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

Calcium supplements are safe! 

This is the conclusion from a new joint clinical guideline from the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the American Society for Preventive Cardiology (click here) . Over the years there have been many reports on the benefits and adverse effects of calcium both taken in the diet, and as supplements. Occasional studies have suggested that calcium in the diet has no effect on cardiovascular disease, but supplements might have. (The word might is in italics because in some trials there is only a suggestion but it is not clinically significant). There are also some studies which show benefit, including one which showed women taking more than 1000 mg of supplemental calcium per day had less cardiovascular disease than those who did not.  Because there are obvious benefits in bone and other health from taking calcium both in the diet and as supplements, these 2 bodies looked at all the evidence that was available, and concluded "dietary and supplemental calcium are safe for cardiovascular health when consumed in the recommended amounts. The recommendation applies to calcium consumed either alone or with vitamin D that does not exceed the National Academy of medicine is tolerable upper intake limit of 2000 to 2500 mg per day""  There will always be studies which so some benefit or lack of benefit, particularly the smaller studies, many of the studies are impure because patients report the amount of calcium they either consumer as supplements or diet during the day, and follow-up is incomplete. There is also a strong lobby against the use of supplemental calcium (in fact the use of supplements), but even if there is an indication rather than a statistically significant result, this will be reported out of proportion to its scientific evidence. When 2 major societies in the United States come to the conclusion that calcium supplementation is safe, there seems little point in individu
als debating the results of further studies.