Statin drugs increase osteoporosis by over 300%

Statin drugs cause osteoporosis! OVER 300%

We keep hearing from much of the medical literature about how wonderful the statin drugs are, and their potential benefits and a number of diseases, in addition of course to coronary artery disease. The evidence for coronary artery disease is reasonably strong, and I think most medical practitioners would recommend that patients with known coronary artery disease should be on at least a low dose of statin.
What we have been very good at doing is ignoring the obvious effects that statin drugs may be having on other systems of the body. The statins block the production of a number of hormone cascades which eventually lead to cholesterol. We have ignored the other branches, such as the development of coenzyme Q (essential for energy), the production of oestrogen, testosterone and other steroid hormones, all of which are affected by the statins.

We now have an extremely damning article published online in the annals of rheumatic diseases (click here) who reviewed all the data in Austrians younger than 90 years of age – nearly 80 million of them, from January 2000 to December 2007, the found over 300,000 who are taking statin drugs and in those they found over 11,000 people with osteoporosis.
These were compared with the control group of 7.5 million patients who were not treated statins, 69% which were diagnosed with osteoporosis.

Putting this together those patients taking statin drugs had three times the incidence (300%) of developing osteoporosis. This was dose-dependent - the higher the dose of statin, the greater the osteoporosis incidence.  This is almost certainly due to an effect of the statin drugs on oestrogen and testosterone. If you then go even further start looking at the effects of lowering testosterone and oestrogen what they do to the sex life, health,  growth etc. menopausal changes the potential damage they could be doing is huge.

Statin drugs are not innocuous, unless used when it is necessary, i.e. those people known or extremely high risk of coronary artery disease.

If you would like further information or consult with me, discuss this or any other medical matter I can be contacted online – geraldlewis@zoho.com

Doctors do take Supplements.

Doctors do take nutritional supplements!

The public believes that doctors and conventional medicine don't believe that nutritional supplements are necessary is far from the truth.
The cardiology website – the Heart.org Medscape polled its readers in 2018, asking them whether they recommended supplements to their patients and if they took supplements themselves. This was an anonymous questionnaire, and thus individuals were happy to give their honest opinion.

Of the 950 physicians who responded, 31% recommended to the patients that they should take supplements, and exactly the same number (31%) took supplements themselves.
However, when they looked at family physicians, specialist doctors looking after the medical care of patients rather than surgeons etc., the number who took nutritional supplements rocketed to 74%!

The reasons doctors gave for taking supplements (the ones they mostly took were multivitamin and multi-minerals, and some additional fish oils) were – improving health and well-being, filling nutritional gaps and preventing diseases.

Unfortunately for the medical profession is not PC to support supplements, even though many believe that they should.

One of the major reasons for not supporting supplements is that most trials using supplements have not shown any benefit. There are many reasons for this, but most likely it is because they used poor quality supplements that only gave the bare minimum of additional nutrition.

When you look at the guidelines for supplements, the RDA (recommended daily allowance) was designed in World War I to make certain that soldiers and civilians had enough nutrition to prevent deficiency diseases. To quote the National Research Council which published the RDA- "the RDA is the minimal intake of any nutrient that will maintain normal function and health". However, a further NRC paper in 1953 said – "although the optimal intake of essential dietary nutrients remains largely speculative, there is considerable evidence that improvement in growth and function occurs when the intake of certain nutrients is increased above the level just sufficient to prevent signs of deficiency diseases."

So even and their own literature, the National research Council admits that there is evidence that higher than RDA levels of supplements improves growth and function.
Specialist physicians obviously see the results in their patients, and from their reading and experience, this is the reason why so many are taking supplements. Obviously, if you are taking supplements, take ones that contain significantly more than the RDA!

I take a quality multi and at least 3 grams of fish oil daily and recommend that my patients do the same.