There are still, it seems, far too many people who still don't understand cholesterol, and still see it as the enemy...
Praluent: New Cholesterol Drugs Get Riskier By ... - Thyroid UK
Praluent: New Cholesterol Drugs Get Riskier By The Day
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greygoose
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My gran and my mother both had/have very high cholesterol. My gran never attempted to control it very much but my mother is obsessive about diet and exercise and still she is seeing some white brain matter changes. Everyone on that side of the family died of stroke, except my gran, who died at the age of 94 of congestive heart failure after suffering years of profound dementia (from TIAs). My mother is now showing what I think may be some cognitive impairment possibly due to her own sclerotic brain.
I read that statins do not affect mortality in women (don't have the details to hand of that study but that is the rough outcome) but it isn't *dying* that I'm worried about; it's the living with the potential effects of long-term high cholesterol which concern me. I may still be young enough to save my own health but I have no idea which way to jump.
Of course low cholesterol can cause health problems but ideally, as with our thyroid hormones, aren't we all trying to tread an invisible line between too much and too little of everything? 
Have you not considered that your mum and your gran were both undiagnosed hypo, and that it was low thyroid hormones that were having the bad effects?
There is research that says that those with higher cholesterol live longer than those with low cholesterol - and your gran did live a long time! Come to that, I've never read any research that proved that high cholesterol actually did any damage. But whether or not their problem is/was high cholesterol, the solution is not statins. Statins cause too many problems of their own.
Mortality in women not affect by statins? What does that even mean? Who on earth did that research? I would love to read the paper.
You many not be concerned about dying, but I think you should be concerned about the effects of long-term statin taking.
I also saw this article this morning - glad you posted it GG - x
My mum has Hashi's and is well medicated on ndt, so no, that is not the problem. I don't know about my gran's thyroid status, but I suspect there is some genetic vulnerability in my family. Yes, my gran lived a very long time. She was a shell of her former vibrant self for 20 long years and by the time she died she had lost her ability to communicate altogether due to dementia.
The paper I referred to says that women who take statins have no significantly lowered risk of mortality from stroke; in other words statins will not protect you from dying of stroke.
I'm not saying that everyone should be on statins - far from it - but that article offers no alternatives for people with very high cholesterol and family history of stroke, white brain matter issues etc.
Given what I have seen I don't know if I am in my mother's position in 20 years if I will go on meds or chance it without. It is not a simple decision to make.
I'm sorry, I'm really confused, now. So, statins are not going to protect you from stroke. Yet you still think you might take them? What would you be taking them for then?
What makes you say that your mother is well medicated? Just asking out of curiosity, not saying you're wrong. But so many people say 'my thyroid is optimised' when they still have a bunch of symptoms and their T3 is low. It's not about how much you take, but how much you need.
I understand that it is not how much you take. I know my mother's treatment is optimised because a) she goes to an excellent doc who knows about keeping her t3 high in the range and b) I keep an eye on her treatment/test results. My mum recommended her doc to me when my gp was being so cr@p.
I don't have the paper in front of me but I suspect it is easily googled using the key words statins, mortality and women. I believe it said that statins prevent stroke but perhaps if you are in the group who do succumb it will not prevent the kind of massive stroke that will kill you. I also think it says that statins affect (improve) mortality rates in men but not women.
Btw I'm not endorsing the study myself nor am I making any recommendations for anyone to take or not take statins. I am saying that the article in the original post is critical of statins but offers no solution to high cholesterol, if you subscribe to the theory that high cholesterol contributes to TIAs. Some do not, and so the research continues.
For me this is a real life worry, and I think about it a lot. My mother has had a very rough two years due to some very very bad luck/act of god stuff, and she is really having trouble navigating the system to come out the other side and I have suspicions that her cognition is compromised due to the sclerosis in her brain. So I wouldn't advise her to take or not to take statins because I don't know what the answer is. But we both desperately want to avoid my gran's fate, which was heartbreaking.
I'm sorry to hear about your mum. I hope things work out for her.
Maybe the article didn't suggest a solution to high cholesterol because the writer doesn't consider it to be a problem.
I am very, very anti statin - not because I've ever taken them, I have the opposite problem, my cholesterol is way too low, and that could give me a heart attack. But the medical profession will not take that seriously because they have been brain-washed to think that it can never be too low! No, it's because of what happened to my friend! First diabetese, then prostate cancer. It is well known that statins can casue diabetes and cancer, even so, when he told his doctor after his prostate operation that he wouldn't take them anymore, the doctor went balistic - well, who could blame him, think of the money he was losing!!!
And that's what it's all about - money! Big Pharma and doctors don't care about your health, they're not a charitable institution, they want the money generated by increasing statin prescription.
Therefore, whenever someone starts talking about their high cholesterol, I just feel duty-bound to say something, before they come to harm. That's all.
GG..... Have you read Dr Kendrick's Doctoring Data? p52. Heart Protection Study - overall mortality unchanged in women....... fact not publicised until follow up paper released .....very quietly.....5 years later. Also in 4S study.....more women taking Simvastatin died than those on placebo..... which will never be read. Loving the book.......
From my non-medical understanding - cholesterol is found in the arteries when it goes there to act as a sticking plaster when there is some inflammation. The viscosity of cholesterol covers the inflammation and allows it to heal. Other things are also found in the plaque that forms ( like a scab ! ) - one of which is Homocysteine. Cholesterol is naturally occurring and over 85% is made in the body - so is there for a reason. Our brains need it and it is required for the good production of all hormones. It's role in the production of VitD is also vital....as we learn more and more about VitD and it's involvement in so many of the bodily functions - D even works with the DNA.
So my take on things is that B12 and VitD deficiencies are responsible for so much - along with thyroids that cannot adjust to modern living ( last few thousand years that is )
Digging further - the gut inflammation also starts off the roller coaster of deficiencies and many other conditions....so as I posted months ago - is it chicken or egg ? We need Medical Detectives in addition to Docs
It may be worth reading the website of Dr Malcom Kendrick One of the researches he mentioned at the Thyroid Conference - was about Low Cholesterol being present in people dying in hospitals over a long period of time. It's either mentioned in his book - The Cholesterol Con - or his new book - Doctoring Data....
I think it will be a discussion that will continue....
Yes indeed. With dementia being a growing problem alongside raised cholesterol - and right now doctors are saying there is a causal relationship, whether you believe that or not - it is vital that doctors can offer us solutions other than losing weight, eating less fat etc because this is not the solution for everyone.
Personally seeing what happened in my gran's family I think there is a genetic component. My mum is a tiny wee slender thing, superfit too (like going to the gym fit) and she just can't shift her cholesterol below a certain level.
I have been having a little dig around and cannot find one article that could possibly convince me that cholesterol is directly responsible for dementia. There are too many other variables that are not taken into consideration.
Take your grandmother for example - paix à son âme - all you seem to know about her is that she had high cholesterol, but you don't know what other ailments or deficiencies she might have had. To leap to the conclusion that it was obviously the cholesterol that caused all her problems is not very scientific.
I don't want to be discourtious, but this just doesn't sound right to me. Have you taken into consideration that thyroid disease is also on the increase and the effect that has on the brain? Do you know how many people have been diagnosed with Altzheimer's when they really have a disfunctional thyroid? I really feel that there is far to much leaping to conclusions in the medical world and science has gone out the window.
I agree with you that in many cases there is far too much leaping to conclusions. It is hard to make informed decisions about treatment because of all the noise surrounding these issues.
Low B12 can also present with Alzheimer/Dementia type symptoms too ....remember Prof Smith at the PAS Conference....the video is on YouTube where he shows his research at Oxford into Low B12 and brain shrinkage....
Yes, you're quite right.
Oh, just thought of another thing that causes dementia : aspartam! And that is sneaking in everywhere.
naturalnews.com/048296_arti...
They have just changed the name so that you don't know it's aspartam anymore, they've called it AminoSweet.
If that's the video about the doctor who started wasting away it is amazing, alarming and well worth watching.
Interestingly enough when my Graves was at its worst and I was very hyper my cholesterol was the lowest I have ever known it, now I'm in remission and back to 'normal' (ha,ha!) my cholesterol is high again.
No it's this one ....
youtube.com/watch?feature=p...
Professor Smith starts to talk 4 mins into the video....
Interesting about your cholesterol....
You're right, think that other guy had B12 or Vit D problems. Will watch this link later on Marz, thanks.
Gosh that is VERY interesting. Am I glad I managed to raise my B12 from the low 300s to the high 600s.
I find it kind of depressing that there is so much knowledge and research out there yet it still doesn't seem to be filtering down to doctors to be used on patients. Simple things like keeping B12 and vitamin D high make an enormous difference yet they are rarely checked and even when they are it is done grudgingly. I know I have to pay to get my Vit D done privately. Yet 'they' will happily hand out statins at the drop of a hat.
Even when they test things, they don't know how to interpret the results. Perhaps that's why they don't want to test them in the first place.
...possibly explains why I bang on constantly about B12 and VitD - and of course anti-bodies. It does beggar belief that patients are left wanting - when they could so easily be treated and receive the building blocks of good health However you cannot patent a vitamin - and so we have to be bombarded with alternatives 
I agree....I am going to a talk in the village at my favourite taverna tomorrow night. A Neurologist is coming to give a talk about Alzheimers/Dementia with a meal at the end - that got me there. I will sit quietly with my lips sealed waiting to hear what she has to say....have checked her website.
I will then have my questions ? Older people here stay out of the sun - all the test results I have seen here say anything with B12 in range is OK - how come in Japan Dementia is lower than in Europe - could it be because their B12 STARTS at 500 - statins handed out like smarties - and so on.
I have devised a leaflet with the above items in a usable format - Greek on one side and English on the other - that I can pop into Docs waiting rooms. It will cover VitD - B12 - Thyroid FT3 - GHA - General Health Awareness... like gluten ?
It's all in my head now I have to put it into practice - my project for this year
You speak Greek? Wow! That's much more impressive than French, because French is at least the same alphabet!
So, you checked her website, what did it say? Is there going to be a big barney? Fisticuffs? Wish I were there! lol Nothing interesting like that happens near me.
I thought the Japanese supplemented anything Under 800, I'm sure I read that somewhere...
Anyway, good idea about the pamphlet! I'd probably be run out of town on a rail if I tried anything like that here!
I guess we all bang on about something or other - good job too! We all have our little area of knowledge. Me, it's diets. I am anti-anti-anti-diet! Well, of the low-calorie variety, anyway! I've seen too much of it. Struggled for too long myself, with doctors repeating the mantra of 'eat less - exercise more', like some sort of magic formula that doesn't work. What do you mean it's not your fault you're fat?!? Of course it's your fault, everything's your fault, you're a miserable failure!!!
Oh, yes! I also tend to bang on about how much I hate doctors, too. lol
Sadly I do not speak Greek well enough to produce the leaflet - but have pals that do....some who have lived here for 30 years or so ! Am hoping it will be accepted - I have a good relationship with the Doc in the village and my Physio in the next village. Also the Blood Testing Unit down the road - Draculas Den - they think I am as mad as a box of frogs but they are always willing to listen and learn Am always sending people there with a list of tests required....
When my hubby went to the GP here - she said she didn't need to explain as he had a Thyroid Doc at home She even reads some of my books
When I was learning Greek - French always popped into the language part of my brain first ! Think learning Greek improved my French - how mad is that
Well, that's what you would expect - high cholesterol with hypo (because the body can't use it the way it should) and low cholesterol with hyper (because the body uses too much).
If you know that because you know loads about statins and I've noticed that because I realised that when I was really hyper my cholesterol was low, then when I was no longer hyper the colesterol numbers went up etc, why don't doctors don't notice it too and make the connection. 'Sigh'
They haven't been trained to make connections. And, in my experience, medecine attracts people who are completely devoid of all logic and happy to just tow the party line. And the party line says it doesn't know if there's a connection!
In hospital in 2013 (for a non-thyroid reason), the endo came rushing into my room in a panic saying she thought I had a pituitary tumour because my TSH was 0 and my FT4 was 0. I said well, that figures, because I'm on T3 only, didn't you test the FT3? She looked amazed. No, she said, I never thought of that. Duh!!! So, she wanted to see my latest blood tests, and I pointed out to her that my cholesterol was 0 (almost) too. I said perhaps that means I'm on too much T3? (There wasn't a T3 test on that list, either.) She laughed and said, who knows! Nobody knows if there's a connection between thyroid and cholesterol.
Well, I'm sorry, dear doctor, but I think somebody does! In fact, I think most people do - except doctors!!! lol Honestly, the mind boggles! And to think we trust our lives to these people!!!
Do you know I actually double checked your post to see when this happened! And it was only last year!
I was just saying to my other half the other day 'What has happened to teachers who encourage individuality, quirkiness, personality, and who have the ability to get kids to be curious, to wonder, to think for themselves and experiment etc' (I used to be one and hopefully I encouraged all of those qualities)
Now all that seems to be wanted if for kids to tow the line and regurgitate the facts that are stuffed into them.
OK we probably don't want to go back to the days where the teacher had a bottle of vodka in the stock cupboard and used to disappear every now and again for a quick glug or who threw blackboard dusters at some poor unfortunate child who didn't happen to be listening. But please encourage children to look for connections - it's a transferable skill that can be used when they are grown ups.
It's worrying too that the person you are talking about is probably a very clever and well qualified person.
Well qualified by whose standards! The fact that she 'didn't think' to test for FT3 doesn't sound very qualified to me. It should be the first thing to do, not the last.
There were other troubling things in the conversation, too. Like when she burst out laughing when I said one doctor had prescribed DHEA. She didn't ask why, or if it helped me, or anything. She just found it hilariously funny. She asked me if I'd ever taken iodine. I told her I'd been prescribed it over 30 years ago and it had made me worse. She wrote in my notes that I was presently self-treating with iodine and that was the cause of all my problems! As I said, I was in for something that was nothing to do with thyroid. That, to me, doesn't sound either clever nor well-qualified. Sounds to me like she should consider a career change!
And, I would say, that the same could be said of every doctor I've ever had expericience of. Even those I've met socially who have never treated me. I've always been left with the impression of 'what an a***-***e!'
You are so right about teaching kids to think for themselves. I've only ever taught adults and adolescents but I've always tried to get them thinking for themselves. Not many can. But i've brought my kids up to think for themselves, and I think I've made a pretty good job of it, too! Though I says it meself who shouldn't! lol Parents also have a responsibility in the education of their children. But, of course, if the parents aren't able to think for themselves, either... What a world we live in!
No I mean well qualified by today's standards and I n the sense that she likely as not had good if not brilliant A level results that got her to medical school and she obviously passed her medical exams to become a doctor.
That ought to be good building blocks to start with, you can only assume she has passed all her exams and qualified to be a doctor but the she needs to keep looking at the whole patient and noticing things (such as hyper patients have low cholesterol then when they become more hypo their cholesterol levels rise ) and wondering why things like that are happening.
But that's just where the problem lies! Once they've been to med school, they think they know everything worth knowing and appear blissfully unaware that science marches on! New discoveries are made, old theories demolished...
I said this to a doctor once, and he exploded! I haven't got the time to keep up with new research, he thundered. Well, you can't really call your self a doctor, then, can you? Because you are doing your patients more harm than good, and a doctor has sworn to do no harm...
But it all falls on deaf ears. They just don't seem capable of understanding that things change.
Of course, I'm generalising here, but I would say the majority are like that.
I have read that Homocysteine with a result in double figures is more indicative of strokes and other problems than cholesterol. The only treatment is with B's - including B12 and Folic Acid. I remember when hampster1 was around - she mentioned this to me. I treated my Homocysteine and it lowered at the same time as my only slightly raised cholesterol. The HDL was very good though...
Again there could be a link with vitamin deficiencies and raised cholesterol - who knows ? I certainly don't
This is another variable - hdl vs ldl. My mum and I both have good hdl (but she still has the sclerosis). Thank heaven for small mercies etc, at least hdl is good news I guess - ?
If you divide the Triglycerides by the HDL the result should ideally be less than 2. You can also divide the HDL by Total Cholesterol and the result should be above 24%..
Hope I have that right
Dr Malcom Kendrick said there is no such thing as good or bad cholesterol as it is a carrier protein so cannot be both. Terminology dreamt up by the PR people in the Drug Companies and of course the media mopped it up
When I said 'good' I meant high, and a good ratio.
This article from Dr Kendrick's blog is the one that highlights the fact that higher cholesterol in women leads to lower mortality. He gives references as well (naturally).
drmalcolmkendrick.org/2012/...
The graphs are particularly helpful.
My brother takes statins (he as diabetes type 2) he as never had is dose lowered ,so i would of thought with a good diet as well that your choiesterol levels would come down so the statins would be lowered he as been on them for about 10 years .Now i am sad to say he is in but the lights are out ,is spark as gone ,don't know wether its the statins i have said you need your tablets reviewed but because the doctor says they are ok ,i must be wrong.
The doctor says they are ok because he gets paid for prescribing them. Also, it has nothing to do with your diet - if it had, my cholesterol would be sky high instead of rock-bottom, with all the butter, cream, eggs, avacados, etc that I eat.
I would think it probably is the statins causing his problem.
scientificamerican.com/arti...
That isn't a brilliant article, science has moved on since it was written, but it gives you the idea.
Thanks saved article ,if i emailed him all the info he would just believe the doctors i have told its money to them but he still things they are right .And for some one who as diabetes he is just bones now with a layer of skin on top.Breaks my heart.
I do so understand, Lizzy. I have a similar problem with my brother. His problem is not statins, but 'heart'. The doctors are stuffing him full of dreadful poisons that are have a terrible effect on him, but he won't do his own research and thinks I'm stupid and know nothing. He says he doesn't trust doctors, but continues to do exactly as they say without a murmer. I know it is heart-breaking. I can feel his physical and mental decline, and can do nothing about it. He gets really nasty sometimes, when I try. It's hard.
But, as they say, you can take a brother to the book shop, but you can't make him read! Or believe. We do our best and that's all we can do.
Hugs, Grey x
.....over 85% of cholesterol is produced in the body - because the body needs it for numerous functions. For the brain - hormones - VitD and so on. The food industry is just as corrupt as the pharmaceutical industry - pedalling their wares when they do diddly squat - and are just there for the money...
Hi, I had raised cholesterol before I went on thyroid hormones, I think T3 lowers your cholesterol. I have read Dr Kendricks book and have been preeching to family and friends ever since! But do you think I am damaging my body by lowering my cholesterol via T3?
Dépends how low you're lowering it. But even if it goes too low, like mine, there's not much you can do about it. You're not going to keep yourself hypo just to keep your cholesterol up, are you? That T3 is needed for everything, every cell in your body needs it. Without it, you'll be very ill.
And yes, T3 does lower your cholesterol. That's what we're always saying on here. Don't take statins because high cholesterol is a symptom, not a disease. Once your thyroid hormones are optimised it will come down. But mine was never high, even when I was very hypo. And it came down too far once on thyroid hormone replacement.
One day i'll find a way of upping my cholesterol level, I'm sure I will. I've been told that coffee enemas raise cholesterol - I can't imagine how or why! - but that is a step too far for me, I think! lol Although, if I had some hard and fast proof of that, I might try it, but so far, it's just hearsay.
We just have to hope that once we have got our bodies back on an even keel with our thyroid hormones, other things will balance out.
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