Thanks,
Mary

Feel free to vent here any time. I totally understand your frustration.

MRE

Hi Rev. Rivers 

I can’t give specific medical recommendations via this blog.  The decision as to whether or not you should be on statin drugs is one you will need to make in conjunction with your personal physician.

It should be pretty obvious from my blog postings what my feelings are, but I’m not your physician.

Good luck.

MRE 

Hi Dorothy Lee–

In my experience with many, many patients triglyceride levels of 500-600 mg/dL come down nicely with a low-carb diet to well within the normal range.  You should discuss it with your physician.

Cheers–

MRE 

Mary

Hi Mary–

Since elevated insulin levels drive a lot of metabolic processes that aren’t particularly good, and since glucagon has an opposing effect on all these same processes, and since glucagon is only up when insulin is down, you could say that it acts as a natural statin, without all the side effects, of course.

Cheers–

MRE 

Finally, as I said before, heart disease is still the number one cause of death, even among non-smokers. For example, Utah, which has a large population of non-smokers, has about a 30-40% lower CHD mortality rate than the national average. So, yes, smoking is probably a significant cause of CHD. Nevertheless, even the non-smokers still do have a fairly high CHD mortality rate (~60% that of smokers).

Hi Matt–

I’ve seen a few hundred patients with heart attacks, and although most of the ones I remember smoked, I had forgotten about my own partner in one of my business ventures who never smoked, yet had a heart attack.  I’m not making the case that no one has ever had a heart attack who never smoked, but the odds are much,much higher for smokers.

Here is an interesting comment from a cardiac anesthesiologist on a discussion board for physicians only:

I am a cardiac anesthesiologist. One day, I was doing another bypass (I have done a few thousand bypass operations) and I got to thinking about a common link between the patients. There was only one I could come up with. Smoking. With the rare exception of familial hypercholesterolemia or juvenile onset diabetes, I could not think of one patient I had put to sleep for bypass that was not a smoker. I have, however, put several to sleep with “normal”cholesterol profiles. Also, it is good reading to look at what “normal cholesterol”has been considered over time. Back in the 70′s, it needed to be blow 275 or 300. Over the years, it has continually been ratcheted down to where we are today. I would be willing to wager that if smoking is never started, the chance of needing coronary artery interventions would be about 5% of the rate that smokers/reformed smokers have. I don’t know how the “second hand smoke” group would weigh in, but I think that they would still be well below the “first hand smoke” rate. This is just my own personal observation, and I don’t have formal studies to back it up, so I just throw this out for consideration and discussion.

He (or she) seems to have had the same experience as I have.

Best–

MRE

No problem.

MRE 

I have known 2 people who have had heart attacks and were not smokers. Both were coccaine users.

I often worry about my risks of heart attack, since my brother, father, and his father, all had heart attacks in their mid-40′s. I am female, 49, diabetic. I adopted a LC WOE and lost 53 pounds, and relaxed a bit when I read your comments about smoking and heart attacks, since I have never smoked.

However, my parents were both heavy smokers, and I know I spent my first 17 years as a heavy second-hand smoker.

Could you share your opinion on the danger of second hand smoke versus actually smoking, as it relates to the risk of heart disease? Do you know of any studies on that topic?

BTW, I took lovastatin for a couple years and had very severe adverse affects, (muscle pain, extreme weakness, fatigue, memory problems, depression) and stopped taking them against my doctor’s advise last September. The problems are slowly clearing up. But he denied that the statins could have caused it, in fact told me that if the statins were the cause, the symptoms would have cleared up within 48 hours of stopping.

Thank you,
Karen

Hi Karen–

Thanks for the history of what happened when you were taking statins.  I’ve heard the same story from countless people.

As to the second-hand smoke, I’m sure it plays a slight role.  In your case, as in mine, where the exposure stopped long ago, I doubt (hope?) there is much residual effect.

Cheers–

MRE 

Anna

Hi Anna–

Anthony Colpo’s book (which I haven’t finished) fingers smoking as a risk factor (I noticed this in flipping through), but I don’t know if he posits a mechanism.

Cheers–

MRE