Diabetes and Statins (for Cholesterol) and Alternatives

[Guest guest]

GREETINGS --

The following article is from Rick Mendosa and is from his website. I

post it here as someone who has experienced the same symptoms and

went down a parallel road.

wambo1941

Cholesterol

The Statins and Diabetes

By Rick Mendosa

I would do just about anything to bring down my cholesterol levels.

I'm so serious about this that I even went on vacation this month. My

wife, Nord, and I drove 440 miles roundtrip to Yosemite

National Park. She had never been there before, and it was my first

visit in half a century.

Give me anything but a statin!

Vacationing has got to be good for lowering the bad kinds of

cholesterol. Certainly, the exercise as we walked to the base of

Yosemite Falls, along the Merced River, to the Museum and Ansel

Gallery from the Ahwahnee Hotel had to bring down those numbers.

Sniffing the negative ions from the 2,425 foot falls, the highest in

North America, had to help. So too did the stress management in such

a setting.

There is a stress-cholesterol connection, according to Prevention

Magazine. The effects are both direct and indirect.

At the same time I started taking fish oil again. Each teaspoon of

the highly recommended Carlson fish oil from the cold Norwegian

waters contains 1600 mg of omega-3 fatty acids, including 800 mg of

EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid) and 500 mg of DHA (Docosahexaenoic Acid).

To get the recommended dose for my weight I take 2 tablespoons per

day divided into two doses.

The most reliable source for alternative treatments is The Natural

Pharmacist. It links almost 30 studies of the benefits of fish oil in

controlling high cholesterol.

Earlier, I had used Jarrow's Max DHA. This fish oil is concentrated

by increasing DHA four-fold to 50 percent while maintaining EPA at

only 20 percent.

I took that fish oil on the recommendation of Yvonne Denkins, then of

the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

She presented her research at the Experimental Biology 2002

conference in New Orleans. It indicated that DHA appeared to improve

the function of insulin in people who are overweight. However, she

never published her research, which has not been subsequently

confirmed by others.

I am also improving my omega 3:omega 6 ratio (higher is better) by

eating more bison (buffalo) and less beef. Bison is also much lower

in fat, typically containing 2 grams in a 3 ounce serving, compared

with 15 grams in a lean beef steak.

A study that The National Bison Association funded found that bison

was not just healthier than beef in terms of cholesterol. It was also

healthier than soy protein, which in 2000 the FDA found decreased the

risk of coronary heart disease. So, I make sure to take ample soy in

my daily diet too.

I also try to have a glass of red wine with dinner. That's supposedly

great medicine to increase HDL cholesterol, the good kind. But I

often forget, probably because I really don't like wine.

Studies also show that taking large quantities of soluble fiber such

as glucomannan, pectin, guar, barley, and oat bran reduce

cholesterol.

The cholesterol-lowering benefit of stanols is well documented. Like

many people I take my daily dose of stanols in the form of a

margarine. I use Take Control, an extract from soy beans. Other

popular brands include Benecol, a margarine made from wood pulp.

Kefir is the most recent addition to my diet (see Kefir

(forthcoming). Among kefir's many benefits are its ability to reduce

cholesterol, according to three studies cited in The Natural

Pharmacist.

I'm even taking a pill, Zetia, that in clinical trials reduced LDL

cholesterol (the bad kind) by 18 percent.

When people take Zetia together with one of the statin drugs, the

results are much more dramatic. For me, however, while the result was

dramatic, it was not something I would ever want to go through again.

The pain was just too great.

So what I don't do to treat my high cholesterol is accept the medical

establishment's usual recommendation to take one of the statins. It's

not that I object in principal or anything. If you don't have any

side effects, I would certainly encourage you to take one of the

statin drugs. It's just that over the past two years I have tried

almost all of them, and all of these I tried caused terrible muscle

pains in my right leg. Zocor was the worst. I couldn't sleep for

hours until heavy duty pain killers kicked in. Next in their pain

quotient were Lipitor, Pravachol, and Mevacor. The only ones I didn't

try were Lescol and Crestor, but when I saw a pattern I decided to

skip them. The muscle pains I experienced fall in the adverse

reactions category of myalgia, " Muscular pain or tenderness,

especially when diffuse and nonspecific " as reported in each of these

drug's Prescribing Informations. Zocor users reported it is 1.2

percent of the cases, which wasn't much, particularly when you

consider that users of a placebo reported it 1.3 percent of the time.

Of the people on Pravachol in one study 0.6 percent myalgia was

attributed to the drug compared with 0 percent of those on a placebo.

The results for the other statins were similar:

Lipitor: up to 5.6 percent for 20 mg dose compared with 1.1 percent

for placebo.

Mevacor: up to 3.0 percent for 40 mg dose twice a day compared with

1.7 percent for placebo.

Lescol: up to 2.7 percent for 80 mg dose compared with 2.3 percent

for placebo.

Crestor: myalgia 2.8 v. 1.3 for placebo.

Officially, however, the big news this month is just the opposite.

New clinical guidelines from the American College of

Physicians, " Lipid Control in the Management of Type 2 Diabetes

Mellitus, " Ann Intern Med. 2004 Apr 20;140(8):644-9, recommended on

the basis of a meta-analysis of the literature that almost everyone

with type 2 diabetes should take a statin drug.

Earlier this year the American Diabetes Association release new

clinical practice recommendations, updated on the basis of recent

studies. The recommendations included one that in people with

diabetes over the age of 40 with a total cholesterol of 135 mg/dl,

statin therapy should be used to achieve an LDL reduction of

approximately 30 percent regardless of baseline LDL levels.

They say that the average person should try to maintain an LDL (bad)

cholesterol level below 130 mg/dl. But those of us who have heart

disease or diabetes, the goal is less than 100 mg/dl. Mine is still

above that level. When it comes into range, I will certainly add an

update to the Web page.