Statin drug side effects and alternatives to it.

Find out devastating statin drug side effects. How to lower cholesterol by 14 percent without statin drug side effects.

All statin drugs have various and serious side effects. It can be, lipitor, zocor, pravachol etc, but in the end the side effects are more or less the same.

The majority of statin side effects and problems are predominantly a result of systemic exposure. What does this mean? Your liver can only metabolize (change) so much of any drug, herb, alcohol etc into other forms before excreting it.

Unfortunately 60% of all prescribed drugs including Zocor, Lipitor and Mevacor use one small liver pathway for synthesis.

What this means is that if there is any other drug, herb, grapefruit juice, etc that inhibits the liver's ability to synthesize a statin, the drug will continue to circulate in parts of the body where it should not necessarily be.

Thus statin drug side effects. Statins can cause muscle pain and weakness because when they get into muscle tissue it begins to break down.

On the "positive" side statin drug side effects are usually limited to 2 percent or less of the people to whom they are prescribed. However, the cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are now the most prescribed class of drugs, with over 13 million people taking them.

CNN, in a story on August 20, 2002 mentioned that these anti-cholesterol statin drugs, were known to cause nerve damage (polyneuropathy) in one in every 2200 patients, and that for people over 50 on the drugs for over two years the chances of nerve damage were 26 times higher than the normal population. That puts over 6,000 people at risk for nerve damage each year.

Other statin drug side effects include brain and central nervous system. A separate statin study by Dr. Muldoon in Pittsburgh showed that 100% of the participants, after only 6 months on the statin drugs, suffered measurable declines in cognition.

Dr. Gupta in the CNN story did mention that the same class of statin drugs had earlier been implicated in the myopathy problems, the worst of which were the dozens of deaths from rhabdomyolysis (muscle damage to the degree that the dying cells in the system can no longer be processed by the liver and kidneys), that were associated with all statins but mostly Baycol, which was subsequently removed from the market.

Merck (the manufacturer of Baycol) knew of this problematic side-effect over 10 years before these deaths, as documented in a US patent, filed in 1989, for a way of mitigating the known myopathy side-effects of statin drugs.

Now, to stick to the facts it is true that, overall, statins are safe for most people, and yes the lowering of cholesterol is shown to prevent heart attacks.

However, there is a tremendous population taking statins, and it is not common knowledge, even among prescribing physicians, that there can be very dangerous statin drug side effects in some people, and that the drugs must be stopped immediately at the first sign of these side effects.

Let’s see what one user of statin, has to say about statin drugs side effects.

Now the question is: Are there other safer alternatives to statin drugs without their side effects? Or a better question: What are the alternatives to statin drugs which do not have side effects?

One of the most successful substances that lowers cholesterol is policosanol, which is a safe and natural extract from sugar cane wax.

It works by helping the liver control its production and breakdown of cholesterol.

Clinical studies show that policosanol is as effective as prescription drugs in lowering cholesterol, but without their dangerous side effects.

Specific clinical trials have been safely performed with elderly persons, diabetics, as well as individuals with liver damage or high blood pressure.

See the table below as to how policosanol performs compared with other cholesterol lowering drugs.

And policosanol is much more cheaper than any cholesterol lowering drugs. It costs less than US$ 30. Compare that to any other cholesterol drugs that range around US$ 100. See the table below for cholesterol lowering drugs prices.

Click here to learn more about policosanol, how it can lower your cholesterol by up to 15 percent, and how to get your own clinically proven policosanol supplement to safely reduce your cholesterol without statin drug side effects.