By: Cat Ebeling, BSN,co-author of the best-sellers: The Fat Burning Kitchen,The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging & The Diabetes Fix
If you have type 2 diabetes and you take a statin drug, you might start noticing a phrase that’s ridiculously overused…
“The benefits outweigh the risks.” Has your doctor ever said that to you?
There are plenty of risks and they’re all serious health issues. Actually the risks FAR outweigh the benefits. ESPECIALLY if you already have type 2 diabetes.
Statins are the primary drug that doctors prescribe to lower cholesterol. Statins are a fairly recent pharmaceutical creation that work by blocking an enzyme in the liver that is responsible for making cholesterol.
Statins became one of the most-prescribed medications when the guidelines for the high end of total cholesterol guidelines were reduced down to 200 a few years ago.
Now, tens of millions of Americans are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, thinking this is the best way to prevent heart disease. In fact, about 30 percent of American men and women over age 40 take a statin.
The problem is that statins come with a host of side effects which can be pretty significant. One of the more serious side effects of statins is the significant increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The latest study on this connection shows the link may be even stronger than was previously reported.
Researchers prospectively studied 8,567 men and women whose average age was 64. All were free of diabetes and not taking statins when the study started. In a follow-up study 15 years later, about 12 percent of the group had started taking statins, most using either Zocor or Lipitor (simvastatin or atorvastatin) and the rest either Pravachol or Lescol (pravastatin or fluvastatin). Most took the statins for over a year, and 716 new cases of diabetes occurred in the group.
After controlling for age, sex, smoking, family history of diabetes, and other factors, researchers found that statin use was associated with higher risk for insulin resistance and high blood sugar, and with a 38 percent increased risk for the development of Type 2 diabetes.