Statin Drugs Linked To Parkinson Disease?

Hadley Intro: A new Penn State study found twice the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s Disease in men and women who take statin drugs to lower cholesterol. See why the proven risks of neurological side effects from statin drugs far outweigh potential benefits in this guest post:

By Marc Miccozi M.D., Ph.D

Two diseases that men and women fear most, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease (PD), afflict the brain and nervous system. Both diseases have “early onset” versions, but generally, they affect the elderly.

Of course, I regularly report on Alzheimer’s disease and any new treatments that involve mind-body approaches, nutrition, and dietary supplementation. But I rarely touch on PD, as there’s been little progress to report.

However, one new study on PD and cholesterol-lowering statin drugs stopped me in my tracks. Dr. Xuemei Huang, a Professor of Neurology at Penn State College of Medicine, led this important study.

The Penn State researchers looked at blood cholesterol levels, medications and PD status in nearly 16,000 men and women who participated in the ongoing, long-term Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study. They also took cholesterol readings at three-year intervals over the course of a decade from 1987 to 1998, before widespread statin use began. Then, from 1998 to 2008, they tracked how many men and women began taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, and how many of them developed PD.

Overall, they found men and women who took statin drugs were twice as likely to develop PD. Furthermore, the Penn State researchers linked higher total cholesterol with lower PD risk.

Dr. Huang said, “If we blanket prescribe statins to people we could be creating a huge population of people with neurological problems.”

This new study at Penn State even made waves across the pond. In fact, Dr. Kailash Chand, Deputy Director of the British Medical Association, recently spoke about it. In an interview, he said, “The risks of side-effects of these drugs are far greater than any potential benefits and it is high time these drugs were restricted…”

Experts say if everyone “eligible” for statins in the U.K. took them, it would equate to 150,000 more patients with PD.

Just how many men and women are now “eligible,” according to the new ridiculous statin drug guidelines?

Well, doctors in the U.S. used to prescribe statins only to those who had a 30 percent greater risk of having a heart attack over the next decade. But in November 2013, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association issued new statin drug guidelines. They now recommend statin drug treatment for anyone who has more than a 7.5 percent risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke over the next decade. Eventually, these guidelines could include just about everyone.

Of course, as I reported last month, all these statistics are fictitious. Statisticians play games with disease risk numbers with trickery, manipulation and misdirection

Truthfully, the entire cholesterol story is a myth. And statin drugs can cause cataracts, Type II diabetes, muscle and kidney disorders, and even heart disease itself. And now, we can add Parkinson’s disease to the long list of side effects.

Did these cardiologists and their mainstream co-dependents ever stop to consider maybe Nature creates cholesterol for a reason?

Indeed–it does.

In Biology 101, you learn cholesterol plays a critical role in protecting the brain and nervous system from birth through old age. In fact, the brain and nervous system use one-third of the body’s total cholesterol. Most of this natural cholesterol goes to form myelin, the protective sheath that wraps nerves and brain tissue.

Memo to cardiologists, the body is not just about the heart, it’s also about the brain.

Cardiologists should know better than to keep prescribing these statin drugs. But they are over-specialized idiot savants walking blissfully down a yellow brick road, where one doesn’t have a brain; another doesn’t have a heart; and none of them have the courage to stand up for the truth.

Today, medical specialists know more and more about less and less, to the point where eventually they know everything about nothing. Much of the rot underlying the pure stupidity in the practice of medicine (aside from the greed) is the growing curse of overspecialization.

It used to be that doctors received a foundation in science and biology in medical school. If only we just remembered these basic lessons of Nature. As Samuel Johnson said, “Mankind needs less to be instructed than to be reminded.”

Fortunately, as I reported last year, more and more General Practitioners are putting their good sense and clinical judgment to use by ignoring the ridiculous advice to give more statins to more patients. We are fortunate General Practitioners aren’t overspecialized to where they know too much about one organ, and ignore the whole body and the whole person.

Always on the side of science,

Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D.

Source:

“Statins, plasma cholesterol, and risk of Parkinson’s disease: A prospective study,” Mov Disord January 2015