Dr. Joseph Mercola- www.mercola.com

The American College of Physicians released a report that stated regardless of cholesterol levels, most people with diabetes should be taking cholesterol-lowering medication to cut their risk of having a heart attack.

These latest recommendations on treatment options for the 18 million Americans diagnosed with type 2 diabetes were released by an organization consisting of 100,000 internists.

Researchers claimed that a man with diabetes was two to four times more likely to experience a heart attack or stroke over a person without the disease and a woman�s risk was two to six times more likely.

Researchers based these findings on the thickness of diabetics� blood and its tendency to form blood clots. Another doctor added that the arteries of diabetics were usually inflamed and suggested that statins were very effective at lowering both cholesterol levels and inflammation.

Under the proposed guidelines, diabetics are recommended to take cholesterol-lowering drugs, regardless of if they have good cholesterol levels or not.

Some of the statins that are considered the top-selling medications include Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol and Mevecor.

Although statins are most commonly prescribed for cardiovascular problems, research suggested they might help or prevent other diseases such as Alzheimer�s disease.

Some studies have found that statins reduced a person�s likelihood of developing dementia by 70 percent.

Researchers also stated that statins might be responsible for producing an effect on amyloid, a protein that is considered to be one of the main contributing factors to Alzheimer�s disease.
Statins have also been shown to help fight diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis and will be observed in the prevention of cancer in future studies.

Research on statins has shown some of the side effects of it include muscle damage that could result in kidney failure and liver damage.

However, experts claimed these side effects were not common.

Annals of Internal Medicine April 20, 2004;140: 644-649

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

There must have been a full moon out when the author of this Annals of Internal Medicine paper wrote his recommendations for diabetics. Either that or he sold out long ago to the drug companies.

Isn't it bad enough that the statins are the number one selling drugs on the planet and that Lipitor is cranking in $10 BILLION, yes billion, not million folks, every year?

Now these greedy drug companies want even more money.

Please understand that I am a great fan of capitalism and I don't begrudge any company from making a profit, or even massively huge profits, but I have major objections to any person or company selling a solution that does not authentically benefit the end user. And when it comes to statin drugs that clearly is the case.

The "experts" are now saying that no matter how low your cholesterol count, if you are a diabetic you should take cholesterol-lowering drugs. They are completely ignorant of the well documented dangers of having too low of a cholesterol level. What is concerning though is that this is not a lunatic doctor saying this, but this advice now is part of the official practice guidelines of the American College of Physicians, a major doctors' group, which represents more than 100,000 internists.

It is difficult for me to understand how this group could get away with such reprehensible misguided recommendations.

After I take a few deep breaths though and relax, I understand that any drug company that makes $10 billion a year has access to the most brilliant marketers on the planet and is easily able to influence journals that publish studies that support such nonsense recommendations.

New cholesterol guidelines were issued in 2001 that would qualify 36 million people to be on these drugs.

Now they want to put all the diabetics in the United States on the drugs as well. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are almost 296 million people who live in the United States and since 59 million have the problem, that means 20 percent have either diabetes or pre-diabetes who will be taking harmful statins.

Therefore, they will be pushing 95 million people to take their expensive solution!

And folks that is just for Pfizer, it doesn't include the numbers for the others: