Story at-a-glance
- One in 4 Americans over the age of 45 is on a statin drug to lower their cholesterol
- While statins may decrease the frequency of mild heart attacks [Editor: more recent studies suggest this relates, not to cholesterol lowering but to their role in reducing inflammation: See The Role of Inflammation in Cardiovascular Disease], they will not necessarily lower your risk of heart disease or death from a major heart attack because of the damage they cause to your muscles, including your heart muscle
- Statins lower your cholesterol, which is an important precursor for many of your steroid hormones, including progesterone, testosterone, aldosterone, cortisol and vitamin D
- Statin drugs deplete your body of CoQ10, vitamin K2, dolichol and selenium, and prevent the production of HMG co-enzyme A reductase (an enzyme your liver uses to make ketones)
- Exposure to glyphosate and electromagnetic fields from wireless technologies also harm your health, especially your heart
[This article is a reprint. It was originally published January 28, 2018.]
One in 4 Americans over the age of 45 is on a statin drug to lower their cholesterol. Are these drugs really as bad as some of the evidence suggests — or might they be even worse than suspected? Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whom I’ve interviewed on a number of occasions. Video link: https://www.bitchute.com/video/zXi8pO0utP8G/
She’s an absolute treasure trove of valuable health information. Here, we discuss statin drugs, which are also featured in her fictional book, “Cindy and Erica’s Obsession to Solve the Healthcare Crisis in America,” for which I wrote the foreword. The story, while fictional, is based on Seneff’s own life and passion for science, and delves into autism, Alzheimer’s, statins, vaccines, glyphosate and more.
In this interview, we focus on another book, “The Dark Side of Statins: Plus, the Wonder of Cholesterol,”1 the last one written by Dr. Duane Graveline, who himself was a victim of statin side effects and died from complications related to statin use. Seneff’s husband was also severely affected by statins, which triggered her scientific exploration into these popular drugs.
[…]
How Studies Overestimate Statin Benefits
As noted by Seneff, it’s pretty easy to overestimate the benefits of statins by confusing people with absolute and relative risk. This is a statistical trick used quite frequently to demonstrate drug effectiveness. Seneff explains:
“They do a study in which the absolute risk is very rare. Let’s say 2 percent of the population is actually expected to have whatever it is they’re monitoring, like, say, a heart attack. They then look over a period of time and find that 2 percent of the control group has the occurrence [they’re looking for, in this case a heart attack] and the treatment group has, let’s say, 1.5 percent instead of 2 percent.
That’s a 0.5 percent decreased risk from [the individual’s] standpoint, but from their standpoint, it’s a 25 percent improved performance because it’s 0.5 out of 2 — one-quarter of the relative risk has been taken away. Therefore, it’s a 25 percent improvement, which sounds much better than 0.5 percent.”
Statins Offer Poor Defense Against Heart Disease
Unfortunately, while statins may decrease the frequency of mild heart attacks, they will not necessarily lower your risk of heart disease or death from a major heart attack because of the damage they do to your muscles, including your heart muscle. On a side note, statins’ ability to lower the risk of minor heart attacks is likely related to their ability to lower C-reactive protein, far more so than the lowering of cholesterol.
However, according to Graveline, you only need one-tenth of the dosage, say 2 milligrams (mg) rather than 20 mg to get this anti-inflammatory benefit, and there are far safer and more effective ways to lower inflammation than taking a statin, even at a low dosage. As Seneff says, “You’re trading heart attack for heart failure, and I think a heart attack is preferred over heart failure.” There are three primary reasons why statins fail to decrease the rate of death from heart disease:
1. Statins lower your cholesterol, which is an important precursor for many of your steroid hormones, including progesterone, testosterone, aldosterone, cortisol and vitamin D. Cholesterol sulfate (produced when you expose your skin to the sun) enters cell membranes and helps build structured water that protects against oxidative damage. Cholesterol is also needed to create DHEA sulfate.
2. They also deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is needed for muscle health, and lowers your levels of vitamin K2 and HMG co-enzyme A reductase, the latter of which is an enzyme your liver uses to make ketones. So, if you’re on a statin drug, you have dramatically impaired ketone production, even if you’re fasting.
3. Statins also lower dolichol, which Graveline believed is just as important as CoQ10. Not only does dolichol play an important role in mitochondrial function, it is also responsible for the process of putting sugar chains on top of glycosylated proteins. This is important because these so-called glycosaminoglycans help maintain the barrier function in the cell and regulate the uptake of nutrients.
In practical terms, this means that your muscle cells (including your heart cells), which require lots of energy, get heavily impacted by statins. One side effect from lack of dolichol is Type 2 diabetes, and statins have indeed been found to cause drug-induced diabetes. Dolichol also fixes DNA mistakes. CoQ10, a powerful antioxidant, also helps, and both of these DNA “repair masters” are depleted by statins.
Statins Make You Age Faster
Contrary to popular belief, high cholesterol is not a primary risk factor for heart disease. It’s actually a vital nutrient needed for health that shouldn’t be artificially and indiscriminately suppressed.
Protect Your Heart: Beware of Cellphone Radiation
Two factors that can have a significant impact on your heart health and risk of heart disease are exposure to glyphosate-containing pesticides and electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Seneff touches on both of these issues in this interview, noting that each also has a tendency to worsen the effects of the other. “I think glyphosate messes up your natural electrical system, which makes you much more susceptible to EMFs,” she says.
Considering the evidence, I firmly believe excessive exposure to microwave radiation from cellphones and other wireless technologies are a hidden and completely ignored contributor to heart disease. While evaluating studies showing you can radically reduce biological microwave damage using calcium channel blockers, Martin Pall, Ph.D., discovered a previously unknown mechanism of biological harm from microwaves emitted by wireless technologies.2
Embedded in your cell membranes are voltage gated calcium channels (VGCCs), which are activated by microwaves. When that happens, they open up, allowing a massive influx of intracellular calcium, which in turn stimulates the release of nitric oxide (NO).
Inside your cell and mitochondria, this NO combines with superoxide to form peroxynitrite. Not only do peroxynitrites cause oxidative damage, they also create hydroxyl free radicals, which are profoundly destructive and cause mitochondrial dysfunction.
One of the tissues with the highest density of VGCCs is the pacemaker in your heart. What the research tells us is that excessive microwave exposure can be a direct contributor to conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias.3 According to Seneff, EMFs also contribute to arterial calcification (blocked arteries). So, if you care about your heart health, and/or already struggle with heart problems, you’ll want to make sure you:
[…]
Shocking Glyphosate Statistics
Both glyphosate and EMF exposure have dramatically increased in recent decades. Between 1974 (the year glyphosate entered the U.S. market and just over two decades before GE crops were introduced) and 2014, glyphosate use in the U.S. increased more than 250-fold. Globally, glyphosate use rose nearly fifteenfold since 1996, two years after the first GE crops hit the market.4
Recent research shows that while few individuals had detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine in 1993, by 2016, 70% of them had it.5 Overall, the prevalence of human exposure to glyphosate increased by 500% during the study period (1993 to 2016), while actual levels of the chemical in people’s bodies increased by an astounding 1,208%.
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act 