Once more, the medical profession wants to treat us all with chemicals whether we need them or not.
This time it’s statins. Anti-cholesterol drugs. There is a Professor, who is an idiot, who thinks it would be a good idea to give statins to everyone over 50 even if they have no cholesterol problems, and even if they already have low cholesterol. Well, it’ll save on the pension bill.
I’m over 50 and have no cholesterol problems. You can give me all the statins you like,. One flush and they’re gone, without all that tedious and time-consuming passing-through-the-body nonsense.
Yet drug safety watchdogs here and in the US have insisted on flagging up relatively minor side effects which are putting patients off the drugs, he said.
These include memory loss, depression, sexual difficulties and depression, while recent research suggests cataracts and diabetes may be more common in patients taking statins.
These are minor side effects? What do they consider a major side effect? Oh, the article does give one possible major side effect. A slow and agonising death.
Okay, if you want to pop pills until you rattle, go ahead. If you trust the medical profession then I think you’re insane but I’m not going to stop you. Personally, when my time comes, I’d prefer a quick heart attack to a long, slow decline into memory loss, depression, diabetes and blindness.
The medical profession has totally lost the concept of mortality. We are all going to die of something. Nobody’s life can be saved. Some can be prolonged but when you look at what the Government does to pensioners and what the NHS does to the elderly, is it really worth it?
Not to me it isn’t. I’ll die drunk in a gutter someday, covered in tobacco ash. Not in a urine-soaked NHS bed while nurses are to busy to hand me a glass of water.
I’ll die smiling and pill-free.
“I’ll die smiling and pill-free.”
Amen to that.
It’s Pharma pill-pushing again, as well as the medics over-diagnosing, but I also think patients have to take the blame, too, given that we live in a society in which we expect not to suffer at all and that a pill will cure every little ache and pain.
My cholesterol level 6.8. three months Pravastatin (Simvastatin made me itch), my cholesterol level 4.3. Just saying.
Mine was 7.9 over 30 years ago when I was advised to follow a fat free diet. I took no notice and my level is now exactly 7.9.
I have smoked for over 50 years and used to drink more than I should have,
So what ??
Perhaps I am dead ??
It is not known how statins work, but probably not via lowering cholesterol. I believe that beyond 50 years of age, high cholesterol is not associated with high mortality.
“These include memory loss, depression, sexual difficulties and depression”
Beautifully ironic quote from the drug safety watchdog.
At the risk of controversy, I have never yet seen a busy nurse and I’ve spent a bit of time in hospitals one way or another. Lazy ones, morbidly obese ones who shuffle/waddle about, stupid ones, obsessively politically correct ones, even one or two heroically having a fag, but busy ~ No. Not saying there aren’t any of course, I’ve just never seen one.
Yep – world of a difference between the nurses of my childhood who bustled around the wards purposefully and those of today (although the exception today are military nurses).
Leggy
After a Heart attack in 2000 I was recommended Atorvastatin, couldn’t Sh1t for a fortnight.
Doctor changed them to Simvastatin, couldn’t stop Sh1tting.Twas a relief after the first statins, but I get a numb bum after a week on the Throne.
Doctor changed them for different statin ,forget the brand, maybe a side effect. Skin turned to Emery Cloth, very painful, but saved money when ‘sanding’ wood.
Doctor changed statin again, but developed muscle cramps which interfered with w@nk1ng much to my disappointment.
Doctor changed them again to Rosuvastatin, they were OK apart from tiredness and another Heart attack in 2009.
I think statins are a wonderful drug, so long as you take no other drugs and are the perfectly average height/weight/age human.
All Hail the Righteous.
Aha, you’re in the new, progressive Scotland. The plan is to have you remain in your house and have people come to you to change your nappy and pop your pills. They’ll pick up your domestic rates, subsidise your utility bills and bang in central heating and insulation for free.
It costs a teeny weeny little bitty more than they’d anticipated, but what the heck, the same could be said about all the big ticket items like free bus passes and the “Edinburgh Tram” and the Homecoming, so this (fresh off the red button) shouldn’t really come as too much of a surprise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19398213
I’ve looked at this at my own place – http://wp.me/p1HPcJ-dO the guy I cite knows his stuff which doesn’t in anyway tie in with the current nonsense spewing forth about statins and how wonderful they are.
Ah, you are obviously not up to speed on the new taxonomy of ‘major’ and ‘minor’ side effects. Major = this will likely kill you. Minor = you will wish this would kill you. And I speak from experience.
It’s important to note that a side effect which promotes a tendency to kill oneself or others is ‘minor’. Heart attack and stroke are ‘major’. This is presumably on the grounds of who picks up the bill.
All drugs have side effects. This attempt at prevention is shooting in the dark. South Asian men are genetically predisposed to have higher LDL cholesterol. All that ghee isn’t helping. But they aren’t taling pharmacogenetics are they, but all people. Medicating the well is simply wrong. If that simvastatin cost £16,000 per head per year NICE would never allow it.
They put my wife on these when they thought she might have a heart condition. They poleaxed her completely. All she wanted to do was sit around and do nothing. Totally knackered and doing well to keep her eyes open.
Except of course at night, when she couldn’t get her eyes shut because of the muscle pains.
Dreadful fucking things! Avoid at all costs!
(PS : turned out she didn’t have a heart condition. It was a hiatus hernia. The similarity escapes me…)
@ Chascrane. I do have a heart condition so they put me on them – fine for a couple of years then exactly the same result as your wife, plus significant memory lapses and severe muscle pains in my legs which made walking a nightmare. I am still not right 3 years after stopping taking them.
Can only speak for myself but I have been taking Statins since I had a mini stroke about 8 years ago. I am not aware of any side effects, if I had I would have to think about it. Quite a few of my friends and family also take them and, as far as I know none have any ill effects. I would like to find out why some people are badly affected and others seem to be ok.
Then you are very lucky, and maybe on a low dose? But I have friends who have said they got no side effects – until I actually asked directly – especially about leg aches and pains, memory lapses, tiredness etc. They were in fact almost all getting one or more to some degree but had not associated them with the statins. Unless acute all the side effects mimic ordinary ageing and day to day physical grumbles, and also it may take months or years for the effects to build up, so it’s not an obvious association. For example, how do you know if you are more forgetful than you were unless a very specific incident occurs or
someone close tells you or gets fed up with your bad memory?
I am on 40mg Lipitor, no aches or pains, I haven’t noticed any great difference in my memory other than the usual at my age, ie going upstairs and can’t remember why! but I had that before the statins. I haven’t noticed any difference in family or friends either and we did talk about it when the first bad publicity started. My son’s memory is worse than mine. I am not an advocate for statins, I simply don’t know, possibly they affect people in different ways. It is impossible to know if my memory would have been better without them, however so far I am inclined to take the chance if it reduces the risk of another TIA or worse, a major stroke, since they tend to run in our family.
I don’t have a doctor. This fixes all the problems at source.