawned on the geniuses in the medical community that your body produces cholesterol for a reason and that artificially lowering it could be deleterious to your overall health. We'll see, as we're conducting long term experiments on millions of statin users.
You have been warned!
Just got preliminary results. Have to discuss with the doc, but here they are.DOG50 said:
Last Year's lab results Most recent lab results
LDL.............139 140
hdl...............59 72
Triglyceride..98 67
Total...........218 225
So, flax seed or not, 200-225 seems to be my cholesterol level. Since we like garlic, olive oil, fish, salads, etc. and seldom eat red meat and since I exercise 7 days a week (almost without fail), I'd guess that without drug intervention, that it's in the genes. Lipitor hurts my liver. We'll see what the doc says. It would really urinate me off to have a heart attack after all this work. Of course, it's happened to other exercise enthusiasts (like Jim Fixx) before.
wabmester
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markplus4 said:
Everybody is different. Some people have genetic abnormalities that cause the body to produce too much LDL, for example. Others are victims of poor diets or sedentary lifestyles. That's why I think it's important to understand what is going on with your body. Experiment on yourself. If you and your doc ultimately agree that drugs are the right course, then ideally you also want to understand the mechanism of action for the drugs you take.
Biology is all about finely tuned machines. Drugs are often a brute-force sledge hammer, but sometimes they actually target the root cause of the problem and offset some mechanical screw-up you might have.
wabmester
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Eagle43 said:
Your total:HLD ratio has improved quite a bit. It went from 3.7 (good) to 3.15 (great). Don't underestimate the benefits of high HDL.
haha
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Your results look pretty good to me, as a non-expert. Before you worry too much, either have your doctor show you, or find on the web, the actual raw results of total mortality and HD mortality in the most successful Lipitor vs. nada trial. The way it is usually expressed sounds very meaningful, "Lipitor reduced heart attacks by 27%” or whatever. However, (I don't have the true numbers, I am just illustrating) if out of 1000 men, 10 died with placebo, and 5 died with Lipitor, that is reported as a 50% mortality improvement. But it seems to me more relevant to note that in the treated group 995 are still alive, and in the nada group 990 are still alive. 99.5% vs. 99%.Eagle43 said:
And this is the absolute best case. Even cholesterol lowering advocates have to admit that once a man is over 60 or so, cholesterol either makes no difference, or high cholesterol is associated with longevity. And it women, it hardly seems to matter at any age.
These are great drugs from the POV of the drug company. Usually drugs taken for one's lifetime are for pretty sick people, whose lifetimes are maybe short, and who are a relatively small % of the population. Anti-hypertensives are a contra-example, but the patients are clinically sick, even if sometimes only mildly so. Off the top of my head, birth control pills are the only popular example of a drug intended to be taken for a long time by healthy people, prior to the advent of statins.
Given this extreme profitability, I at least would expect some high quality spinning coming from the drug companies, their researchers, and their clinical trial docs in academia. These people bend over backward to magnify positive results, and explain away as anomalies negative results- such as one trial where 7 or 8 women in the treated group got breast cancer, and only one in the placebo group did.
And let us not forget that our friendly Family Doc has a horse in this race too. I have a dermatologist friend who used to brag that Derm is the only specialty where people never get better, and rarely die or get much worse. Treating cholesterol, as opposed to heart disease, brings a lot of Docs formerly denied this cushy station in out of the cold.
H
Here is a pretty good summary of the research, including the study you cited about overall mortality rates in low risk patients.
http://www.world-of-fungi.org/Mostly_Medical/Lydia_Pavey/PAVEY_Statins.htm
Shorter, but more recent:
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20050315/1137.html
Well, I take an 81-mil enteric-coated asprin every day; and vitamins C, E, a senior multi vitamin, and a fish-oil tablet. Also Smart Balance and Total Control fake butter which say they help with cholesterol. I'm sick of wheat bread, oatmeal, and vitamin-enriched cereal. Eat lots of walnuts, almonds, onions and garlic. Two glasses of wine every night (usually white, not red).
It's the genes, man, the genes. I do hope that whoever said that total cholesterol doesn't mean much once you pass 60 is correct.
The good news is the hdl/total ratio is 3.1, and the triglycerides are 67.
Maybe it's the Texas Water??
BTW: As I have noted, growing up poor, so my family ate red beans and rice about twice a week, sometimes more. Who knew that was good for you? I thought we were deprived of those steaks.
It's the genes, man, the genes. I do hope that whoever said that total cholesterol doesn't mean much once you pass 60 is correct.
The good news is the hdl/total ratio is 3.1, and the triglycerides are 67.
Maybe it's the Texas Water??
BTW: As I have noted, growing up poor, so my family ate red beans and rice about twice a week, sometimes more. Who knew that was good for you? I thought we were deprived of those steaks.
HFWR
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Might want to skip the vit-E; recent study (sorry, no link) suggests high dosage is not circulatory system friendly. The multi probably has all the E you need.
cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
High cholesterol and especially high triglycerides are in my family, me my dad and my grandfather all had it. We all tried various diets and excercise, never moved it much. None of us took any pills for it, although my dad tried some high blood pressure meds for a few weeks that made him dizzy until he discovered that his bp was only high when he went to the doctor. Grandpa made it to 88 while smoking wih asthma and eating habits that included spreading congealed bacon grease on biscuits. Dads at 71 and probably in better shape than I am and certainly with better health and eating habits than his dad.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-15-vitamin_x.htm
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/293/11/1338
I do take 30 mg of Co-Q10, as statins interfere with your body's ability to produce it naturally. The resultant low Q10 has been implicated in some of the side effects of statins. This research is still a work in progress too though.
