Statins may be keeping people from dementia too. That is a nice side effect.

A couple thoughts. The low hanging fruit in improving health has been picked. Sanitation, immunization, clean food and water and air. Those have been huge. Add antibiotics, anesthesia and surgery and the medical industry has had all those for 50 years or longer. So now there is just nibbling at the edges of life. Premie care, enormously expensive, and successful for many infants. Cancer care which adds years of life if the patient is young but not so much for the elderly cancer patient even if successful. So how can you live a little longer or a little healthier or both? Does lowering lipids help? Does weight control really matter, and to what degree? Are vitamins a scam? Is coffee harmful?
Proving antibiotics help in strep was easy.

Denny FW, Wannamaker LW, Brink WR. Prevention of rheumatic fever. Treatment of the preceding streptococcic infection. JAMA. 1950;143(2):151-3.

It involved a few hundred patients on a military base where there was an unbelievably high rate of rheumatic fever. Some got penicillin some didn't and the results were clear. It only was a few days of medicine and a few months of follow up. However the little tweaks to get those last few years better require years of medicine, or not medicine, or other interventions. Getting enough patients and the proper controls is phenomenally difficult expensive and the results are never really clear. So one study done with a different approach to the same question may get a conflicting result with another. Relax. Think of it as similar to working on your Nascar vehicle. All the easy stuff is the same for everyone. It is really hard to get that last 1 MPH out of the car. One time the tweak works, next time it doesn't. Different racing surface, weather, mood of the driver. Only after hundreds of ovals do you think you've got the adjustment right. But maybe not for next year's model or a different track. And sometimes that little tweak makes the engine fail. You didn't do anything wrong, you're just at the extreme edge of getting a little more out of the car and that can happen.

The public's expectation that we will all live healthy and forever is wrong. I am 100% certain I will die no matter what I do.

I hafta agree with Gracie. If 100,000 people died because of side effects of prescribed medication, how many people would have died if these medications had not been available. Ever wonder why the life expectancy today is so much greater than when you were born? Think it could have any thing to do with medical advances? Yeah, could be!
How many would have died of polio if there were no vaccine? Just one example.
Yes, the sky is not falling.
Just my opinion.

Can you compare the number of lives lost yearly from "adverse effects of prescribed medications" to the number of lives saved from taking prescription meds?

What Dr. Barbara Starfield was trying to point out in her paper was not the evils of prescription medicine, but the untenable position the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been put in. The FDA is the government agency responsible for making sure that the drugs in this country are safe and efficacious. I believe that in 1992, the FDA went from being funded by our tax dollars to being funded by the drug companies it regulates when the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) was passed. She was trying to point out that the budget of the FDA is now dependant upon the very industry it is supposed to regulate. I agree with her that this is not a healthy relationship.

Oh GRACIE , statins reduce cholesterol prodution but also reduces CoQ 10 production, needed in every cell, especially the brain. I believe we are the only country that does not supplement when taking statins. I brought that question to a cardiologist neighbor and he agreed. Barry, what do you think?

I read it in a book. It must be true! After all the author claims to be an expert.

Taking CoQ 10 certainly couldn't hurt unless you are also taking a drug that could interact with it like a beta blocker. As we age our CoQ 10 levels go down. Statins also reduce those levels. A side effect of statin therapy can be muscle pain or even a very dangerous condition where the muscles break down called rhabdomylosis. CoQ 10 seems to help reduce the severity of these possible side effects. When I was a working pharmacist I used to recommend adding CoQ 10 to a patients supplements, but only after checking their medication history to make sure there was no interaction with other medications, and always told them to check first with their doctor in case he felt the need to adjust statin dosage.

I do think that more needs to be understood about drug interactions. When my father died, my mother was prescribed antidepressants. Combined with the other drugs she was taking, they turned her into a zombie. I was worried she was experiencing dementia. We got her to a new MD, who looked at her list of drugs, and took her off half of them. Her health and state of mind were greatly improved.

Barry RX #43 post is exactly what I read was some of the problems with statins along with increase chance of Type II diabetes.

I also agree with most of what blueash said. While certainly I have no death wish I accept that death comes to us all.

I still believe this comes down to who you going to believe.

It took my cardiologist 3 years to convince me to take statins and blood pressure meds and these are at the minimum. and i am likely in the majority of the populations that resists taking any kind of medicine for anything at all. So belief in the individual making the recommendation is critical.

I also discount any claims made for or against if the person making such suggestions is trying to sell you something and the tendency in the world of marketing to over state claims for or against.

Now I have myself really confused:D

for those of us who just don't know what we don't know its kind of scary

Now THAT hit the spot!:BigApplause:

Does everything include a plant based diet and not consuming any oils?


Statins have many side effects, the thing is they develop so slowly you don't know they exist sometimes, ask me how I know.

Longevity --simple diet & exercise are a great way to accomplish that

Happened to me 4 years ago, now no meds vegan diet & no oils.

BP 118/70 was 150/87 took 7 months to med free and feel a million times better with more energy.
weight loss was was like automatic, I probably eat more food by volume than most folks but don't gain weight.

I follow Dr's Colin Campbell & Esseltyn

I think another part of the problem is that patients may use multiple pharmacies for their meds. Trying to find the cheapest deals on meds. mean no one pharmacy has a record of everything you are taking. So interactions can be missed. Like BarryRx said, when he saw something, he could make a recommendation...but if you don't know the whole picture you can't do that. So that $10 gift card for transferring a prescription may not be that great a deal in the long run.

AND...sometimes patients do not tell their physicians or pharmacists of the supplements they are taking. I have friends say "Why? They are all natural???"

I am not a fan of alternative medicine advocates who are always shouting " BIG PHARMA" while they sell you their stuff and I am not a fan of Suzanne Somers who misleads people about breast cancer and endangers their lives in my opinion..

I don't recommend that everything be believed without question, including your statement. Who are the medical hucksters/salesmen and what do you have to back up your statement?