If you are a post-menopausal woman with high cholesterol, your doctor will almost certainly recommend cholesterol-lowering medication or statins. And it just might kill you. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins increase the risk of getting diabetes by 71 percent in post-menopausal women. Since diabetes is a major cause of heart disease, this study calls into question current recommendations and guidelines from most professional medical associations and physicians. The recommendation for women to take statins to prevent heart attacks (called primary prevention) may do more harm than good.

Statin drugs increase the risk of diabetes in a number of different ways. Most importantly, statins increase insulin resistance. Increased insulin resistance increases inflammation in the body and inflammation is the hallmark of most diseases, including ironically, heart disease.

These cholesterol lowering drugs used to prevent heart disease actually create insulin resistance that may increase:

• Belly fat
• High blood pressure
• Heart attacks
• Chronic fatigue
• Thyroid disruption
• Parkinsons
• Alzheimers

Devastating side effects are not limited to post-menopausal women. New research has shown that taking higher doses of the statin drugs Simvasatin, (Zocor), Atorvastatin (Lipitor), or Rosuvastatin (Crestor) increases the risk of acute kidney injury by 34 percent.

In 2012, the FDA ruled that patients taking statins no longer need routine monitoring of liver enzymes. This is a very dangerous and irresponsible decision.

Statin drugs have been directly linked to over 300 side effects which include:

• Cognitive loss
• Acidosis
• Neuropathy
• Anemia
• Cataracts
• Immune system dysfunction
• Rhabdomylosis (degeneration of muscle tissue)
• Pancreatic dysfuncti

Here are some facts:

• A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that coronary calcium was six times more accurate in predicting an impending heart attack than the risk factor of a family history of coronary heart disease.
•  Research has found that statin drug use leads to accelerated coronary artery and aortic artery calcification, both of which greatly contribute to cardiovascular disease and mortality.
• Statins deplete the body of CoQ10, a powerful antioxidant. CoQ10 is a crucial component of cellular energy production.
•  Mitochondria are our cell’s energy centers. Cardiac muscle cells by have up to 200 times more mitochondria and much higher CoQ10 requirements than skeletal muscle.
• Every year $37 billion is spent on cholesterol-lowering medications worldwide.

[Photo by: pvera, via CC License]