A Statin-Free Life: A revolutionary life plan for tackling heart disease – without the use of statins

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Sometimes, if you think a tablet might cause a nightmare, it can increase the risk of having one. For some types of statin, it’s better to take them at night, because that’s when they have a bigger effect on reducing cholesterol. However, the most important thing is that you take them regularly, rather than not at all. Are there any food or drinks I should avoid?

He is a pioneer of the lifestyle medicine movement in the UK and in 2018 was ranked by software company Onalytica as the number 1 doctor in the world influencing obesity thinking.An exceptionally rare, but serious, side effect is severe muscle damage, producing pain and weakness in the muscles. It can be reversed if treatment is stopped and most people who develop it make a rapid recovery. Losing some weight, if you’re overweight, can also help. If your cholesterol is not coming down enough, your doctor may prescribe the drug ezetimibe for you as well as your statin to further lower your cholesterol. This helps to prevent your intestine from absorbing cholesterol. As well as taking a statin, it’s important to keep active, eat well and if you smoke, stop. June Davison puts some of your questions to Professor Richard Hobbs, head of Primary Care (Health Sciences) at the University of Oxford and a part-time GP. LDL cholesterol is often referred to as "bad cholesterol", and statins reduce the production of it inside the liver. Why have I been offered statins? I think that’s really important. But either way, I think doctors should be aware, patients should be aware that these potential side effects, which aren’t serious or life-threatening at all, but interfere with the quality of life and that’s of course, very important for people, are very common and you shouldn’t be afraid of discussing with our doctor and having a trial period potentially after discussing with your doctor of them. The other thing that we didn’t mention is when we talk about all this issue about management of heart disease with statins is that for many people, it gives them the illusion of protection so they think I can eat what I like-

Listen, my insulin levels are like less than five, pretty much about two. I have a 6% body fat. Yes, I’m bragging, but I’m pretty metabolic healthy, exercise a lot, I eat really healthy. And I went to Sardinia last summer and I’m like here I am for a week, I’m just going to eat whatever and I’m going to eat the pasta, the bread, I’m going to drink the wine. And I was treated well and had a very abundant diet and I gained like five pounds and I got the belly fat. So even if you are extremely healthy, if you start to eat more of that stuff, you’re going to start accumulating that and unless you are just doing a marathon every day, it’s really tough to keep up with that carbohydrate load that we have. And so- If you're at risk of developing CVD in the near future, your doctor will usually recommend lifestyle changes to reduce this risk before they suggest that you take statins.worth the read… very educational regarding heart health. Including lots of researched information for many scenarios (including People with genetically very high levels of LDL cholesterol diagnosed with FH familial hyperlipidaemia)~ definitely recommend

We now know that heart disease is linked to two biological processes, he says: “Insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.” Insulin resistance is when cells don’t easily absorb glucose from your blood – from sugar and high GI foods – so it’s chronically raised. “Insulin itself directly damages the inner lining of the heart arteries,” he says. Probably for the rest of your life, because they only work for as long as you continue taking them. How do I know if my statin is working? And it reminds me of a quote from, I think Mark Twain, or maybe Roger Williams. He said, “There’s liars, there’s damn liars and there’s statisticians.” And I think the way that the data gets squeezed and manipulated often give the impression of a profound benefit, but you challenge that hypothesis and you challenge us to think differently about statins. So I think it’s going to be a very controversial conversation. I’m really excited about it and I hope to learn a lot because even though I’ve studied this for the last 30 years, I’m still freaking confused because there’s so much data. And you’ve just gone into it and I’m so happy to have you, Aseem. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah. I think that’s right. And I think the lifestyle stuff is so huge. And you talked about the Pioppi diet, I talk about the Pegan diet. It’s essentially focusing on quality. So whatever you’re eating, the key concept is it should be high quality, meaning nutrient dense, unprocessed, whole real food. And you can kind of go up the chain, eating a filet steak is better than eating, for example, a bunch of bread, right? But it’s not as good as eating wild elk or eating a grass fed steak. So you can keep going deeper in the quality chain. The second is to really understand that food is medicine and that everything you’re eating is regulating your biology in real time. And three, it’s personal. Everybody’s biologically different and some people may be more carbohydrate tolerant than others. Some people may be more fat intolerant than others, and there are ways to figure that out, which is really important. Malhotra clearly feels his duty is to his patients – to “reduce suffering”. He’s forthright, and long been unafraid of ruffling feathers.and/or have certain health conditions, including a continuing disability or diabetes that can't be controlled with diet. It’s a useless biomarker in terms of predicting someone’s risk of heart disease and therefore we shouldn’t obsess about lowering it," he says. Instead, he believes the best predictor of the risk of heart disease is reached by measuring the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, or 'good' cholesterol. Simultaneously, "if the damage and repair mechanisms in the body are overridden - if there’s more damage than repair - then within the heart arteries you can develop these deposits that are full of cholesterol, actually a response to the injury - but also inflammatory immune cells."