Could I Get a Hamburger, French Fries, and a Statin?

Hell with that--I'd rather have some fluoxetine hydrochloride with my hamburger.

And maybe a good Barolo, too.

I prefer my Barolo with fillet mignon .

Isn't it (gasp) contraindicated to mix fluoxetine hydrochloride and beverages in the same family as Barolo?

If the plan is implemented, and if statin distribution does for cholesterol what condom distribution did for STDs and teen pregnancy, then prepare for a jump in chronic heart/cardiovascular health issues.

>>...prepare for a jump in chronic heart/cardiovascular health issues.

My predisposition for high blood cholesterol was discovered 30 years ago. Dietary changes had no effect. I've been taking a statin since then, and lately fenofibrate, too. But the doses have to be carefully controlled and monitored, so eating it in fast food would be insanely foolish.

At my last checkup, HDL and LDL cholesterols were in mid-normal range and plaque buildup was still in the high-ish-normal range. BP is normal, 115/75.

My father had had three heart attacks before reaching my age.

Dangerous Bill

"Should fast food companies be able to give away drugs that are usually prescription-only?"

Sure, what's the point of having doctors anyway? They just get in the way and cause prices to go up. We should just allow pharmaceutical companies to sell direct to fast food restaurants and other low level retail stores too.

Okay, now that I have my sarcastic rant out of the way...

Statins lower cholesterol, especially LDL which is hypothesized (lipid hypothesis) to be the cause of coronary heart disease (CHD). However, the lipid hypothesis is just that....a hypothesis. And to my knowledge there have been no studies of statins that are able to prove that statins benefit anyone other than men previously diagnosed with heart disease and even that benefit was slight. reference

While, lower LDL may result in reduced CHD related deaths, lower LDL does not result in reduced all cause mortality. Does it really matter once you die if your death was from CHD or something else? I guess you could rest easy knowing that your family may be able to say, "he's gone, but at least it wasn't from CHD".

Maybe your sarcastic rant is not too far off the mark. If the burger joints can sell statins for 7 cents and I am paying $3.15/pill in lots of 100, I think I should got to the burger pharmacy. (In honesty, my cost is somewhat modified by insurance and cost me ~47 cents per pill plus my insurance fees). Something is not right if the Brits can distribute for 7 cents and we must pay big bucks for the same pills. Oh well, at least my nutritionist doesn't wear clown shoes.

Yes, something isn't right with US pharmaceuticals.

In Australia we have a thing called the "pharmaceutical benefits scheme" PBS. A panel of medical doctors look at all available drugs and look at the statistics to pick what's currently the most useful and cost effective. This (large) group of drugs are govt. subsidised for everyone who has a prescription.

A lot of modern drugs are minor variants of old drugs that have been tweaked to allow the patent clock to reset. Some show only a small improvement over the older types and some are out of patent and available as generic items.

I can still obtain anything on the market, but if the price is above the PBS price of $32/month I start asking questions.

Oh yeah, the drug companies really really hate it.

>>And to my knowledge there have been no studies of statins that are able to prove that statins benefit anyone other than men previously diagnosed with heart disease and even that benefit was slight. reference

I don't put much credence in single studies, whether published in prominent or obscure journals. Medical research is mostly run by medics, who know little about experimental design or data analysis. Meta-analyses of statin effects show profound effects on heart attack risk as well as other lipidemia-associated pathologies like atherosclerosis and pancreatitis. There are other, more mysterious effects, like reduced bone loss with age.

Early studies on statins recruited subjects from men who'd had heart attacks, since they're most at risk of additional attacks. This meant smaller subject groups and shorter term outcomes. But the differences were not 'slight'.

But dispensing statins in food, OTOH, is a silly idea. One case of fatal rhabdomyolysis will consume any imaginable profit from a hundred thousand or a million customers. Moreover, statins have to be taken daily for lengthy periods of time to realize any benefits.

If you intend to eat a big, fatty meal, better to take a double dose of Metamucil before eating, and flush all the fat through your system like a freight train.

Dangerous Bill

Dangerous Bill,

I do not put much credence in single studies either. I am also leery of meta-analysis of epidemiological studies as they are observational and do not prove causality. An simplified (ridiculous?) example would be a study and that observes everyone who breathes also dies and then arrives at a conclusion that death comes from breathing.

The difficulty with studies that can prove causation are either overly expensive or not possible to do on live human beings.

I follow a doctor (Dr. Michael Eades) who is quite against statins. He has blogged about the topic over the past several years. One of the topics he mentioned frequently is that there has never been a study that shows proof that statins benefit (reduction in all cause mortality) any groups other than males over 65 years old who have had previous heart related conditions. Since that statement he has posted about a study which does show additional benefits, although slight. I was looking back through his blog to find it, but haven't put my hands (or eyes) on it yet.

Dr. Eades, is very good at pointing out the misleading conclusions and bias in the research or new paper articles as well as how the pharmaceutical companies are distorting the perceived benefits of statins. In the meantime here are links to his posts on the subject of statins.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/10/ Feb 2^nd 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/9/ Feb 7^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/9/ Feb 12^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/9/ Apr 9^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/9/ Aug 22^nd 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/8/ Oct 6^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/8/ Nov 13^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/8/ Dec 4^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/8/ Dec23rd 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/7/ Dec 24^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/7/ Dec 27^th 2007

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/7/ Jan 2^nd 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/7/ Jan 15^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/6/ Jan 17^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/6/ Jan 18^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/6/ Jan 22^nd 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/6/ Jan 23^rd 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/5/ Feb 27^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/5/ Mar 10^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/5/ Mar 30^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/5/ July 9^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/4/ Jul 21^st 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/4/ Sep 19^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/4/ Sep 30^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/3/ Oct 6th2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/3/ Oct 7^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/3/ Nov 10^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/3/ Dec 28^th 2008

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/2/ Jan 9^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/2/ Feb 26^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/2/ Apr 29^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/2/ Jun 18^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/1/ Jul 23^rd 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/1/ Nov 6^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/1/ Nov 19^th 2009

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/category/statins/page/1/ Sep 23^rd 2010

Hi JB,

First, let people die by eating hamburgers, it's their choice to grow, become obese, and finally get some heart problems, which direct them to the cimetery.

Second, concerning doctors, I don't want to see them. When a healthy person goes into the hospital for a visit become sick when is coming out from there. The air is containing high level of bacterias and other infectuous particles coming from and travelled by airconditionning from one floor to another. SARS killed only in hospitals in Toronto, never from the street. It tells you how clean a hospital could be. Also, check the % people enter in hospital sick and come out healthy. It's amazing the number of dead come out.

Third, education about pills distributed by doctors. One "eventually" could cure from the original sickness but some other part of the human body cannot accept these pills and create another health problems, which will be corrected by anothers pills, and it's never ending stories start that way. I hope everyone get the picture? Every medication that human body need to absorb after doctors prescription, this same human body cannot handle the chemicals the pills contain. We, human, react every time we absorb those chemicals. Sometime, we just have some gases, diarrhoea, or big complications but we react because human body cannot recognize those chemicals and don't know how to eliminate from the system. It's the same when we eat something rotten or bad. We get sick! Imagine a double sickness from two different pills? It's complicated for understanding and sometime it's harder to eliminate from the human body.

Fourth, any business needs some revenue and pharmaceuticals know well how to make easily.

Fifth, doctors need to work to make money and this is an easy way to get customers, visits, to eliminate eventual working shortage. Sorry, there was, is, and will be never any work-shortage for doctors. They are never collect unemployment money!?

I am not against the chemical industry. I work in it for over 50 years. I don't like other industries that use chemicals in our food. Check the number of ingredients we have in a loaf of bread. The count can go the 23 to 27, depending of the brand. My mother teach me to make bread with only 4 or 5 ingredients. Why do we need 20 more? I take half of an hour and cook twice a day and once I eat Chinese, mostly dim sums. Hamburgers? It's good business but no thanks!

Finally, we are what we eat, Gil.

NB: Read statistics about obesity in every country having hamburger supply...

OK the part about hospitals is hilarious. By the same logic, optomitrists cause eye damage, just look at how many people go in there without glasses and come out with a new pair.

Have in mind that BAYER lost some G$ in their scandal of cholesterol lowering drug that caused muscle deterioration and death in some patients by overdosing. This was a statin.

(More will help more. The patient has no more heart problem if full of muscle problems or dead.)

In between I talked to some pharmaceutical specialists from the US and from Europe all of them stated that any statin may cause these problems if overdosed.

Good luck. I prefer olive oil and walnut oil for fat. A fish, a steak, a chicken, potatoes and some vegetables. Also cheese (Swiss, French and Italian) and red wine and beer and dark-black German bread.

RHABE

Hi Rhabe,

Thanks for the confirmation of side-effects of every pill on human body, inside and out. I am against any pill prescribed by doctors. First, they transfer their resposibilities to another, the pharmaceuticals, and when some problem arises they suggest another pills. We know and they also know that one cure something and attack somewhere else something other from our body, and need to correct with another pills, and it's never finish, except with the death of the patient.

So, if every statin "may cause", without absolute certainty about the exact cause as said by the specialists on the subject, why we suggest to take with food?

Sorry Rhabe, when you suggest to people to eat chicken or fish with olive oil and some veggies, you don't promote the pharmaceutical business! Be honest and help them some way!! They need us as consumers!!!

It was nice to talk you again, and repeat: We become by what we eat, Gil.

I would bet that the "scientists" promoting this scheme get large grants from pharmaceutical companies. Until people get a little educated about pharmaceutical companies, their products and tactics we'll keep getting insane suggestions like this. The medical community (doctors) help keep albatross around our necks. There are cheaper, more natural, and proven ways to deal with disease.

I've posted several times in the past about vitamin C as a good example. In the last few months a television story (60 Min.; New Zealand style) has helped bring it to the public's attention. Dr. Thomas Levy has been a leading researcher and proponent of "rediscovering" the real power of Vitamin C, which has been ignored and buried by the medical system for over 60 years now.

Statins? As others here have noted. We (especially in America) dig our graves with our forks.

... sorry for the fragmented sentences along with some poor punctuation. When you're in a hurry, things happen.

>>I would bet that the "scientists" promoting this scheme get large grants from pharmaceutical companies.

You're right. Until recently, a scientist receiving a grant from a pharmaceutical company could do his research and report his/er results in a major medical journal without revealing the source of funding. The scientist knew, of course, that if the research went the wrong way, s/he wouldn't get any more grants. This put a lot of pressure on a scientist's integrity.

This became such a scandal that all the major medical journals now require scientists to declare the source of their funding within the paper. Pharm companies have responded by founding their own medical journals for their tame scientists to publish in.

When you go to your doctor and get a prescription, you've probably noticed that it's usually for an expensive name-brand drug instead of a cheaper, often safer generic drug. That's because doctors are awarded cruises and golf vacations by drug companies. On a seven day cruise, they may listen to a couple of hours of lectures on various products of the drug companies to make the cruise tax-deductible.

As of 2008, (in the US) drug companies can go into your drugstore's prescription records to confirm that your doctor is prescribing their medication and not some cheap generic. You generally have to educate yourself and insist on the cheaper drug.

Dangerous Bill

I sure do not get the most expensive non generic with my insurance! If there is a generic version, that is what I get. This is OK, the copay is rather larger with a non generic. Also, if you think this way about your doctor, maybe you should shop around. I do not blindly trust mine but I do not think they are out to cheat me either.

It's almost universal among doctors in Canada and the US. I'm sure there are those who, out of principle, won't take the bribes offered by pharma companies, but in defense of the doctors, the pharma companies assure them that their drug is 'better' than the competition, or at least no worse.

Until 2007, the most widely prescribed sleep aid, for example, was Ambien. Data show that it's less effective than older generics in inducing and maintaining sleep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambien

In 2007, the patent ran out, and the generic 'zolpidem' appeared overnight. But the company was ready with newly-patented 'Ambien-CR' which releases the same drug more slowly. By the company's own data, the lifetime of Ambien in the blood is increased by only an hour, but the continuous release feature makes it a different, patentable drug. So if your physician prescribes it, the drugstore cannot substitute the generic 'old Ambien'. They have to give you the Ambien-CR at the pharma's price.

If you go to your doctor with insomnia, chances are great that he'll prescribe Ambien-CR rather than zolpidem or the more effective and safer clonazepam, diazepam, or flurazepam.

Dangerous Bill

All statins destroy the body's ability to produce Coenzyme Q10, otherwise known as ubiquinone, wihich is found in every cell of the body and is necessary for the functioning of the body, particularly the heart. Stains, while it is claimed for them to help the body, actually help to destroy it.

"All statins destroy the body's ability to produce Coenzyme Q10,"

Indeed it does *reduce* the ability to make CoQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq10

Which may account for my doctor's suggestion to take Q10, which is not cheap. I think I will start to do that, even though I have no family history of heart failure.

But given the excellent state of the pump and blood chemistry after 30 years of statins, I'm not about to stop taking them over a hypothetical problem.

Dangerous Bill