The billion-dollar memory thief drug

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

I often warn about the dangers of statin drugs. They are metabolic poisons that interfere with your body’s natural production of vitamin D and Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). And at least one prominent U.S. scientist thinks they even disrupt brain function.

Of course, big pharma is trying to tell us the complete opposite—that high cholesterol causes dementia. And they say you need to take a statin drug to cut your risk.

But this claim is just plain wrong.

Your brain needs cholesterol. In fact, you learn this simple fact in Biology 101. (Of course, big pharma never lets a little basic biology stand in the way of making a buck.) I’ll explain more about how cholesterol protects your brain in a moment.

First, let’s back up…

Originally, doctors only gave statin drugs to people with high cholesterol. But now, big pharma wants virtually every adult to take them. They say it will prevent any number of health problems—from cardiovascular disease to Type II diabetes.

In fact, in 2013 big pharma got some help advancing their cause. An “expert” panel expanded the guidelines for statin use. This panel concluded that physicians need to look beyond total cholesterol levels when determining who should take a statin.

According to these “experts,” physicians need to consider a patient’s age, weight, and blood pressure. They also need to look at whether a patient smokes or has diabetes. They even designed a nifty mathematical formula to help doctors determine their patients’ cardiovascular disease risk. And if, after plugging in the numbers, a patient has more than a 7.5 percent risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke in the next decade, he or she should start taking a statin drug. Regardless of their LDL cholesterol score.

If doctors across the country apply these new guidelines, millions more American men and women (and up to a billion worldwide) will “qualify” to start taking statin drugs.

The statin industry has also worked overtime to prove high cholesterol raises your risk of Alzheimer’s dementia. But they’ve only found one study that even comes close to substantiating this claim.

In a single review study from the past 30 years, men with high cholesterol in their 50s had an increased risk of Alzheimer’s much later in life.

The statin industry quickly jumped on this random finding back in 2008. And the lame stream media aided and abetted them. But they missed (or didn’t understand) a key piece of the study…

The men in the study started taking statin drugs in their 50s, once they were diagnosed with high cholesterol. So, for the rest of their lives, the men had statin-induced low cholesterol. Now, a good percentage of these men did develop dementia. But it wasn’t because of their initially high cholesterol. Having low cholesterol for all those years probably increased their dementia risk.

You see, cholesterol plays a critical role in protecting the brain. In fact, here is what an overwhelming number of studies published before and after that review suggest…

Older adults with high cholesterol have increased longevity. (And heart disease is still the number one cause of mortality in older adults, both men and women. So increased longevity generally means lower risk of heart disease, with higher cholesterol.)

Plus, researchers link high cholesterol with better memory and reduced dementia risk. And lastly, researchers link falling cholesterol levels very clearly with higher rates of Alzheimer’s dementia.

In addition to these statistical studies, there’s one obvious reason why statin drugs contribute to Alzheimer’s dementia…

Statins cripple your liver’s ability to make cholesterol. And your brain needs cholesterol. It enables signal transport across the synapses—a critical, ongoing brain function. Longer term, cholesterol encourages the growth of nerve cells. And it keeps the myelin sheath around nerve cells healthy. The myelin sheath is a layer of fatty substance that insulates each and every nerve cell. Without healthy myelin, the nerve cells in your brain can’t communicate with each other!

In an interview, one prominent U.S. researcher put the immediate effects this way…

“When you deprive the brain of cholesterol, you directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters affect the data-processing and memory functions. In other words–how smart you are and how well you remember things.”

Doesn’t that sound like dementia to you?

Without a doubt, statins affect brain function. Just consider the story of, NASA physician-astronaut Dr. Duane Graveline who actually experienced amnesia after taking a statin drug for just six weeks.

Following his frightening ordeal, Dr. Graveline wrote a book about the damaging effects of statins on the brain called Lipitor: Thief of Memory. But the real thief is the entire statin industry.

So protect yourself from these thieves. And don’t let any primary care physician scare you into taking a statin drug supposedly because “high cholesterol is a big risk factor for Alzheimer’s.”

It’s just not turning out to be true.

Thankfully, more and more doctors are beginning to see the statin problem more clearly…

In fact, the new cholesterol guidelines I told you about above have actually prompted hundreds of doctors to actively examine the evidence on statins. And, as a result they’re getting their patients off these dangerous, largely useless drugs.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough just to stop taking statins. The damage they cause in your body doesn’t all go away on its own. But you can reverse it. I’ve written in detail about the dangers of statins drugs, what you can do to avoid them, and how to recover from them in my special report The Insiders’ Guide to a Heart-Healthy and Statin-Free Life, which is available on my website.  This is life-saving information that anyone who is currently taking statins—or has ever taken them—needs to know. So please, don’t miss it.

Sources:

“Cholesterol as a Risk Factor for Dementia and Cognitive Decline: A Systematic Review of Prospective Studies With Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 2008; 16(5): 343-354

“High total cholesterol levels in late life associated with a reduced risk of dementia,” Neurology 2005; 64: 1,689-1,695

“Better memory functioning associated with higher total and LDL cholesterol levels in very elderly subjects without the APOE4 allele,” Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2008; 16(9): 781-785

“Total cholesterol and risk of mortality in the oldest old,” The Lancet 1997; 350(9,085): 1,119-1,123

“A scissors mechanism for stimulation of SNARE-mediated lipid mixing by cholesterol,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2009; 106(13); 5,141-5,146

“Cholesterol-reducing Drugs May Lessen Brain Function, Says Researcher,” Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com), 2/26/2009

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Marc S. Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D. was the founding editor-in-chief of the first US journal in Complementary and Alternative Medicine and organized and edited the first US textbook in the field, Fundamentals of Complementary & Integrative Medicine in 1996. He has published nearly 300 articles in medical literature and is the author or editor of over 25 books. Dr. Micozzi served as Senior Investigator of cancer prevention at the National Cancer Institute, where he published the original research on diet, nutrition, and chronic disease. He continued this line of research as the Associate Director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and Director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

In recent years, Dr. Micozzi has served as the Founding Director of the Policy Institute for Integrative Medicine in Bethesda, MD, working to educate policy makers, the health professions, and the general public about the opportunities for integrative medicine and the need for clean, clear science within our modern medical establishment. Dr. Micozzi writes a monthly newsletter called Insiders’ Cures as well as a free e-letter called The Daily Dispatch.