4 ms·

I was afraid this would be one of those pieces that the morbidly obese would cite to say that "preventive medicine" in the form of exercise or just weight loss

I was afraid this would be one of those pieces that the morbidly obese would cite to say that "preventive medicine" in the form of exercise or just weight loss in general is dangerous, but it's actually a fairly good piece. The statin screening especially hit home for me as I've been threatened with being put on statins myself. I just love how the screening calculator was most likely written by the drug companies (no conflict of interest there) and didn't take into account physical activity level, diet, or even weight! Like the article's author, I would steadfastly refuse to be put on a medication that did very little to decrease my susceptibility to a disease, while hampering more natural ways to prevent the disease (ie, less exercise due to muscle pain from statins).

debacle 12y ago
The statin stuff is just bad science. Statins don't have the effect on cholesterol that they are purported to have. They are the product of a time when we still thought that the fat you eat makes you fat. We're beyond that point, but statins are absolutely huge in terms of money.
- nielsbot 12y ago
  This is interesting--I'd love to read more about it. Can you link some sources? (I'm not being snarky)
  - debacle 12y ago
    http://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-statins-dont-save-lives-in-people-without-heart-disease http://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-statins-dont-sav... http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/02/effectiveness-of-statins-called-into-question.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/0... http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-12-2013/can-statins-save-your-life.html http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-12-201...
    - ZeroBugBounce 12y ago
      For context of anyone reading, the second link (mercola.com) has a ton of nonsense anti vaccination articles on it. That's enough for me to wholesale write off anything else the blogger/site might be commenting on, science-wise.
      - debacle 12y ago
        Mercola has a lot of stupid shit on it, but I found no fault in the article (except for a bit of woohoo on energy psychology). It was the only good non-industry source I could find on the Jupiter study.
        hga 12y ago
        Well, to a certain degree the Jupiter study indicts itself, at least at brief glance. It uses a surrogate endpoint, not actual disease or mortality. As I understand it, large dose niacin used to promoted as good for your heart based on more iffy lipid surrogates, but when a real study was done, it turned out to increase mortality. Oops. And while I'm not so influenced by "the drug company paid for it!" bit, Crestor's situation is special, it was introduced when earlier well studied statins had gone generic (or nearly so). It had to muscle its way in, so to speak. So I view it with extra jaundice in my eye (tempered by the fact that it's brand name, so you know you're going to get the real stuff at the right dose, and in my recent study of statins it's clear that bad side effects are very strongly correlated with inadvertent overdosing). Anyway, if an iffy source says something, as long as you can track down what it claims to be quoting then you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Given that it's peppered with links to PubMed.... I myself am looking at statins (for primary prevention, pushed by my doctors with some justice) with a jaundiced eye, based on how far their target is from actual cholesterol production. They interfere with a lot more than that.
    - tokenadult 12y ago
      The site mercola.com is basically untrustworthy on all topics related to health and disease, which is about all it ever writes about. http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-plaguing-america-their-bad-claims-about-science http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/joe-mercola-quackery-pays/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/joe-mercola-quackery-pay... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-breast-cancer-awareness-month-quackery/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-breast-cancer-aware... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/mercola-gardasil-and-toyota/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/mercola-gardasil-and-toy... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-ignore-joseph-mercola-and-natural-news/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-... http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/08/03/15-years-of-promoting-quackery/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/08/03/15-years-of-pro...
- DanBC 12y ago
  We are absolutely not beyond the point of "the fat you eat makes you fat". We might be beyond the point of "the cholesterol you eat is the cholesterol that kills you", but these are very different things.
  - tiglionabbit 12y ago
    Who is We? The general public, your doctor, modern scientists?
- gmarx 12y ago
  Look at the literature and try to find convincing evidence that high cholesterol causes heart disease. I've never seen it. They keep looking for new fractions of cholesterol that will finally show significance but they never question their Bayesian prior assumption. Many drugs lower cholesterol and show now reduction in mortality. Statins (last I read) were alone in this. The logical conclusion is that statins do not achieve this effect through cholesterol reduction.
  - tiglionabbit 12y ago
    Yeah. I find it weird to see that [Cochrane shows statins prevent heart disease](http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_statins-for-the-primary-prevention-of-cardiovascular-disease http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_statins-for-the-...), despite the whole cholesterol debacle. It would be nice if we understood this situation better. We know now that only some types of LDL are dangerous, but how often are people given an LDL particle count? According to Michael Pollan, the whole Fat/Cholesterol thing started when the government found some weak evidence that beef is bad for you, but they blamed it on cholesterol so as not to single out a particular industry. But is beef even bad for you? Or is it something in how hamburger meat is processed? Or what?
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    This makes me wonder if eggs should be considered a health food instead of a health hazard. Anecdotal, but if I eat 4 eggs(~300) calories, I am full for the same period of time as eating ~600-1000 calories of something else. But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they?
    - mindcrime 12y ago
      But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they? Good question. The author of Living Low Carb[1] argues that it's not "saturated fat" in general that's bad for you, but rather more specifically "trans-saturated fat", or saturated fat consumed along with simple carbs (sugar, etc). He also argues that most dietary cholesterol passes through your system unprocessed, and that serum cholesterol is largely driven by cholesterol manufactured by your liver. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Low-Carb-Controlled-Carbohydrate-Long-Term/dp/1454903511 http://www.amazon.com/Living-Low-Carb-Controlled-Carbohydrat...

debacle 12y ago

The statin stuff is just bad science. Statins don't have the effect on cholesterol that they are purported to have. They are the product of a time when we still thought that the fat you eat makes you fat. We're beyond that point, but statins are absolutely huge in terms of money.

nielsbot 12y ago
This is interesting--I'd love to read more about it. Can you link some sources? (I'm not being snarky)
- debacle 12y ago
  http://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-statins-dont-save-lives-in-people-without-heart-disease http://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-statins-dont-sav... http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/02/effectiveness-of-statins-called-into-question.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/0... http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-12-2013/can-statins-save-your-life.html http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-12-201...
  - ZeroBugBounce 12y ago
    For context of anyone reading, the second link (mercola.com) has a ton of nonsense anti vaccination articles on it. That's enough for me to wholesale write off anything else the blogger/site might be commenting on, science-wise.
    - debacle 12y ago
      Mercola has a lot of stupid shit on it, but I found no fault in the article (except for a bit of woohoo on energy psychology). It was the only good non-industry source I could find on the Jupiter study.
      - hga 12y ago
        Well, to a certain degree the Jupiter study indicts itself, at least at brief glance. It uses a surrogate endpoint, not actual disease or mortality. As I understand it, large dose niacin used to promoted as good for your heart based on more iffy lipid surrogates, but when a real study was done, it turned out to increase mortality. Oops. And while I'm not so influenced by "the drug company paid for it!" bit, Crestor's situation is special, it was introduced when earlier well studied statins had gone generic (or nearly so). It had to muscle its way in, so to speak. So I view it with extra jaundice in my eye (tempered by the fact that it's brand name, so you know you're going to get the real stuff at the right dose, and in my recent study of statins it's clear that bad side effects are very strongly correlated with inadvertent overdosing). Anyway, if an iffy source says something, as long as you can track down what it claims to be quoting then you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Given that it's peppered with links to PubMed.... I myself am looking at statins (for primary prevention, pushed by my doctors with some justice) with a jaundiced eye, based on how far their target is from actual cholesterol production. They interfere with a lot more than that.
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    The site mercola.com is basically untrustworthy on all topics related to health and disease, which is about all it ever writes about. http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-plaguing-america-their-bad-claims-about-science http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/joe-mercola-quackery-pays/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/joe-mercola-quackery-pay... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-breast-cancer-awareness-month-quackery/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-breast-cancer-aware... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/mercola-gardasil-and-toyota/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/mercola-gardasil-and-toy... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-ignore-joseph-mercola-and-natural-news/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/9-reasons-to-completely-... http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/08/03/15-years-of-promoting-quackery/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/08/03/15-years-of-pro...
DanBC 12y ago
We are absolutely not beyond the point of "the fat you eat makes you fat". We might be beyond the point of "the cholesterol you eat is the cholesterol that kills you", but these are very different things.
- tiglionabbit 12y ago
  Who is We? The general public, your doctor, modern scientists?
gmarx 12y ago
Look at the literature and try to find convincing evidence that high cholesterol causes heart disease. I've never seen it. They keep looking for new fractions of cholesterol that will finally show significance but they never question their Bayesian prior assumption. Many drugs lower cholesterol and show now reduction in mortality. Statins (last I read) were alone in this. The logical conclusion is that statins do not achieve this effect through cholesterol reduction.
- tiglionabbit 12y ago
  Yeah. I find it weird to see that [Cochrane shows statins prevent heart disease](http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_statins-for-the-primary-prevention-of-cardiovascular-disease http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_statins-for-the-...), despite the whole cholesterol debacle. It would be nice if we understood this situation better. We know now that only some types of LDL are dangerous, but how often are people given an LDL particle count? According to Michael Pollan, the whole Fat/Cholesterol thing started when the government found some weak evidence that beef is bad for you, but they blamed it on cholesterol so as not to single out a particular industry. But is beef even bad for you? Or is it something in how hamburger meat is processed? Or what?
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  This makes me wonder if eggs should be considered a health food instead of a health hazard. Anecdotal, but if I eat 4 eggs(~300) calories, I am full for the same period of time as eating ~600-1000 calories of something else. But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they?
  - mindcrime 12y ago
    But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they? Good question. The author of Living Low Carb[1] argues that it's not "saturated fat" in general that's bad for you, but rather more specifically "trans-saturated fat", or saturated fat consumed along with simple carbs (sugar, etc). He also argues that most dietary cholesterol passes through your system unprocessed, and that serum cholesterol is largely driven by cholesterol manufactured by your liver. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Low-Carb-Controlled-Carbohydrate-Long-Term/dp/1454903511 http://www.amazon.com/Living-Low-Carb-Controlled-Carbohydrat...