Why are statins so harmful, and are they even necessary?
By A Midwestern Doctor
The Forgotten Side of Medicine
December 20, 2024
The Statin Damage Crisis
Less severe reactions to a toxin are much more common than severe ones. Because of this, if you see a cluster of severe reactions, it indicates that far more, less severe reactions are occurring as well (which is how after learning a few people in my social circle had died suddenly from the COVID vaccines, I was able to correctly predict the almost unfathomable scale of the non-fatal COVID vaccine injuries that would hit America).
Likewise, if you see a large number of less severe reactions to a pharmaceutical, you can predict far more severe injuries are lurking in the background.
In turn, available data shows statins injure roughly 1 in 5 recipients, most frequently with: The Great Cholesterol … Best Price: $11.00 Buy New $17.68 (as of 08:12 UTC – Details) •Muscle damage (e.g., muscle pain and inflammation)1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8, 9,10, 11, 12, 13
•Fatigue1, 2 especially with exertion and exercise3
•Diabetes,1, 2, 3, 4, 5 particularly in women 6, 7, 8
•Liver dysfunction and failure1, 2
Likewise, even more severe injuries can also occur far too frequently such as:
•Psychiatric and neurologic issues such as depression, confusion, aggression, and memory loss1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
•ALS-like conditions and other central motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease and cerebellar ataxia)1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Note: a more detailed list of many other statin side effects can be found here.
Sadly, effective marketing has made the medical profession remarkably resistant to acknowledging these frequent side effects of statins.
Statin Neurotoxicity
Many statin victims say that abruptly, almost in the blink of an eye, they have become old people. — Duane Graveline MD
Dr. Graveline awoke to this issue after being started on a statin and then developing global amnesia (which is really scary) which disappeared once he stopped the statin.
“When I suggested, on the basis of my 23 years as a family doctor, that perhaps my new medicine was the cause of my amnesia, the neurologist replied, almost scoffingly, that “Statins do not do that.” He and many other physicians and pharmacists were adamant that this does not occur.”
Eventually, he was persuaded to try again.
The year passed uneventfully and soon it was time for my next astronaut physical. NASA doctors joined the chorus I had come to expect from physicians and pharmacists during the preceding year, that statin drugs did not do this and at their bidding I reluctantly restarted Lipitor at one-half the previous dose. Six weeks later I again descended into the black pit of amnesia, this time for twelve hours and with a retrograde loss of memory back to my high school days.
Perhaps stockholder loyalty explains why Pfizer management knew over a decade ago, during the first human use trial of Lipitor, of the cognitive impact to come when Lipitor was released to the public. Of their 2,503 patients tested with Lipitor, seven experienced transient global amnesia attacks and four others experienced other forms of severe memory disturbances, for a total of 11 cases out of 2,503 test patients. This is a ratio of 4.4 cases of severe cognitive loss to result from every 1000 patients that took the drug. Not one word of warning of this was transmitted to the thousands of physicians who soon would be dispensing the drug.
Because of this and other debilitating long-term complications (e.g., previously an extremely fit individual, he developed chronic exhaustion), Graveline became an expert on statin injuries and, in 2014, wrote The Statin Damage Crisis, a book which explains why these drugs are so dangerous.
Why Statins are Harmful
Statins work by inhibiting an easy to target enzyme that is necessary for the production of cholesterol. Unfortunately, blocking that enzyme disrupts a variety of other vital physiologic processes. Let’s review what that enzyme does:
Since each of these enzymes is essential for the body, many problems can ensue.
Note: some of the other affected biomolecules include nuclear factor-kappa B, tau proteins, and selenoproteins.
Cholesterol
Cholesterol has a few different essential functions in the body. These include:
•It is the precursor to many different hormones.
•The brain’s synapses (which, amongst other things, form memories) require cholesterol to function. Since cholesterol is too big to enter the brain, glial cells (support cells of the nervous system) synthesize it within the brain. Statins, unfortunately, inhibit glial cell production of cholesterol.
•Cognition is highly dependent upon cholesterol. For example, one study found that minor cognitive impairment could be detected in 100% of statin users if sufficiently sensitive testing was done (again illustrating how minor injuries are more common than severe ones). Likewise, a variety of more severe adverse effects on cognition are also observed:
“A patient’s rapid descent into dementia after a statin is started is much too often written off by their doctor as senile brain changes or beginning Alzheimer’s when the real culprit is their statin.”
Note: one of the sadder side effects we have frequently observed from the COVID-19 vaccines has been a rapid cognitive decline in the elderly (who cannot often advocate for themselves). When this happens, like statin brain damage, it is always assumed to be due to “their age” and ignored.
Numerous studies have also found a significant association between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violence. Likewise, statin dementia is often characterized by aggression.
Finally, one of the most concerning side effects of statins is their tendency to cause ALS (a truly horrible rare disease—curiously also seen in association with the COVID-19 vaccines). This correlation is further supported by many reports of statin ALS improving once the statin is stopped.
CoQ10
CoQ10 is an essential nutrient that both the mitochondria (which power the human body) and the stability of our cell walls depend upon. CoQ10 deficiency caused by statins is generally considered the most common cause of their side effects. This is really sad because those side effects could have been prevented if CoQ10 had been given with the statin. Unfortunately, this is unlikely ever to happen, as doing so would be equivalent to an admission statins could cause harm.
Note: this analogous to the odds of a severe childhood vaccine injury being proportional to how many are taken at the same time (which I believe is due to a critical threshold being passed that initiates observable microstrokes throughout the body). Yet, anytime someone proposes spacing vaccines to reduce this risk, they are vehemently attacked (as it is tantamount to an admission vaccines are not 100% safe).
Some of the common energy-related side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency include:
•Mitochondrial damage
•Lack of Energy
•Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
•Congestive Heart Failure and Fluid Retention
•Shortness of Breath
•Gout
Some of the side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency weakening cell wall integrity include:
•Pancreatitis
•Rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue)
•Tendon and ligament inflammation and rupture The Great Cholesterol … Best Price: $3.82 Buy New $2.99 (as of 07:30 UTC – Details)
.•Hepatitis
Note: remarkably, Dr. Graveline shared that once statins began frequently causing liver damage, this was “addressed” by the enzyme threshold needed to diagnose liver damage being significantly raised.
Two of the most common consequences of statins CoQ10 depletion are myopathy (muscle pain, tiredness, weakness, and cramps) and peripheral neuropathy (numbness, tingling, or burning sensations, particularly in hands and feet).
Although myopathy is the most commonly reported side effect of statin usage, much of it (e.g., myositis) goes undetected. This is because the symptoms are often not accompanied by blood work showing muscle enzyme elevations and can only be detected by biopsies (which are rarely done relative to blood work).
One of the sadder things about statins is how aggressively they are pushed on diabetics (under the logic that since diabetics have an increased risk of heart disease, it is critical they take a statin to prevent them from having a heart attack). To highlight the absurdity of this, statins are well known to significantly increase your risk of diabetes (multiple studies have found this), which I suspect is again due to them impairing mitochondrial function.
Similarly, peripheral neuropathy is a condition diabetics are well known to be at a high risk of. In one study, it was found that the risk of neuropathy (e.g., burning pain with tingling or numbness of the extremities) was increased by 14 to 26 times (depending on the type) for long-term users of statins. Likewise, other nerve issues, such as neurodegeneration, can be caused by statins.
Note: in addition to preventing adverse effects from statins, CoQ10 is also one of the more helpful supplements for preventing heart disease.