Statins HARM patients: Cholesterol-lowering drugs damage your heart

Statins are the drug of choice when it comes to heart health, but a growing body of evidence now indicates that these drugs are not the miracle medicines they’ve been made out to be. Recent research has shown that statins actually pose a threat to heart health and are linked to an increase in arterial calcification. The evidence that statins are actually harmful to patients is diametrically opposed to the medical industry’s calls to expand statin prescriptions.

It’s estimated that one in five Americans have been prescribed a statin, and so-called experts recently recommended that nearly 10 million more people “need” a statin drug. Some estimates suggest that guidelines from some organizations would see statins prescribed to over 40 percent of the 40-to-75-year-old set — even when there is no history of heart problems.

It’s no wonder that over-prescription is practically an epidemic in and of itself: The medical community today believes that drugs are what heals the body, even though no one ever got heart disease from a statin deficiency.

Statins are a threat to heart health

As Natural Health 365 reports, the science on statins is in — and it doesn’t look good. Recent research has shown that statins are linked to an increase in calcification of the coronary artery, as well as a higher incidence of obstructive coronary artery disease.

A 2012 study from scientists at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, CA,  featured 6673 participants with no known history of heart disease. Of the study volunteers, 2413 were on statin drugs, while the remaining 4260 were not.

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“The researchers used coronary CT angiography to visualize coronary atherosclerotic plaque, and found that the statin groups had a higher number of coronary segments with calcified plaques – along with a corresponding higher prevalence of obstructive coronary artery disease,” sources report.

While some have tried to spin this finding as a “positive,” with newer research declaring arterial plaque calcification is a “protective” benefit of statins, research has consistently shown this is simply untrue. Calcification of the arteries is associated with increased arterial stiffness, which in turn increases the risk of having a cardiovascular event (like a heart attack or stroke).

“Further studies showed that the extent of coronary artery calcification (CAC) strongly correlated with the degree of atherosclerosis and the rate of future cardiac events,” a paper recently published in the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology explains.

Multiple scientific papers note that coronary artery calcification is a “strongly established” independent risk factor for adverse health events.

The statin scam

Statins have been around for decades, and natural health experts have been questioning the validity of these “medications” ever since. Even the very notion that lowering cholesterol will prevent heart disease has been called into question, especially now that the benefits of a Mediterranean style diet have been so thoroughly studied. As sources note, the Mediterranean diet has been shown to reduce mortality risk by up to 70 percent. Across numerous studies, the diet has been linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular events and mortality — without reducing cholesterol levels. This raises substantial questions about the belief that cholesterol reduction confers heart health.

There are multiple glaring issues within the pro-statin paradigm. Statins have been linked to an array of other unwanted side effects, including memory loss and diabetes. More, research has shown the “benefits” of these drugs have been wildly overstated, with scientists declaring statins have “failed to substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes.”

Statistical manipulation and heavy-handed sales tactics are the cornerstones of the pharmaceutical industry, and statins are no different. Big Pharma may call their creation a miracle drug that saves lives, but its still the same industry that created the opioid epidemic.

Learn more about harmful medications at DangerousMedicine.com.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalHealth365.com

Atherosclerosis-Journal.com