Side Effects from Statins (Part 2)

“Some people experience memory loss, report an inability to concentrate as well, and feel that they are developing Alzheimer’s disease when taking statin drugs. (Coincidentally, a new study suggests that Simvastatin (Zocor) actually lowers the risk of Parkinson's and Alzheimer’s diseases.) This memory loss may be so extreme as to be amnesia that lasts for 6 to 12 hours.” 


“A systematic review of the cases reported to the FDA determined that approximately half of the memory loss problems occurred within 60 days of starting on statin therapy, although memory problems were reported after taking a statin drug for just 5 days. Fortunately most people return to normal after discontinuing the statin drug. The time until recovery appears to be related to the amount of time before the cognitive symptoms appeared; that is, the longer it took for the symptoms to appear, the longer it took for the person to recover. However, a small group may continue to suffer with cognitive problems, perhaps indefinitely.”


“A recent study raises the possibility that statins increase the risk of delirium in patients after surgery. Researchers at the University of Toronto looked at data from 284,000 people after surgery. Delirium is known to be under diagnosed in these cases, but the researchers estimated that it occurs after 10% of all surgical procedures, and after 13% of procedures in people taking statins. Because delirium can increase recovery time, this is an area of concern. The hypothesis is that the statins cause blood flow to the brain to reduce in favor of flow to the heart, although there is no firm evidence that this is happening. “
http://www.statinanswers.com/effects.htm
“Other potential statin side effects:


Although muscle weakness from statins and liver problems are of the most concern, much research has shown that they can also cause sexual dysfunction and performance problems, as well as memory loss, personality changes and irritability.


Other side effects from long term use of statin drugs:


1) While cholesterol lowering drugs do lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, they have limited effect on HDL (good) cholesterol, and no effect on triglycerides (fats), an equally important heart disease risk indicator.


2) Statins decrease your body's supply of CoEnzyme Q10 (CoQ10), an essential nutrient for cardiovascular strength and function.


3) Muscle weakness from using statins:  http://www.healthy-heart-guide.com/muscle-weakness-from-statins.html


4) Low cholesterol levels into the danger zone range, more on the dangers of Low Cholesterol in part 4 of this series. 
We will take a look at How Statins Work in my next post. 


There are natural cholesterol lowering ingredients, some of which have been shown to outperform statins in lowering cholesterol, without the possible