Is your doctor aware of the danger in LDL cholesterol that’s too low?

You could call it autopilot prescribing.

Type 2 diabetes raises heart disease risk. So many doctors automatically recommend a cholesterol-lowering statin drug for all diabetes patients – yes, even if cholesterol numbers are within normal limits. (In cholesterol crazy world, “normal” isn’t safe anymore. The mantra is, “Lower, lower, lower!”)

If you find yourself in this situation, I hope your doctor happens to subscribe to the Canadian Medical Association Journal. And if he does, I hope he happened to catch a CMAJ study in which more than 6,000 type 2 diabetics (some of them statin drug users) were followed for about five years.

Results: “Among patients with type 2 diabetes…both low and high levels of LDL cholesterol were associated with elevated risk of cancer.”

A 2007 study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also found a link between low LDL levels and cancer risk. Of course, despite the data, the authors went out of their way to insist that there was no proof linking higher cancer risk to statin use.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Source:
“Independent Associations Between Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and Cancer Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 179, No. 5, 8/26/08, cmaj.ca