Contrary to what you might have heard, high cholesterol is NOT a disease

Thinking like sheep

Oh…to live in one of the world richest countries. It’s so hard. Poor us.

We have so many terrible risks we face every day…like clean water, ample food supplies, and not enough of us are taking statins.

Yes, you read that right. We’re at terrible risk from underuse of the world’s number one selling drug.

Don’t believe me about this looming danger? Just open a recent Time magazine that reported on a new cholesterol/statin review in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Down in the dumps

“Results are depressing,” says the Time author.

The review found that “effective medication coverage for control of high cholesterol remains disappointingly low.”

So sad! I’m hoping Bono will start a concert to raise money for statin awareness (oh wait!).

According to the review: “Cholesterol-lowering medication is widely available, highly effective and can play an essential role in reducing cardiovascular disease around the world.”

Oh brother! What nonsense!

Statins do lower cholesterol, but there’s virtually no evidence that they do anything to protect you against heart disease.

But never mind the evidence! We’re talking about mainstream mantra. So of course the Time article has to play along, as if this is just terrible, awful news.

“Japan has the worst record on prescribing cholesterol-lowering drugs,” we’re told.

Tut tut, Japan. It really is time to step up the drugging of your citizens.

“Germany and the U.S. also perform poorly.”

Oh, the shame! Poor performance! How can we live with ourselves?

The WHO report says cardiovascular diseases were once thought of as “diseases of affluence” that are now common in “middle-income countries.” But Time gets that wrong and says “high cholesterol” was once a disease of affluence.

It’s a minor mistake, but it shows the mindset of the Time reporter: High cholesterol is a disease, so you better take your drugs.

High cholesterol is NOT a DISEASE! For most people it’s not even a problem! In fact, driving cholesterol levels too low–THAT’S a real problem. Years ago, the Framingham Heart Study showed that total cholesterol levels under 160 actually caused heart disease problems to RISE (…a fact woefully absent from the Time story)!

The Times article calls statin under-medicating a “system failure.” But from where I sit, it’s the first successful thing I’ve read in the statin war.

Now if we could just get the world’s other wealthy nations to join our cause.

Sources:
“System Failure: Countries Too Slow to Identify and Treat High Cholesterol” Catherine Mayer, Time magazine, 2/2/11, healthland.time.com
“High total serum cholesterol, medication coverage and therapeutic control: an analysis of national health examination survey data from eight countries” Bulletin of the World Health Association, Vol. 89, No. 2, February 2011, who.int