Taking statins? Read these.

I always resist the MD pushing of any prescription drug as I've read so many cases of the "beneficial" drug later being discovered as not only not being beneficial in preventing the medical issues it was supposed to prevent, but actually being harmful in some very serious way. I just found these news bits today which totally reinforce that position. The statin lead article is what then led me to the other two. The Science Daily site is a great site to discover such things and I visit it daily.

Disclaimer: Never change your medication regimen without first talking to your doctor.

Strong statin-diabetes link seen in large study
Date: May 7, 2015
Source: Veterans Affairs Research Communications
Summary: In a study of nearly 26,000 beneficiaries of Tricare, the military health system, those taking statin drugs to control their cholesterol were 87 percent more likely to develop diabetes. The research confirms past findings on the link between the widely prescribed drugs and diabetes risk. But it is among the first to show the connection in a relatively healthy group of people. The study included only people who at baseline were free of heart disease, diabetes, and other severe chronic disease.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150507145328.htm

and if you then become diabetic:

New look at the diabetes, heart risk relationship
Date: September 10, 2014
Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Summary: People with diabetes who appear otherwise healthy may have a six-fold higher risk of developing heart failure regardless of their cholesterol levels, new research suggests. In nearly 50% of people with diabetes in a study, researchers employing an ultra-sensitive test were able to identify minute levels of a protein released into the blood when heart cells die. The finding suggests that people with diabetes may be suffering undetectable -- but potentially dangerous -- heart muscle damage possibly caused by their elevated blood sugar levels.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140910120222.htm

and you then take some prescription diabetes medications:

Medications used to treat diabetes may trigger heart failure, study finds
Date: March 16, 2015
Source: University Health Network
Summary: A comprehensive study examining clinical trials of more than 95,000 patients has found that glucose or sugar-lowering medications prescribed to patients with diabetes may pose an increased risk for the development of heart failure in these patients.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150316214838.htm

So, you take statins which apparently greatly increase your probability of becoming diabetic and, after you do, your heart is being damaged and the meds you then take to treat the diabetes also damage your heart, that organ the statins were supposed to help protect in the first place!!!!!!!!!! But, hey, statin sales are $140 BILLION worldwide. Think about how many Ferrari's and McMansions that will buy.

Ba-dump-dump...

No, what can make you diabetic is #1 genetics #2 eating bad food that results in #3 obesity.

If you eat bad food that can lead to high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes. Smoke cigarettes on top of that and I want you to leave your rocket stuff to me in your will as you will statistically die an early death.

Many people take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol so they can still eat bad foods and viola, they still get obese and viola' they still have an increased risk of diabetes and viola can still get vascular complications from the diabetes.

Toss in untreated high blood pressure, and your risk of heart failure shoots to the moon aside from croaking from a heart attack. Have a heart attack? Your risk of dying from heart failure down the road goes up just by simply having experienced the heart attack.

Now if you are a fat, smoking type II diabetic who has a heart attack and is "saved" by the medicos. #1 Stop smoking #2 Lose weight and quite likely #3 diabetes might go away or become easier to manage. Take a statin if indicated and it will prolong your life.

One needs to be skeptical of massive retrospective studies because there are too damned many uncontrolled variables that are inherent in their design. The money grubbing, fame grabbing, ivory tower bastards can infer whatever they want from the results.

We're a bunch of obese, lazy, fat people who want to find something or someone else to blame for our myriad of health problems. Can't accept we eat too much, exercise too little and don't attend to "little" problems soon enough before they become
big problems. Kurt :rant:

How long (in months) do you think you can eat less then 60 carbohydrates per meal three times a day and not cheat.

Would you look forward to using up what energy you do have exercising at least an hour a day, every day for the rest of your life (which makes you more hungry then you already are)?

Hunger is constantly with you, this is the reality of managing diabetes even with prescribed drugs. And the drugs are expensive.

Statins link to diabetes is possible a chicken and egg conversation.

bradycros said:

How long (in months) do you think you can eat less then 60 carbohydrates per meal three times a day and not cheat.

Would you look forward to using up what energy you do have exercising at least an hour a day, every day for the rest of your life (which makes you more hungry then you already are)?

Hunger is constantly with you, this is the reality of managing diabetes even with prescribed drugs. And the drugs are expensive.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, that's the pisser thing about diabetes. Take any treatment to increase insulin release (ie. beating a dead horse pancreas) or taking exogenous insulin and guess what? Insulin is an appetite stimulant. Yeah, it makes it harder to lose weight and practice
diet discipline but it's not impossible. Bottom line, get the weight off. No one said it is easy.

The best chance of forestalling diabetes is carrying an ideal body weight. Yeah there are type I's whose beta cells are destroyed by circumstances beyond the sufferers control (ie. juvenile diabetes)

Don't fool yourself, Type II diabetes can be cured by getting to an ideal body weight whether by diet alone or a bariatric procedure. There are type II's who will begin to act like type 1's if they have the disease long enough.

Kurt

ksaves2 said:

Ahhh, that's the pisser thing about diabetes. Take any treatment to increase insulin release (ie. beating a dead horse pancreas) or taking exogenous insulin and guess what? Insulin is an appetite stimulant. Yeah, it makes it harder to lose weight and practice
diet discipline but it's not impossible. Bottom line, get the weight off. No one said it is easy.

The best chance of forestalling diabetes is carrying an ideal body weight. Yeah there are type I's whose beta cells are destroyed by circumstances beyond the sufferers control (ie. juvenile diabetes)

Don't fool yourself, Type II diabetes can be cured by getting to an ideal body weight whether by diet alone or a bariatric procedure. There are type II's who will begin to act like type 1's if they have the disease long enough.

Kurt

Click to expand...

This is partially true. DM II is definitely different. It never acts like DM I. You may use insulin with Type II, but it is a different process. Your cells need more insulin than a non-diabetic to regulate blood glucose levels in type II. Type I can not produce Insulin at all. Rarely does a type II stop producing insulin.

ksaves2 said:

Ahhh, that's the pisser thing about diabetes. No one said it is easy.


Kurt

Click to expand...

The degree of difficulty isn't the problem. The problem is that the effort is not sustainable.

cwbullet said:

Statins link to diabetes is possible a chicken and egg conversation.

Click to expand...

If you're implying what I think you are, note "But it is among the first to show the connection in a relatively healthy group of people. "

ksaves2 said:

No, what can make you diabetic is #1 genetics #2 eating **** food that results in #3 obesity.:

Click to expand...

True, but what that study apparently shows is that those taking satins have a significantly higher risk of developing it regardless of that. Plus, the propensity for diabetes is genetic. I've had relatives who were fit, nowhere even remotely approaching "overweight," who died from it (type 2) at a relatively young age, one of them most likely because of the diabetes medication she was taking that is now linked to pancreatic cancer which is what she died of. There's a big lawsuit against that class of drugs right now. Which then goes back to my skepticism about prescription drugs in general.

Also, most aren't even getting the right cholesterol test prescribed to determine their true risk:

https://www.drsinatra.com/why-your-cholesterol-test-can-lie

Then there's this about dietary cholesterol:

The U.S. government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...gstanding-warnings-about-dietary-cholesterol/

"The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.

The group’s finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee’s findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of excess cholesterol in the American diet a public health concern.

The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease."

And when you read the sort of evidence they based their old guidelines on, you really begin to wonder if any of these "experts" actually have a clue.

What wasn't mentioned in the story about the study is whether the control group had similar high levels of untreated cholesterol as the statin group. Then the question would be did the statin group have any lower risk of heart disease than the control group. If the control group did not have high choleserol levels then is it really a control group?

jderimig said:

What wasn't mentioned in the story about the study is whether the control group had similar high levels of untreated cholesterol as the statin group. Then the question would be did the statin group have any lower risk of heart disease than the control group. If the control group did not have high choleserol levels then is it really a control group?

Click to expand...

I'd really hope their methodology wouldn't that incredibly sloppy, especially when doing a study that big pharma will hate.

ksaves2 said:

No, what can make you diabetic is #1 genetics #2 eating bad food that results in #3 obesity.

If you eat bad food that can lead to high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes. Smoke cigarettes on top of that and I want you to leave your rocket stuff to me in your will as you will statistically die an early death.

Many people take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol so they can still eat bad foods and viola, they still get obese and viola' they still have an increased risk of diabetes and viola can still get vascular complications from the diabetes.

Toss in untreated high blood pressure, and your risk of heart failure shoots to the moon aside from croaking from a heart attack. Have a heart attack? Your risk of dying from heart failure down the road goes up just by simply having experienced the heart attack.

Now if you are a fat, smoking type II diabetic who has a heart attack and is "saved" by the medicos. #1 Stop smoking #2 Lose weight and quite likely #3 diabetes might go away or become easier to manage. Take a statin if indicated and it will prolong your life.

One needs to be skeptical of massive retrospective studies because there are too damned many uncontrolled variables that are inherent in their design. The money grubbing, fame grabbing, ivory tower bastards can infer whatever they want from the results.

We're a bunch of obese, lazy, fat people who want to find something or someone else to blame for our myriad of health problems. Can't accept we eat too much, exercise too little and don't attend to "little" problems soon enough before they become
big problems. Kurt :rant:

Click to expand...

+ 1 million Kurt.........
You tell em.........
This is correct......
Read a book entitled "Grain Brain" search it on Amazon,, you will not regret this.........
All of these different prescription drugs are a bandaid for the problem,,
not living a healthy lifestyle........
A bandaid on a wound is no help if you don't first clean the muck out of the wound.........
Elevated insulin levels are very unhealthy,, no matter the reason for them...
You may be an otherwise healthy person,, when you consume carbohydrate your body either produces an unhealthy level of insulin or in my case,, I shoot it in.....
No matter,, it is still unhealthy..........
Cholesterol,, I stopped taking Lipitor when I read all of it's bad possible side affects..
Please read this book..

And yes,,, I can sustain long term eating and living a healthy lifestyle,, I'm doing it right now,, and so can you,, but only if you believe you can,, if you truly in your heart believe that you can not,, then you will be correct..........
it isn't always easy,, and I sometimes eat things that are "cheating",, but that is the great exception,, not the rule...

Teddy

ksaves2 said:

Ahhh, that's the pisser thing about diabetes. Take any treatment to increase insulin release (ie. beating a dead horse pancreas) or taking exogenous insulin and guess what? Insulin is an appetite stimulant. Yeah, it makes it harder to lose weight and practice
diet discipline but it's not impossible. Bottom line, get the weight off. No one said it is easy.

The best chance of forestalling diabetes is carrying an ideal body weight. Yeah there are type I's whose beta cells are destroyed by circumstances beyond the sufferers control (ie. juvenile diabetes)

Don't fool yourself, Type II diabetes can be cured by getting to an ideal body weight whether by diet alone or a bariatric procedure. There are type II's who will begin to act like type 1's if they have the disease long enough.

Kurt

Click to expand...

Type 2 diabetes, traditionally referred to as "Adult Onset" diabetes, symptoms can sometimes be mitigated by a combination of weight reduction, appropriate sized meals ingested at regular and appropriate times. Exercise also plays a role in the presentation of symptoms, however you cannot cure diabetes with this or any other . There is not cure for diabetes, and anyone who claims otherwise and has had diabetes just needs to start leading a poor life, or live long enough and their symptoms will present themselves again. That is not to say that poor eating habits and lack of exercise caused diabetes in the first place. There is not way to know what caused anyone's type of diabetes, just known and suspected underlying conditions. Whether these are preexisting genetic or environmental conditions it is still a matter of opinion.

Type 1 diabetes, traditionally referred to a "Juvenile" or "insulin-dependent" diabetes, or my favourite non-medical term "sugar" diabetes is also controlled through a combination of eating the proper foods, in appropriate quantities at a regimented time, including exercise. However a type 1 diabetic needs insulin, as their body either does not produce enough (sometimes people call this "borderline" type 1 diabetes) or does not produce any at all. Again there is no cure for type 1. Although in some cases if a person living with type 1 diabetes is having issues with another organ and requires a transplant, there have been cases where they have transplanted the cells that produce insulin called "beta" cells. However I am not aware of anyone simply having a beta or islet cell transplant on it's own.

The reason for this is even though the transplanted cells are beneficial to the new host, the immune system does its job an recognizes them as "foreign" and will try to destroy or reject them. So any transplant recipient must take strong drugs to suppress the immune response in order to prevent rejection. And they have to take these drugs for the rest of their life. Unfortunately many of these drugs have serious side effects. Like the a lot of topics around the underlying disease, there are still a lot of unknown long-term effects of these anti-rejection drugs, but, and here is the kicker, it is suspected that they may increase the risk of certain types of cancer.

Just a FYI, the current trend of referring to these very different diseases as Type 1 or 2 vs. their "traditional" names is simply due to current trends and our understanding of the diseases. These are a bit alarming and also lend towards the theory of environmental playing a role, although I personally believe it is both preexisting or genetics as well as environmental. In my case I am 49 however when I was 24 I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which I was obviously not a juvenile, although my wife would say I still am. Conversely there is an alarming trend in Type 2 diabetes with quite a lot of young people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Last point. Taking statins is actually part of managing type 1 diabetes and going by statistics alone, and I can't recall the exact numbers, a type 1s chances of heart attack or stroke are significantly reduced if statins part of their routine. However I would agree with the cynicism of the poster that these methods of managing the disease are influenced by the bottom line. Just look up Eli Lilly and cross reference the effect that some studies are showing of cow's milk on humans. This relates to modern farming techniques, the growth hormone bovine, the direct relationship of bovine and a hormone produced and present in higher quantities in milk then related to increased incidence in diabetes, types of cancers, etc. The big kicker here, Eli Lilly is a big producer of insulin and bovine the growth hormone...talk about corporate hypocrisy at the highest level. It reminds me of the early days of tobacco companies denying that smoking causes cancer...Eli Lilly just pretends these studies don't exist.

Winston said:

Then there's this about dietary cholesterol:

The U.S. government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...gstanding-warnings-about-dietary-cholesterol/

"The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.

The group’s finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee’s findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of excess cholesterol in the American diet a public health concern.

The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease."

And when you read the sort of evidence they based their old guidelines on, you really begin to wonder if any of these "experts" actually have a clue.

Click to expand...

Back in the days when recommending a diet low in fats was being considered, many disagreed with the idea. Now that low-fat foods are a billion dollar a year industry, anything that upsets that apple cart will be officially reviewed with a great deal of skepticism. Same thing goes with sugar substitutes, corn/HFCS, and any GMO product.

As Native Americans say, "Of course you can trust the government. See how well it worked out for us?"

o1d_dude said:

Back in the days when recommending a diet low in fats was being considered, many disagreed with the idea. Now that low-fat foods are a billion dollar a year industry, anything that upsets that apple cart will be officially reviewed with a great deal of skepticism. Same thing goes with sugar substitutes, corn/HFCS, and any GMO product.

As Native Americans say, "Of course you can trust the government. See how well it worked out for us?"

Click to expand...

I read an article about US big pharma by the science journalist Robert Whitaker, a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and, later, director of publications at Harvard Medical School, and a co-founder of CenterWatch which was the first non-government site to publish detailed information about active clinical trials that could be accessed by patients and their advocates. It provided examples of big pharma clinical trials that were outrageously biased and manipulated and points out that too often no one calls them on it. Why? One example: the British medical journal "The Lancet" needed unbiased, independent experts on a particular drug type to review study papers submitted to them but they couldn't find ANY who weren't also working for a US big pharma company! That's what they do, they fund the entire field of expertise a particular drug deals with. Also given were specific examples of insanely biased clinical trails where those given a placebo and getting positive results for the their disorder and those not showing positive result from using the actual drug under test were eliminated from the trails!

Oh, and check this out. This is only the latest experimental hint of this. There are others.:

Certain gut bacteria may induce metabolic changes following exposure to artificial sweeteners
Date: September 17, 2014
Source: Weizmann Institute of Science
Summary: Artificial sweeteners have long been promoted as diet and health aids. But breaking research shows that these products may be leading to the very diseases they were said to help prevent: scientists have discovered that, after exposure to artificial sweeteners, our gut bacteria may be triggering harmful metabolic changes.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140917131634.htm

Excerpt:

Artificial sweeteners -- promoted as aids to weight loss and diabetes prevention -- could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease, and they do so in a surprising way: by changing the composition and function of the gut microbiota -- the substantial population of bacteria residing in our intestines. These findings, the results of experiments in mice and humans, were published September 17 in Nature. Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Department of Immunology, who led this research together with Prof. Eran Segal of the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, says that the widespread use of artificial sweeteners in drinks and food, among other things, may be contributing to the obesity and diabetes epidemic that is sweeping much of the world.

Back to my inherent skepticism about "experts," especially in the fields of economics and many of the natural sciences. If you can't conduct a precisely controlled experiment, I don't trust your results much.

Winston said:

I read an article about US big pharma by the science journalist Robert Whitaker, a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and, later, director of publications at Harvard Medical School, and a co-founder of CenterWatch which was the first non-government site to publish detailed information about active clinical trials that could be accessed by patients and their advocates. It provided examples of big pharma clinical trials that were outrageously biased and manipulated and points out that too often no one calls them on it. Why? One example: the British medical journal "The Lancet" needed unbiased, independent experts on a particular drug type to review study papers submitted to them but they couldn't find ANY who weren't also working for a US big pharma company! That's what they do, they fund the entire field of expertise a particular drug deals with. Also given were specific examples of insanely biased clinical trails where those given a placebo and getting positive results for the their disorder and those not showing positive result from using the actual drug under test were eliminated from the trails!

Oh, and check this out. This is only the latest experimental hint of this. There are others.:

Certain gut bacteria may induce metabolic changes following exposure to artificial sweeteners
Date: September 17, 2014
Source: Weizmann Institute of Science
Summary: Artificial sweeteners have long been promoted as diet and health aids. But breaking research shows that these products may be leading to the very diseases they were said to help prevent: scientists have discovered that, after exposure to artificial sweeteners, our gut bacteria may be triggering harmful metabolic changes.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140917131634.htm

Excerpt:

Artificial sweeteners -- promoted as aids to weight loss and diabetes prevention -- could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease, and they do so in a surprising way: by changing the composition and function of the gut microbiota -- the substantial population of bacteria residing in our intestines. These findings, the results of experiments in mice and humans, were published September 17 in Nature. Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Department of Immunology, who led this research together with Prof. Eran Segal of the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, says that the widespread use of artificial sweeteners in drinks and food, among other things, may be contributing to the obesity and diabetes epidemic that is sweeping much of the world.

Back to my inherent skepticism about "experts," especially in the fields of economics and many of the natural sciences. If you can't conduct a precisely controlled experiment, I don't trust your results much.

Click to expand...

Oh man do I agree with this.........
It is so unfortunate.....
Money drives everything.....
Even the decisions that you'd really prefer it not...
Then when big business comes into the picture...
All bets are off,, all is fair game,, no matter what has to be done to skew the results...

Teddy

Nobody has mentioned anything about the side effects. I took Lipitor for over a year, and it was causing some muscle pain. I didn't pay attention at first, I've had 3 back surgeries, and figured the pain was from those. But, I was off the stuff for about 10 days, while I got the prescription refilled, and felt pretty good. The pharmacist mentioned something about it, and sure enough, when I started it again, I had back pain, could barely move. So, now I'm off of it. Unfortunately, my back is still giving me fits, surgery #4 is looming up next month. Sigh....

Phil L.

Maxitout said:

Nobody has mentioned anything about the side effects. I took Lipitor for over a year, and it was causing some muscle pain. I didn't pay attention at first, I've had 3 back surgeries, and figured the pain was from those. But, I was off the stuff for about 10 days, while I got the prescription refilled, and felt pretty good. The pharmacist mentioned something about it, and sure enough, when I started it again, I had back pain, could barely move. So, now I'm off of it. Unfortunately, my back is still giving me fits, surgery #4 is looming up next month. Sigh....

Phil L.

Click to expand...

+1...
For sure...
Muscle pain and weakness form Lipitor.......
I think it was more in my hands for me...

Teddy

Maxitout said:

Nobody has mentioned anything about the side effects. I took Lipitor for over a year, and it was causing some muscle pain. I didn't pay attention at first, I've had 3 back surgeries, and figured the pain was from those. But, I was off the stuff for about 10 days, while I got the prescription refilled, and felt pretty good. The pharmacist mentioned something about it, and sure enough, when I started it again, I had back pain, could barely move. So, now I'm off of it. Unfortunately, my back is still giving me fits, surgery #4 is looming up next month. Sigh....

Phil L.

Click to expand...

Really sorry to hear that.

https://www.drugs.com/mca/statin-side-effects-weigh-the-benefits-and-risks

Excerpt: The most common statin side effect is muscle pain. You may feel this pain as a soreness, tiredness or weakness in your muscles. The pain can be a mild discomfort, or it can be severe enough to make your daily activities difficult. For example, you might find climbing stairs or walking to be uncomfortable or tiring.

FDA Expands Advice on Statin Risks

https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm293330.htm

Hmmm. I thought for a while before posting (shock)

first, the number one controllable* risk factor for high cholesterol: being overweight
second , the number one controllable* risk factor for diabetes (type 2): being overweight

I think you take two studies an make a illogical connection. It isn't the drug, per say, but being fat.
Yes, you will find a lawsuit on almost every drug out there, for all sorts of reasons, many of which boil down to not taking responsibility for one's own health

I would also agree that many suffer from side effects or adverse reactions to their medications. This isn't good. None of these pills are mother's milk. Even acetaminophen (Tylenol) has been known to cause death. Look it up, it's on the package insert. For any pill, the question is, can it do more benefit then any risk I may suffer? One noncontroversial fact about cholesterol lowering drugs is that they reduce the 10 year risk of death due to heart attack or stroke. That's the Framingham study in a nutshell, ladies and gents. Make your decision wisely (but you should have tried weight loss, eating better & exercise first). Each of us will have to make this calculation about their medications. (For example beta-blockers reduce the risk of second heart attacks but risk kidney damage)

I wish all of you the best of health...



*both disease states have family history, sex and age as risk factors, but you can't do anything about them

cbrarick said:

Hmmm. I thought for a while before posting (shock)

first, the number one controllable* risk factor for high cholesterol: being overweight
second , the number one controllable* risk factor for diabetes (type 2): being overweight

I think you take two studies an make a illogical connection. It isn't the drug, per say, but being fat.
Yes, you will find a lawsuit on almost every drug out there, for all sorts of reasons, many of which boil down to not taking responsibility for one's own health

I would also agree that many suffer from side effects or adverse reactions to their medications. This isn't good. None of these pills are mother's milk. Even acetaminophen (Tylenol) has been known to cause death. Look it up, it's on the package insert. For any pill, the question is, can it do more benefit then any risk I may suffer? One noncontroversial fact about cholesterol lowering drugs is that they reduce the 10 year risk of death due to heart attack or stroke. That's the Framingham study in a nutshell, ladies and gents. Make your decision wisely (but you should have tried weight loss, eating better & exercise first). Each of us will have to make this calculation about their medications. (For example beta-blockers reduce the risk of second heart attacks but risk kidney damage)

I wish all of you the best of health...



*both disease states have family history, sex and age as risk factors, but you can't do anything about them

Click to expand...

+1.......
Living a healthy lifestyle will make you healthy,,, this includes diet and exercise.....
Taking prescription drugs to cover the affects of living an unhealthy lifestyle will not make you healthy........

Teddy