Elevated cholesterol

[Frank]

Hello,
My wife has had elevated cholesterol since 2004. She has had a number of blood tests, but done nothing until now. She just had a blood test and her results are:
Cholesterol 7.5 mmol/L
HDL 1.0 mmol/L
LDL 5.2 mmol/L
HDC-C Ratio 7.5
These are the same readings she has had since about 2009.

She was prescribed Lipitor to reduce the cholesterol. The Doctor said that nutritional means will only bring it down to about 6.0, which is not enough. She took the script and came home.

I convinced her to try the Vit C first to try to bring down the cholesterol.
She has started with 2 gm/day. Every couple of days she will increase by 2 gm/day until she gets windy. Then cut back a little. She will also add a couple of grams of lysine and 2 tablespoons of oat bran.

Should this process bring down her cholesterol to < 5.4 mmol/L and if so, how long should it take?
Thank you

[ofonorow]

First of all, I am more familiar with the mg/dl units - where 180 mg/dl is king. Normal.

But yes, taking vitamin C to lwer cholesterol should work over time, especially if she has no other toxicity that the body is trying to counter by producing cholesterol.

Find out her Lp(a) if you can.

[Frank]

I found an online converter at http://www.onlineconversion.com/cholesterol.htm
The values are as follows:
Total Cholesterol: 290 mg/dl
HDL: 39 mg/dl
LDL: 201 mg/dl
Tryglyceride: 248 mg/dl

I think the labs have trouble with the Lp(a) here in Australia. I tried before with my doctor. I asked for my Lp(a) and I received a result for what the lab showed as 'Apolipoprotein A'. The value was given in g/L. I didn't think this was the Lp(a) I was looking for.

[Frank]

I am not in favour of statin drugs. However, I have a question about its reputation.
If someone is not taking Vit C, and then starts taking statin drugs to reduce their cholesterol, it will reduce for sure. Since the body is using the cholesterol to plug up cracks in the arteries, now there is less cholesterol to do that. Of course there is no Vit C to produce enough collagen to that either.
Why do we not hear about people with major artery damage and death by the reduction of the cholesterol?
Thanks

[jimmylesante]

Would Vitamin B3 be useful too?
When i was 130kgs with 38% body fat, i expected my Cholesterol to be through the roof.
We use mmol/l (multiply or divide by 38.6 to convert)too, where anything over 5(193) is getting into the too high territory.
I was 4.6 and my homocysteine was at the top end of normal too.
However i'd like to do a Lp(a) test as suggested. Just interesting to think that some well fed people may be undernourished and some not so well fed people may be fully nourished.
With regards to no Vit C and on Statins followed by death from leaking blood vessels- i'd think it would be difficult to not ingest vitamin C with the food we eat, or that is added to foods, seems ascorbic acid is being put into most things. Moving on , although i'm not a pro, but cholesterol being an indicator of heart health is slower becoming less recognised. I understand that the better indicators than cholesterol are Lp(a) and/or homocysteine.

[Johnwen]

[Frank]

Thank you for your replies.
I follow your argument. Its just that, with millions and millions of people taking statins I would have thought that with people dying, after all these years, the media would have noticed some connection to the statins.
Maybe not.

[Frank]

My wife is having trouble with the taste of Ascorbic Acid. She adds it to fruit juice (apple juice).
Is there a down side to doing this? Is the Vit C effectiveness reduced by mixing with apple juice?
Thanks

[ofonorow]

Thank you for your replies.
I follow your argument. Its just that, with millions and millions of people taking statins I would have thought that with people dying, after all these years, the media would have noticed some connection to the statins.
Maybe not.

Adding juice should not be a problem save adding to much sugar.

I think johnwen nailed it, and I too have had the same thoughts - statins should do more harm than good, so why isn't this obvious.

added. Actually I believe that answer is that statins INCREASE Lp(a) cholesterol. This, according to Pauling/Rath, is actually part of the healing process... You don't get weakened arteries - you get more plaqu caused by Lp(a)! But there is the sticky problem that statins inhibit endogenous CoQ10...

If you can believe TV, Pfizer has sponsored or conducted well over 450 studies of Lipitor alone (according to a recent TV commercial.) Not one of these "studies" found a significant benefit, and if you look at them individually, there are all sorts of scientific problems, (See Hickey's book TARNISHED GOLD). They are usually terminated at just the point when the results for the statins are starting to turn south...

So, why did they conduct 450 studies on Lipitor? Sounds like the definition of insanity (and no one studies Pauling's vitamin C and lysine therapy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

They do it because a P value of .95 says that 1 in 20 results might be flawed. If they ran the study 100 times, they expect to see the result 95 times..

They are looking for the 5 wrong results - hoping they break in their favor!!

This is what I believed happened in the Crestor Jupiter trial.. They had a positive report for a statin drug re: reversing some atherosclerosis! One study!!!

This is not science. Doctors think it is, and are trained to believe in what the medical journals tell them.

Now a woman doctor in California was supposed to run an independent study on statins... Never heard if she published results.

There are all sorts of sites/evidence, such as the Space Doc, that statins harm ones health. We started this page, but did not keep it going.. http://vitamincfoundation.org/statinalert/ primarily because statins are the tip of the iceberg of "bad" drugs that create more sickness and thus more wealth for Big Pharma.
Another huge market are the stomach acid blockers, such as Nexium/Prilosec, .. but that is another story..

People are being harmed by statins (the incidence of heart failure has tripled since they were introduced) and I remember writing this paper a long time ago about this..http://internetwks.com/owen/coq10.htm

Because harm creates illness, it keeps the business churning..

[Frank]

Thank you Owen.
We will keep at it. My wife is now up to 6gm of ascorbic acid and 2 gm of lysine. She eats plenty of fish and meat so we'll leave the lysine as it is.
She needs to go back to the doctor in 3 months for another cholesterol test. What we plan to do is go to the chemist in 6 weeks, where they do cholesterol tests for a small fee. This way we'll know if there is any progress. If there is no progress, it will be difficult to tell the doctor that she will not take the Lipitor though. She will go to the chemist again before the doctor as well.
She is also reducing her sugar intake to reduce triglyceride.

[Bossman]

Thank you for your replies.
I follow your argument. Its just that, with millions and millions of people taking statins I would have thought that with people dying, after all these years, the media would have noticed some connection to the statins.
Maybe not.

Frank, you don't want to know which percentage of people in my circle of relatives, friends and acquaintances who are on statins experience very troubling side effects of statins. Some of them can hardly walk due to severe pain in their legs. So, even if you ignore the fact that people die due to statins there would be enough other reasons to stop prescribing statins.
However, big pharma has implanted so much fear for cholesterol in people's mind that they are willing to give up their quality of life in return for lower cholesterol readings. Unfortunately, a lot of physicians just blindly follow big pharma.

[jimmylesante]

Frank any update?

[jimmylesante]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgbdNNfotwM Short clip about cancer/acidity and towards the end his thoughts on cholesterol(i found very funny)

[Frank]

Sorry for the delay in response. Had a problem logging into the forum.
After a couple of weeks on the Vit C and Lysine my wife started being dizzy. She decided that it must be due to the Vit C and stopped it. A few days later the dizziness went away. This confirmed to her that it was the Vit C. However, a lot of time has passed since that episode and she has had dizzy spells again without any Vit C. She now agrees that it had nothing to do with Vit C.
During this period she started looking on the net for Vit C side affects. There are a lot of sites with side affects for Vit C. There are a few like:
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/ ... 13409.html

Here, there is a side affect in the middle of the page that refers to "excess of 8-oxoadenine and 8-oxoguanine in the blood lymphocyte can damage the white blood cells beyond repair". We don't know what this means exactly except that the white blood cells may be damaged. This scarred her and now refuses to take Vit C because of this. I tell her that I haven't heard about this in the forum at all and may be bogus, but no, it's on the internet so must be true.
At this stage she hasn't been back to the doctor, because she doesn't want to take the Lipitor either.
We are now stuck and don't know where to go from here.
Thanks

[tjohnson_nb]

"The human body starts showing several physiological problems if there is an excess of vitamin C in the system."

LOL, this is listed as one of the side effects. It's way too technical for me to understand.