I have high cholesterol and DO NOT want to take statin poison. A friend is getting the cholesterol shots – how can I get the same?

"Statins are beneficial and harmless to most patients. In patients that cannot take them, or if the numbers are bad despite being on them, many alternatives exist – including multiple types of injections."
- Dr. Alexander Postalian, General and Interventional Cardiologist

Read More: https://www.texasheart.org/heart-health/heart-information-center/topics/statins-cholesterol-lowering-medicines/

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Transcript

00:00:00:13 - 00:00:04:20
Unknown
I have high cholesterol and do not want to take statin poison.

00:00:04:19 - 00:00:08:06
Unknown
a friend is getting the cholesterol shots. How can I get the same?

00:00:09:09 - 00:00:24:06
Unknown
Well, look, I have this conversation almost every day, multiple times a day. The statin talk. Okay. Statins lower the risk of heart attacks. Lower the risk of strokes. And they have some side effects,

00:00:24:07 - 00:00:44:23
Unknown
which I'll come to in a second. But I'll start by saying that it's part of my job to keep up with the literature. Okay. And I could probably make a career holding on to the studies that say students are harmful, but some of them are well done, by the way, and not letting go of those studies

00:00:44:22 - 00:00:48:01
Unknown
and hanging on to that data and sort of be right.

00:00:48:09 - 00:00:55:05
Unknown
But I would be ignoring the thousands of other studies saying that studies are beneficial.

00:00:55:06 - 00:01:01:06
Unknown
So we have to balance out all the results and come up with a conclusion. I literally wake up every morning and go through

00:01:01:06 - 00:01:03:12
Unknown
what was published in all the major journals

00:01:03:12 - 00:01:14:16
Unknown
and try to sort of frame my mental gestalt. so there is much more evidence to say incidents are beneficial than they are harmful.

00:01:14:18 - 00:01:20:26
Unknown
And some of the side effects, the biggest one that most patients are concerned about

00:01:20:25 - 00:01:24:28
Unknown
is muscle pain. And we used to think that it's caused a muscle pain

00:01:24:29 - 00:01:30:15
Unknown
in about 30% of people. But over the years, we've sort of

00:01:30:15 - 00:01:37:04
Unknown
had been able to study this more precisely. And we took a bunch of patients and we gave them statements and told them here, so statin.

00:01:37:06 - 00:01:56:11
Unknown
And then we took another bunch of patients and gave him a Tic-Tac and told them, here's a statin and more than 20% of the patients taking the Tic TAC had to stop the Tic TAC because of unbearable muscle pain. There's a lot of reasons for muscle pain. Statins could be one of them, but it's probably not 30% more close to maybe 5%.

00:01:57:15 - 00:02:04:02
Unknown
So we'll say I think giving students a chance is the right thing to do. However, if

00:02:04:03 - 00:02:09:26
Unknown
someone cannot tolerate statins because of unbearable side effects,

00:02:09:26 - 00:02:21:22
Unknown
then we do have other options. And we have something called Benford acid, which is another pill. But the more well-tested ones are injections. They're called Pcsk9 inhibitors.

00:02:21:21 - 00:02:26:24
Unknown
It's one injection every two weeks. And then we have another one called in glycerin.

00:02:27:09 - 00:02:30:02
Unknown
That is one injection every six months.

00:02:30:02 - 00:02:56:10
Unknown
And it's very efficacious. They act in ways independent of statin therapy. So not they're not different types of statins. And they're quite useful quite effective. Lower the chances of having heart attacks and strokes. So yes, if you cannot take statins or are completely unwilling, you should, explore these options. Not everybody is a candidate for these drugs, but you might be.

00:02:56:10 - 00:02:56:16


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