Re: Try to use herbs to lower your cholesterol

From: Henriette Kress (spamtrap.hetta_at_spamcop.net)
Date: 12/16/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:39:27 +0200

"Robert Linde" <acuherbals@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> artichoke leaf, Hawthorne, turmeric, myrrh, niacin, cinnamon (my
> favorite)EFA's, mushrooms, Reishi, eating right, cutting out sugar,
> exercise, weight loss, Red yeast rice, jiao gu lan, neem, and a dozen more
> that I can't think of.

Red yeast rice contains statins (mostly lovastatin, but also mevastatin, which
had side effects so bad that there are no mevastatin drugs these days).
You can get the same side effects with red yeast rice as you can with statins;
not surprising, as statins are made the same way as red yeast rice, just using
slightly different and more efficient yeast strains.

I've been looking into cholesterol and cholesterol-lowering med research
recently. What follows is just the tip of the iceberg. Don't trust me, go read
the studies I refer you to.
Note, the abstracts are often misleading. Find the full studies; most are online
somewhere in full; if they're not linked from medline you can find them by
googling for the study subject.

Absolute total mortality in statin vs. placebo groups is almost always about 1 %
over 5 years (14), that is, minimal, with side effects (including major ones
like myopathy, rhabdomyolysis, and cancer) occuring in an average of 2/3 (12) of
those actually taking their statins (or other cholesterol drugs, but statins are
worst).

That's absolute total mortality, as opposed to relative total mortality.
(Relative total mortality: you have 3000 people in each group, 100 die in the
statin group and 130 in the placebo group over 5 years; mortality % are 3.33
and 4.33, respectively. Relative total mortality is lowered by 30 % (1 of 3.33).
Absolute total mortality is lowered by 1 %...)

And that's total mortality, not heart-related mortality.

Any cholesterol-drug study telling you about relative total mortality while
forgetting absolute total mortality is trying to skew your perceptions of the
research paper conclusions.

Any cholesterol-drug study telling you all about heart-related mortality while
forgetting total mortality is trying to skew your perceptions of the results of
the paper.

A couple years ago the pharmacogiants got about 25 billion $ a year from
cholesterol-lowering drugs. That's likely much higher now ... you can buy a
lot of researchers for that kind of money.

So. Ditch the whole "cholesterol is bad for you" -approach unless
- you have familial hypercholesteremia
- you have already had a heart attack
- you are diabetic.

Further reading:

1) The "dietary fat is bad for you" -approach is not a good idea:

   Taubes G. Nutrition. The soft science of dietary fat. Science. 2001 Mar
     30;291(5513):2536-45.

2) Building drug sales on false premises:

   Stehbens WE. Coronary heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, and
     atherosclerosis. I. False premises. Exp Mol Pathol. 2001 Apr;70(2):103-19.

   Stehbens WE. Coronary heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, and
     atherosclerosis. II. Misrepresented data. Exp Mol Pathol. 2001
     Apr;70(2):120-39.

3) Don't do cholesterol drugs, and don't try to reduce your cholesterol levels
if you're a woman:

   Hu FB, Stampfer MJ, Manson JF, Rimm E, Colditz GA, Rosner BA, Hennekens CH,
     Willett WC. Dietary fat intake and the risk of coronary heart disease in
     women. N Engl J Med. 1997 Nov 20;337(21):1491-9.

4) ... it's much better to just ditch trans-fatty acids, instead of reducing
total fat intake if you're a woman:

   Willett WC, Stampfer MJ, Manson JF, Colditz GA, Speizer FE, Rosner BA,
     Sampson LA, Hennekens CH. Intake of trans fatty acids and risk of coronary
     heart disease among women. Lancet. 1993 Mar 6;341(8845):581-5.

5) The famed Framingham study...

   Kannel WB, Castelli WP, Gordon T. Cholesterol in the prediction of
     atherosclerotic disease. New perspectives based on the Framingham study,
     Ann Intern Med. 1979 Jan; 90(1):85-91.

6) ... was badly skewed in favor of the cholesterol myth:

   Castelli, W. Concerning the Possibility of a Nut. . ., Archives of Internal
     Medicine, Jul 1992, 152:(7):1371-1372.

(Castelli is the doc who took over after Kannell.)

7) Kannell continued to harp on the "blood cholesterol is an excellent indicator
of heart attack risk" even after Castelli let the cat out of the bag:

   Wilson, PW, Kannel WB. Hypercholesterolemia and Coronary Risk in the Elderly:
     The Framingham Study. Am J Geriatr Cardiol. 1993 Mar, 2(2):56.

(There are many reports based on the Framingham study in medline; take into
account that the researchers had to massage their raw input quite a lot to get
the results they desired, and take the lot with a large grain of salt.)

8) Check the absolute total mortality of this one, not the heart mortality
touted in the abstract:

   Multiple risk factor intervention trial. Risk factor changes and mortality
     results. Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial Research Group. JAMA, 1982
     Sep 24;248(12):1465-77.

9) The very first cholestero-reducing drug article. They studied middle-aged men
who had cholesterol levels 95 % above normal, found nice relative (not absolute)
heart mortality (not total mortality) numbers, and went on to happily recommend
lowered cholesterol to ANYBODY, nevermind sex, age, or starting cholesterol
levels.

   The Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial results. I.
     Reduction in incidence of coronary heart disease. JAMA. 1984 Jan
     20;251(3):351-64.

10) I quite like this pair: First a 39-year follow-up of naturally
low-cholesterol young male white-collar workers ...:

    Strandberg TE, Strandberg A, Rantanen K, Saloma VV, Pitkälä K, Miettinen TA.
      Low cholesterol, mortality, and quality of life in old age during a
      39-year follow-up. J Am Coll Cardiol 2004;44: 1002-8.

11) ... and then a commentary on it:

    Criqui MH, Golomb BA, Editorial Comment: Low and Lowered Cholesterol and
      Total Mortality, J Am Coll Cardiol. 2004 Sep 1;44(5):1009-10.

12) Do have a look at total side effects in the statin vs. placebo groups:

    Newman CB, Palmer G, Silbershatz H, Szarek M. Safety of Atorvastatin Derived
      from Analysis of 44 Completed Trials in 9416 Patients. Am J Cardiol
      2003;92:670-6.

Scary, innit?

13) Somebody said it in 1998, but did anybody listen? No.

    Kmietowicz Z. Cholesterol screening is not worth while. BMJ. 1998 Mar
      7;316(7133):725.

14) And the parade example of how to show nicely pro-cholesterol-lowering-med
numbers:

    Shepherd J, Cobbe SM, Ford I, Isles CG, Lorimer AR, Macfarlane PW, McKillop
      JH, Packard CJ, for the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study Group.
      Prevention of coronary heart disease with pravastatin in men with
      hypercholesterolemia. N Engl J Med. 1995;333:1301-1307

They all do this: if you actually read the full research paper (not just the
abstract), you'll find a total absolute reduced mortality of 0.9 % over 5 years,
not the 22 % lower relative total mortality they mention in the abstract.
Nice... not. 

---
Who not to trust, when talking fat, cholesterol, and cholesterol-lowering meds:
Enig and her pal, Sally whatshername. In trying to find the truth behind various
papers on and off the net I followed her references in "The Oiling of America".
The papers she referred to didn't say what she said they did ... I wouldn't
trust anything she says, at all at all.
Who to trust: Ravnskov, while rabidly anti-anti-cholesterol, is actually getting
quoted in that bastion of nutrition science papers, The American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition, these days. Good show!
Bill Sardi has also been diving into cholesterol-lowering drugs. Here's one of
his reports, easy to understand by layfolk, with references for those so
inclined: http://www.askbillsardi.com/sdm.asp?pg=cr - his other two cholesterol
reports are linked from that page.
---
The whole thing is rather depressing once you really start to look into things.
Money is everything, nevermind all the lives the pharmacogiants are ruining.
Henriette
-- 
Henriette Kress, AHG                        Helsinki, Finland
Henriette's herbal homepage:   http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed
Henriette's herbal blog: http://www.henriettesherbal.com/blog

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