Are you one of the millions of American that take cholesterol lowering medication? Statin drugs are one of the most widely used drugs in America. What exactly do statin drugs do, how do they lower your cholesterol, and how are they affecting you?
First, let’s take a closer look at cholesterol. Believe it or not, most of the cholesterol in your blood stream is actually made by your body. You see, your body uses cholesterol for a variety of different functions. Cholesterol is used as a building block for most of the cells in your body. It is also a building block for bile salts which your body uses in the breakdown of fats and aids in the absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K. It is used to make a wide range of hormones in your body including: cortisol and aldosterone, and sex hormones such as: progesterone, estrogens, and testosterone, and their derivatives.
Now let’s take a look at how statin drugs do their job. Statins block an enzyme (HMG-CoA reductase) in your body. This enzyme is what the liver uses to make cholesterol. Sounds pretty harmless right? Well let’s look at the consequences of blocking this little enzyme. Notice I said consequences and not side effects. That is because these are things that will occur in everyone taking statins. I will also mention common side effects that are associated with these consequences.
First let’s look at the liver. Your liver is the main place where cholesterol is synthesized. By taking statin drugs you are essentially turning off this function in your liver. In order to maintain a balanced system, your body regularly turns on and off a wide range of functions. However, synthetically turning off a function in your body for a long period of time can have a damaging effect. A possible side effect is liver damage.
Statins increase your diabetes risk by actually raising your blood sugar. We mentioned that the liver produces cholesterol. It does this by taking excess glucose (sugar) from the blood and converts it into cholesterol. When statins do their job, the liver dumps the excess glucose back into the blood stream. Many people that are on statin drugs can be mistakenly diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes or Pre-Diabetic. When in all actuality, if they simply discontinue the statin, their blood glucose levels revert back to normal.
Statins also deplete your body of an important enzyme called co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10). The production of this co-enzyme takes place in the liver. By using HMG-CoA reductase (the enzyme targeted by statins) the liver produces this important co-enzyme. Ok, what does CoQ10 do exactly? CoQ10 is used by the cells of your body in the creation of ATP molecules, which your cells need to produce energy. Therefore, organs with the highest energy requirements, such as the heart, require more CoQ10 to function properly. As your body becomes more depleted of CoQ10, you may suffer from fatigue, muscle weakness and soreness, and eventually heart disease.
It is still unclear if statin drugs deplete your body of vitamin D but we do know that they inhibit your body’s ability to produce vitamin D. One of the reasons that a healthy dose of sunlight is good for you is because your body converts cholesterol into vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. UVB (from the sun) activates vitamin D through cholesterol. That’s why your blood cholesterol levels rise in the winter. Due to a lack of sunlight, you don’t have enough active vitamin D in winter, so your body pumps up your cholesterol in the hope of converting as much as possible to active vitamin D. So if your body makes more cholesterol in response to low vitamin D levels in the winter, is it safe to assume that it always does this? Could this be a cause of high cholesterol levels?
As more and more research is showing, vitamin D is absolutely critical for good health and disease prevention. By taking statin drugs and inhibiting your body’s ability to produce vitamin D. Side effects of vitamin D deficiency could include bone or muscle pain, high blood pressure, type 1 or 2 diabetes, an increased incidence of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, asthma, and myopia along with getting sick more frequently.
One of the main things the body uses cholesterol for is the production of hormones. These hormones include all of your sex hormones (progesterone, estrogens, and testosterone), as well as the adrenal hormones (cortisol and aldosterone). As you might imagine, these hormones are crucial for how the body functions on many levels. When the body does not have enough cholesterol to produce these hormones you may suffer side effects such as: high blood pressure, sexual dysfunction, or fatigue.
So what is the answer? I’m sure you already know but let’s just put it out there just in case…diet and exercise. Be mindful of your diet. You’ll want to eliminate sugars from your diet and eat as much raw food as possible. Exercise several times a week. If you are not exercising at all, starting with 10 minutes is better than nothing. Exercise alone has been shown to protect the heart and prevent atherosclerosis, Lastly, 10-15 minutes of sunlight everyday will help keep you healthy. Unfortunately, due to decades of professional and media misinformation, the typical American believes they should avoid the sun and need to use sunscreen before, and several times during sun exposure…but more on the sun next time.
