foodconsumer.org

Statin Zocor can cause muscle injury - FDA warns

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:42:00 +0000

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against use of higher doses of the cholesterol-lowering drug Zocor sold as simvastatin as cases of muscle

jlb

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:16:02 +0000

There are too many of these new medicines which cause terrible side effects. Long term vs. short term usage effects are unclear and vauge if even understood. Interaction dangers are commonplace but poorly defined. I hate to say it but if people take many of these new designer drugs, the effects are probably worse than not taking them. It seems to be the wild west when it comes to consumer safety, let the buyer beware.
Snake oil is always snake oil, no matter how nice the box looks when it is sold.

Pete

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:08:14 +0000

Before taking statins try optimizing your vitamin d levels (5000IU of d3 a day). Wait a month or so and then get your cholesterol rechecked. Everyone I know who has tried this has had normal cholesterol on the retest.

Philip

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:15:03 +0000

Of course the FDA recently expanded the indication of another drug in the same class, Crestor, to include people with normal cholesterol! It isn't like the FDA hadn't already issued a Public Health Advisory about Crestor and rhadomyolysis
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/PublicHealthAdvisories/ucm051756.htm

Are we looking at another tragedy unfolding and yet another embarrassing about face by a compromised regulatory agency. Meanwhile the "lipid hypothesis" itself is being more and more widely questioned after decades of intensive lipid lowering have had no effect on heart disease rates. Perhaps even more astonishingly, when Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD PhD reviewed the medical literature he found something quite surprising had been documented there. On average, at least according to Dr. Ravnskov's review of the literature, people with higher cholesterol live longer. You can read on this here http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/2009/10/do-people-with-high-cholesterol-live.html if interested.

There is also a write-up about Dr. Duane Graveline, MD and former NASA astronaut's findings concerning statins and the rare but serious side effect of global transient amnesia. http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/2009/11/statins-and-global-transient-amnesia.html

Wonder if this new FDA advisory will change prescribing patterns? Or will the Zocor indication just be expanded to healthy people with normal cholesterol?