The widespread use of statins is the end-point to the postulate, starting early last century, that high serum cholesterol causes heart disease. While there are no different types of cholesterol in this context, there are different lipoproteins that carry them around the body. Cholesterol itself will not dissolve in blood (fat and water, eh), so it is carried around in a protein and phospholid encapsulated ‘boat’, a lipoprotein. There is a distribution of sizes for the lipoproteins, so we get the well known LDL (low-density lipoprotein – larger package) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein – smaller package) amongst others (Chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL). But the cargo is the same – the cholesterol in each lipoprotein is not a different thing. In this postulate, elevated LDL (and perhaps decreased HDL) causes increased risk of coronary disease. Of note, all of the evidence linking high LDL to atherosclerosis is epidemiological; as far as I know, there’s no RTC or concrete causative pathway. However, if we take the correlation as causation and ‘ground truth’, the rush was on in the 1950’s to identify drugs to lower serum cholesterol.
As an aside, there is little correlation between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol levels. That’s because your body produces at least 80% of the cholesterol in your system. Cholesterol is an absolute necessity for life – you will die without it. It’s critical for cell membrane construction and maintenance, hormone production, bile fluid, etc. It’s too important to be left to exogenous sources, so we make our own, largely in the liver. So even if you want to lower cholesterol, there’s no particular reason to stop eating eggs – your body is smart, knows what it needs, and will make more of it.
A lipoprotein. The different ‘types’. Their function.
Given that we make our own cholesterol, if you want to reduce it pharmacologically you need to modify the production chain. The first drug to reduce serum cholesterol was Triparinol, released in 1959. It was withdrawn in 1962 as it was causing cataracts and accelerated heart disease (!). After the fact, there was some evidence (and court case to boot) that the dangers of the drug were known from the pre-approval trials and were simply not reported or were ignored – not sure where I’ve heard this before, but it seems familiar… Triparinol was not a statin – its method of action is to inhibit the final step in cholesterol creation. But if one only inhibits the final stage of a multi-part process, you get a build-up of intermediate products and that build up was probably the root cause of the adverse affects. Complex systems, who’d of thunk?
On the other hand, the statin class of drugs inhibits the rate controlling enzyme (HMG-CoA reductase) for cholesterol generation, hence they slow down the entire chain of processes that create cholesterol, not just truncate a single step. The first statin (mevastatin) was isolated from a fungus in Japan (what is it with the Japanese and fungi?). In the late 70’s Sankyo (Japan) and Merck (US) were in a race to bring a statin to market. No too long after the start of trials in dogs, rats, and monkeys, Sankyo halted development due to significant adverse events in the their trials. There was little success in actually lowering cholesterol in rats, and over 50% of the dogs in the trials developed liver cancer. While there has been criticism that the dosing was extremely high (poison is in the dose), within months, Merck pulled out of development of their drug as well (lovastatin, also isolated from a fungus and building on the work of the Japanese in the 70’s – following a trip by the Merck CEO to Japan in the late 70’s). However, Merck did continue research on lovastatin and the statin class of drug, and, 5-6 years later (1987), got FDA approval for lovastatin, marketed as “Mevacor” (AKA Altocor, Altoprev), the first commercial statin drug.
Atorvastatin (marketed as Lipitor) was patented in 1986 by Pfizer and approved for use in 1996.
Cerivastatin (marketed as Baycol, Lipobay) was developed and marketed by Bayer A.G. as a competitor for Lipitor. It was withdrawn in 2001 due to a high incidence of rhabdomyolysis – rapid break down of skeletal muscle which is potentially fatal as it can lead to kidney failure. The rate of rhabdomyolysis with Baycol was 50-80 times higher than with other statins.
That’s right, “than other statins” meaning all statins have this side effect. Of course with any medication, side effects will happen (except vaccines – they are known to be 100% safe). With statins, all the various products list a common set of side effects – not surprising as they all have the same method of action. Side effects include increased diabetes risk, high serum liver enzymes (liver damage), muscle pain, reduced cognitive function, the aforementioned rhabdomyolysis, weakness, blurred vision, “insert fast talking voice at the end of all pharma commercials”. While “side effects are rare” (except in cases where they aren’t…), as many as 30% of users experience muscle pain; Generally, 20% of patients discontinue statin use due to ‘intolerable’ side effects.
One of the original lipitor ads. All statin adds follow the same M.O.
Of course, if the effectiveness of statins in preventing heart disease is high, side effects may be tolerable. What is the effectiveness? Most people have probably heard the claim that regular statin use reduces risk of heart attacks by 30%. The fine print is actually relatively big in this lipitor add, but it’s often not. They are talking about relative risk, not absolute risk. In this specific case, reduction in events from 3% (control) to 2% (treatment). So it’s the tried and true tradition of reporting relative risk instead of absolute risk to make your intervention appear to be more effective than it is. In general, for all statins, one only sees a 1% reduction in heart attack risk, so one needs to treat 100 people to avoid 1 heart attack. In fact, the statin advertisements were one of the driving forces behind the ‘strong recommendation’ from the CDS and FDA that absolute risk should be reported for all drug interventions; advice that seems to have been forgotten recently for some reason…
On it’s face, 1% is not a great benefit – one might still choose it, but it’s a bit different calculus than what people think of when they hear 36% reduction. However, that number doesn’t even account for a variety of other factors. One factor is that essentially all of that ‘benefit’ comes from a reduction in secondary events – i.e. there seems to be essentially no benefit in preventing a first heart attack, all the benefit appears to be in the cohort that has already had a cardiovascular event. A second factor is that we are looking at only one metric for a positive outcome, heart attacks. But what we are really interested in is overall health; not having a heart attack is small comfort if you instead die from some other adverse impact from the statin. There was a similar bias in a recent set of trials for some vaccine or something. The only end point was whether the vaccine group was protected from contracting the virus – and even that number was gamed by the study design! One can see the folly of that approach with a simple, though extreme, thought experiment. Say one develops a cancer treatment and goes to trial in an RCT with the only end point metric being the remission of cancer in the control versus treatment. At the end of the trial, we find that 10% of the control group died of cancer and 0% of the treatment group died of cancer. Success! Except that 50% of the treatment group died from massive organ failure. But by the study end-point metric, the trial was a success.
There have been some meta analyses that try to tease this out and it tends to be a wash for statins: “The Effect of Statins on Average Survival in Randomized Trials, an analysis of the end point postponement”, Kristensen et. al. 2015, BMJ Open and “Evaluation of Time to Benefit of Statins for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Events in Adults Aged 50 to 75 Years: A Meta-Analysis”, Yourman et. al. 2021, JAMA Intern Med. (fights urge to put links in footnotes…)
Part of the reason why statins may not provide an overall mortality benefit, let alone when weighed against quality of life, is that their primary affect – namely lowering of LDL cholesterol might actually be harmful. If LDL is not implicated in increased risk of heart disease and lowering it has other deliterious effects, overall health will be reduced on a statin. Indeed there is some evidence that the very small benefit of statins in reducing heart attacks is not due to their effects on cholesterol, but rather on anti-inflammatory properties, especially vascular inflammation.
In any case, that was my main thought putting together this article – cholesterol has gotten a bad rap and we’re off chasing our tails trying to reduce it by dietary interventions and pharmacologically and doing great harm, especially from the dietary side (statin use seems to be relatively harmless – I wouldn’t put too much of my money on that proposition though – if potentially unpleasant) in the process. But what was intended to be a short section on statins and why their cholesterol lowering effects may not be a good thing, became very long. I’ll stop now and leave a discussion about why the dominance of the diet-heart hypothesis in the medical orthodoxy might have had and continues to have long term negative impacts on human health and well being to another time!
Part of the reason why statins may not provide an overall mortality benefit, let alone when weighed against quality of life, is that their primary affect – namely lowering of LDL cholesterol might actually be harmful.
Sometimes I think saying “Beneficial drug is actually harmful” is no different than saying “water is wet.”
The world is full of examples of drugs that were once considered perfectly safe, and years or even decades later it turned out that they caused major problems such as cancer. Just turn on the TV, and every time you see a commercial for a law firm stating “If you were harmed by…..” or “If you used… and developed cancer….”, that was once a drug that was considered 100% safe and effective. There is no such thing as 100% safe and effective.
The dosage is the poison. Even water is toxic in a high enough dosage.
~ 1.08 gallon per 100 pounds
And the human body is amazingly resilient if we don’t fuck it up.
My favorite one is now Tylenol causes autism. Yeah, OK.
How much should I take to just focus at work?
It’ll destroy your liver long before it induces the ’tism, I suspect. Just to be on the safe side, maybe we should stop requiring 600 milligrams of it to be added to a barely-therapeutic dose of hydrocodone so that people in chronic pain (and yes, even the junkies who just want to get high) don’t have to fry their liver OR risk the ’tism in exchange for relief.
But take into account the benefits to Pharma of massive profits from statins, and it all starts to make sense.
So, yeah, statins. I first ran up against statins in the form of a friend who took them and said they drove him out of his mind and into another personality entirely, and mimicked actual madness. I was like, “Pffft, whatever,” but later in our friendship, he started taking them again, and not long after that, he ended our friendship in a hail of fireworks of the insane type. I don’t know, that’s just an anecdote.
However, I started looking into it (okay, yeah, the explosion hurt) and that side effect is real, man. Add to that, after doing so many medical reports where old people are about half on and half off statins, the ones who are OFF statins are like, “No, that shit made me go crazy.”
There you go, my ever-so-scientific assessment of the situation. I will never go on statins and I have begged my mom not to go on them. To my surprise, she was already aware of that side effect, and gave it a hard pass.
I did take them for a while. And they most definitely impacted my moods. I won’t be taking them again. The mental changes are real. Made it very difficult for me to control mood swings, and I was angry a lot. Which is not me.
Fantastic article! Thanks, PM!
So much bad info out there.
The medical world is disgusting. I’ve reached the point where I pretty much won’t take any meds.
I take 4 mental illness medications. I know that I am a better, more productive human being ON them than OFF them, so I’m willing to take whatever risks.
I only take one physical-health-related medication (omeprazole), which is a godsend.
What I WON’T take is estrogen (patches) post hysterectomy. It just can’t make up for the real thing, and also, I’m not sure that my mental illnesses weren’t worsened by the real stuff anyway. I’ve never been off my mental illness meds when estrogen wasn’t a factor.
“I take 4 mental illness medications.”
That sounds like a lot.
They each do different things.
“One to stop me stabbing people again, one to prevent general murderous thoughts….”
https://youtu.be/hTUAaW3oGGo?t=98
The problem is clearly that you’re not taking the anti-mental illness medications…
Runs for cover…
The older I get the more I feel like the hippie dad from Dharma and Greg. The world, and especially our country, is driven by big corporations making massive profits and you and I are just another potential source of dollars.
Why heal? Forever treatment is the way to go!
I think the clot shots basically revealed that to be true.
The whole COVID thing in general revealed so much. The government is spying on you, they are censoring you, they are in in bed with big business, all that hippie conspiracy stuff is actually happening.
And what’s shocking to me is how many people still don’t see it.
Essentially the hippies are running the show.
Album title from years ago: “I’m not selling out – I’m buying in.”
The world, and especially our country, is driven by governments colluding with big corporations making massive profits and you and I are just another potential source of dollars
I would add the above modifier. Pfizer and the FDA are essentially a single entity with the gov in the driver’s seat. Same with Big Ag and the USDA. Same with the Big Military and the DOD. etc.
No objections, that sounds right.
Like him, the FBI isn’t really after you?
Doctors look at me weird when I tell them I’m not “on anything”, as if they don’t hear that a lot.
Apparently ’60-90ml ethanol, taken orally, 1x/day’ isn’t a real prescription…
Isn’t that basically an entire bottle of wine?
Good point. Should be more like 120-180ml
What about for reducing stroke?
I think it’s of the same order of effectiveness and probably the same root cause – vascular anti inflammatory effects.
I’ll say it would take a lot lot lot of convincing for me to take a statin – I’m firmly in the camp that elevated LDL is not harmful and in fact protective especially at older ages (and females), with the caveat that you don’t want damaged/oxidized LDL that is not picked back up by the liver – particle size matters in LDL.
So I don’t think it’s primary indication is at all beneficial. But it definitely seems to have some beneficial impact on a narrow set of conditions from a ‘secondary’ action. Whether those benefits outweigh the deleterious impacts of its primary action is less clear to me; studies almost always have a very narrow set of metrics for positive outcome. Not to the extreme of the thought experiment presented, but qualitatively similar.
I had a doctor tell me to take cholesterol meds because my cholesterol level was insanely high. But I chose to lose about 40 lbs instead. Really don’t see myself going on cholesterol meds.
<==
Fuck yes. Nice work.
Excellent work!
Well done sir!
Atta
boypickle!Curious if the Dr. suggested that as an option, or if you just decided that on your own?
No he didn’t suggest that. He’s not really that great a doctor imo, but every once in awhile I have to go. He just wanted to put me on meds.
The whole reason I started low-carb was to reduce my cholesterol & glucose numbers w/o drugs.
When I was regularly staying <50g-carb/day and putting in 30 minutes of cardio, my numbers for both dropped an astounding amount.
Great article, if I am diagnosed with anything and the Dr. recommends pills, I always look for a way not to take them.
I also remember Joe Rogan being incredulous that the official diet recommendations rated ground beef as less healthy than Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats.
Our health/medical/government experts have played a large part in ruining the average health of people.
Thanks for writing. This is interesting and it affects us all in one way or another.
I am on a cocktail of 3 meds for high blood pressure and elevated heart rate. They are working and so for I’m not noticing side effects. I’ve been eating full fat for years, including a stretch of a few years where I was on Keto. Butter, bacon, whole milk, all the “bad stuff”, but my cholesterol is just fine. Same with Mrs. TOK, her cholesterol is great.
My maternal grandmother has had high cholesterol (high 200s) for at least as long as I’ve been alive. She’s also never owned a car, walks everywhere, and has probably never weighed more than 110 pounds soaking wet. She’s closing in on 90 years old. Senile and evil, but nothing wrong with the old ticker. Outlived her daughter.
Yeah, I also eat the supposedly “bad” diet, but my cholesterol is always fine. It seems it has much more to do with genetics than with diet.
Relevant
repost from the ded thread:
LCDR_Fish,
I saw you would be available for lunch tomorrow in Norfolk.
Email me at ronhatsu at yahoo.com
Hope to hear from you.
My own research into the subject when my cholesterol came up a little high on a physical 5 years ago led me to basically the conclusion. I’m more comfortable accepting whatever risk skating along the magical 200 total cholesterol number entails than getting onto a statin.
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes touches on this subject at some length, particularly the epidemiological studies that have formed the basis of the cholesterol hypothesis for all these years. Good read if you’re up for the 600 page slog.
Another interesting tidbit: purveyors of red yeast rice supplements are required to sell their product sans the naturally-occurring monacolin K, as monacolin K is structurally equivalent to lovastatin, and therefore considered by the FDA to be a drug rather than a dietary supplement. Yes kids, as long as you patent your approximation of nature, nature becomes a patent infringement.
(returns from long sequence of morning meetings, prepares to dive back in)
Lovastatin was actually isolated from naturally occurring Aspergillus terreus and I think monacolin K is isolated from it as well; whether added to the red yeast rice supplements or naturally occurring from some other source I don’t know. But almost all statins are infringing on nature’s patents since they are largely derived/isolated from the same class of fungi.
Since I know there are fans of the breed, and I don’t remember seeing it posted:
https://www.11alive.com/article/life/animals/herd-dog-kills-8-coyotes-to-save-sheep-decatur-neighborhood/85-4197e55d-d611-4047-a6c6-f7cbe34e43d5
Wow! What an amazing pup!
Good dog! Hopefully he’s doing okay…
I’m not crying! You’re crying! I don’t like dogs! Stop it with dust in here! Where’s the Pledge?
Anyone with seasonal allergies wean themselves off of a pill? The only thing I take is Fexofenadine in the spring and then again early in the fall. The local honey thing is bullshit.
I do a daily sinus rinse and very occasionally a spray. I think this year I used the spray only once or twice. The sinus rinse is money.
Seconded on the rinse. I used to have bad sinus infections several times a year. Then I got a neti pot, and after regular use I’m at a point where I just need to use it when I start feeling congestion. Works great and completely drug free.
OTC nasal steroidal sprays for the win.
They won’t work immediately. You start on the two sprays once a day, back it down to one spray a day and back it down 2 to 4 times a week depending on where in the season you are.
Indicated dosage is 2 spays once a day.
The girlfriend had some decent success with bee pollen (not honey), although she said it tasted terrible.
No,
I’m taking allergy shots (on 3rd year of regime) and I still need my Fex during the spring/summer cedar pollen season. The shots did solve the issue where I couldn’t sleep flat over night.. 1-2 hours and my sinuses were clogged, I had to sleep sitting up.
Now my seasonal allergy is very local, It started when I moved into my current house, surrounded by cedars… When they release pollen in the spring it looks like fog. If I moved away, I could probably skip the pills. Moved in to the new house in December… Tears and mucus in March.
Wow. Usually it takes a season for your body to freak out.
For example, my Japanese teacher moved here with the typical cedar allergy that many Japanese have. Her first year in the US no allergies. Her second year here, she suffered the same seasonal allergies that many of us here have.
I had occasional allergy sessions in the past, (1-2 weeks) but we couldn’t correlate it. So I may have been primed already. That year went from the “flu” in February.. to my nose never turned off… after 3-4 weeks, I went to the doctor.. “Allergies, take this pill, and this spray”.. fixed it within 1-2 hours. The current meds are much better than the previous ones.
Rogan had a bee keeper on recently and she debunking the whole local honey/pollen thing. For one, bees don’t collect pollen from seasonal allergy causing plants and so certainly don’t make honey from it. What’s the mechanism of action?
No seasonal allergies here, or at least not bad enough to notice, so can’t help you there!
It’s a scam from Big Honey.
YOU LEAVE FOURSCORE ALONE, MOTHERFUCKER!
Try the herb, Butterbur. It got me off nasal steroids. Takes a few days to work into your system. It was pretty magical for a lifelong bad allergy sufferer.
Get the Pa free stuff.
Years later, a life coach friend recommended I try the paleo diet. Didn’t even need the Butterbur after that. Grains are the devil.
Check into SLIT (SubLingual ImmunoTherapy). It’s a long -term solution; the time frame for it to completely work is years. Basically you take micro doses of your allergens and your body fights off the allergy. I’ve been doing it for about a year. Certainly not cured, but it seems like it may be taking the edge off. Bad part is, I’m so damn terrible about forgetting the night dose, so it’s likely taking me longer to get results than most.
I’m glad I don’t have that shit. No allergies.
My mom was allergic to dozens of things.
My dad’s allergic to seafood, so we never got to have fish growing up.
Nice to be able to cook fish for myself now once in a while.
You know how the prostate tests are now contra-indicated, as they are net negative due to the large number of false positives?
Yeah, just saw a study recently, maybe linked by somebody here, that the same thing may be true for colonoscopies.
I had my age 50 colonoscopy, and have clearance for 10 years, so hopefully they will have that figured out for sure in next 7 years.
ditto
Yup, just had that experience over the past year. PSA results were high, and they kept rising, got referred to a urologist, did a biopsy, biopsy was negative, 6 month follow up PSA was still rising, urologist sent me for an MRI, MRI all negative, diagnosis Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy. I started reading up on it, and found that for older men, PSA levels are not a good indicator of cancer since older men in general start developing enlarged prostates which then elevates PSA. It does seem to have a decent correlation with cancer for younger men.
saw palmetto
One thing I like about my current doctor is he doesn’t do PSA tests as standard. I asked about it, although I didn’t want one, and he was like “Nope, too many issues.”
Great interview here:
PSA and Rethinking Prostate Health
I’m at a loss here as well. I think it reached peak mushroom here.
Sabikui Bisco
If you or your loved one has suffered one or more of these side effects after taking Creantix, you may be entitled to compensation. Call 1 888 4 BIG LAW for your free consultation.
narcolepsy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm_OyAcF8BA
lazy eye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYd57rkvnpQ
muscle pain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud4HuAzHEUc
hair loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLpfbcXTeo8
skin loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Al-nuR1iAU
memory loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNbBDrceCy8
Is Facial Amorphia another name for resting bitch face? If so I may need Creantix. Who is your dealer?
narcolepsy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm_OyAcF8BA
lazy eye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYd57rkvnpQ
memory loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNbBDrceCy8
homicidal ideation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uguXNL93fWg
OT – It’s not the EU its the European Parliament. Get it right people.
EU leaders try to sideline Qatar scandal — while they still can
Why not both?
Daily Quordle 325
2️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
personal best, I think
Heh, Trump’s big announcement today was he’s hawking a line of Trump NFTs. He’s lost his mind and gone over the cliff.
OFFS.
LOL really?
Dude, that’s so six months ago.
Will they be on TrumpCoin’s blockchain?
I find this absolutely hilarious.
He should start his own crypto exchange, just in time to get investigated by congress.
You’re fucking kidding me.
It makes one think that the agencies have placed saboteurs in his inner circle that are giving him batshit advice on purpose.
Of course, he’s taking it.
He’s gonna partner with the MyPillow guy.
Tom Brady gonna buy them all.
Hold your horses, that was only part of the announcement. The other part was a multiple step “free speech” plan that involves investigating and prosecuting any government employee who worked with big tech to censor US citizens.
Do you have a link.? Every single article I find in a search is only about the NFTs.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1603467335175921664?cxt=HHwWgIDToffC1MAsAAAA
Announcing the NFTs at the same time (or at all) was as narcissistic as it was stupid.
Agreed, I don’t know what the hell he was thinking.
Do an internet search for “Trump NFT” and you get a whos-who of liberal “news” and opinion outfits making fun of it. Such a bad move. He’s usually his own worst enemy.
Here’s the bullet list: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1603467358038855684
I don’t feel so bad for getting stuck in my own driveway this morning (SNOWPOCALYPSE!).*
The Facilities guys got both of our articulated loaders stuck in the ditch on Airport Road while clearing the parking lots.
* I shoveled snow for two hours to get unstuck, got stuck again further down the hill, shoveled for another half hour and finally made it to the plowed area.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ew8jYh320Rc/maxresdefault.jpg?o
It keeps the riff raff out
/what I keep telling myself
Rated: Mostly True
I haven’t been able to* leave my yard for three days.
*haven’t tried real hard.
*Wish I had a skidsteer
Problem here is I can clean the yard, but the 3 miles of gravel to the highway are cleaned on someone else’s schedule. Being able to work from home greatly diminishes my desire to move snow.
Just say no to snow.
Getting stuck in my driveway never bothered me. I would just go back inside for a while.
Today, a happy Idiots In Cars.
This Superhero Orange Man is the orange man we need.
idiot doesn’t even stop and just keeps driving😐 not OP
“Sorry, this post has been removed by moderators “
It was staged, anyway.
That makes sense.
Well that stinks. I’m not sure why.
Pedestrian crosswalk. Two lanes of same direction travel. One car stops. Some kind of worker in blaze orange is crossing from one side and another female pedestrian starts from the other side.
Car comes blasting through past the stopped car in the other lane. Guy in blaze orange literally scoops the women (backwards – back to the where she started) up and jumps across the remainder of the crosswalk.
Oblivious car continues on. Orange man saved her from serious if not deadly injury and put himself in harms way to do it.
Video is still showing for me.
I was on Atorvastatin for a year. I got off it at my last yearly. (I would have gotten off sooner if PM had written his article sooner!!11)
The only reason I went on it was I had borderline high LDLs and a strong history of heart disease in the family. I got off it for two main reasons; One, my dear departed mother begged me not to go on it. A sense of guilt for always blowing off her medical concerns made me re-think it. Secondly, one side effect ‘Meat didn’t mention: diarrhea. It took me a year to make this correlation because I really do a terrible job of listening to my body.
After a year on it, my LDL was lower and my HDL was higher, but not to any level you could pin on anything specific. We’ll see next year what my numbers do. Regardless, I’m not going back on it. I do need to get on the damn bike and drink less beer.
I just started Atorvastatin recently on the recommendation of my doctor, also due to high LDL (153 vis a vis 70-100 normal range) and family history of heart disease. No side effects so far after a month or so. My LDL has plummeted, so it worked as advertised in that respect. But after reading PM’s article I may discuss it more with my doctor. He did mention the relative risk reduction, but not the absolute.
This article has heart.
Bacon and eggs will remain on my menu.
State ABC reaches deal with Spotsylvania restaurant owner
Gourmeltz can’t sell alcohol until 23 December and is out the seized alcohol that “spoiled”.
Of course it “spoiled”.
To be fair, most alcohol is spoiled after I turn it to urine.
So… they’re out the Irish cream?
And the beer that was stored in the industrial oven.
And whatever booze the ABC folks drank.
I could see them forcing “destruction” of beer past its best by date as well.
Hurricanes IN SPACE
Last year, scientists announced they had discovered cyclone-like auroras near the North Pole. Over 600 miles in diameter with multiple arms that rotate counterclockwise, they contain a calm center, or eye, and “rain” electrons into the upper atmosphere. The team dubbed them “space hurricanes” for their 3D funnel shape.
“[They’re] occurring where nobody looked and occurring under conditions where nobody thought anything was happening,” said Larry Lyons, who is co-author of a study on the space hurricanes as well as a space physicist at UCLA. “It’s just a matter of opening your eyes.”
In a new study, researchers shed even more light on these mysterious phenomena, showing when, where and how they occur in unprecedented detail.
It will be blamed on climate change. Who wants to take the under on that bet?
This has been rumored for a while. I can’t believe they are going to build the thing.
The Rotary Range-Extender Mazda MX-30 Could Be The Weirdest New Car On The Road
I’m saying this as an owner of an EV that used to own an RX-8. I don’t get it.
Huh.
1. There are plenty of choices besides building electric cars. Like not building them. Bad Autopian! *pulls out rolled up newspaper
2. If the motor becomes constant duty, used like a generator on a train instead of a hybrid, it might work. Rotaries on a small scale don’t have that bad oil burning problem.
I am far more likely to buy a plug-in hybrid than an ev so it doesn’t sound that weird to me. I’d be more interested if it was in a new RX.
More the choice of a rotary. If you want a hybrid the Toyota system is the one to buy. They’ve done it the longest and have high reliability.
It was just redesigned too, and actually looks pretty nice. Inside and outside.
We’ve been quite happy with our 2009 Camry hybrid. The only down side was the trunk space eaten up by the battery.
What’s its towing capacity?
About 15-20 years ago I experienced some chest pains. As it turned out, it wasn’t coronary-related, but gastro-related (and maybe stress from work, etc.). But I followed my doctor’s instructions and had a stress test (passed with above average results) and went to a cardiologist.
When I mentioned the cardiologist I was going to see, a couple nurses said “Oh, he’s the best! You’re lucky to be able to see him.”
In my first appointment with the cardiologist, he started talking statins. I said I’d like to see if I can make lifestyle changes before taking any drugs. He said “You could lose 20 lbs, but you won’t do it.” I found that rather insulting. He also asked about my diet and as soon as I mentioned eggs, he said “Oh, the cholesterol!” I was perplexed, because I was aware of studies that showed that the cholesterol in eggs had very little, if any, impact on blood cholesterol. He was of Indian heritage, so maybe he ate a vegetarian diet, and didn’t bother to keep up-to-date on eggs?
Needless to say, I cancelled the follow-up appointment and never looked back. I told people I fired him.
In 2020, when I’m more than 20 lbs lower in weight than I was when I saw that cardiologist, I see in the news that a prominent local cardiologist is sick with Covid. Poor bastard died at age 57 ( he was a couple years younger than me).
Like salt for high blood pressure, doctors will still tell people to avoid it even though it makes no difference for the vast majority of people.
I had several “discussions” with my old GP who didn’t believe me when I told him that I had done a 50 mile bike ride over the weekend.
Great article PM. I hope you are doing well.
Even without getting into the studies, the notion that things like eggs, heavy cream, butter and lard are what’s driving health problems like obesity and heart issues doesn’t pass the smell test. I would suspect my grandparents ate much more of that than we did. The level at which “cholesterol = bad” is simply accepted is pretty astonishing.
Pat mentioned Gary Taubes’ book above – I think he’s got a couple on this subject that are good reads. Similarly, Tundra was pushing a book a while back, I may have the name wrong – Deeper Nutrition? That one is very good, too. As far as I can tell, if you’re gonna have a War on ______ against a particular category of foods, it ought to be vegetable oil, sugar and corn syrup. One or all of those things seem to be in everything — I even saw a baby formula (my wife is breast feeding, fortunately) whose main ingredients was HFCS, vegetable oil and whey powder. Woof.
Lastly, there’s a somewhat amusing chart floating around somewhere that shows the date of the introduction of the food pyramid, with a plot line of some sort of negative health issue. I know correlation isn’t causation, but it’s funny to see the plot line rise at a 45-degree angle as soon as the food pyramid was introduced.