National cholesterol guidelines that are expected to help more Americans lower their risk of heart disease will boost the number of people eligible for cholesterol-lowering medication by 140%.
Their analysis indicates that the guidelines could triple the number of people younger than 45 who can take medication and increase the number of older Americans eligible for the drugs by about 130%.
The costs of the drugs coupled with a lack of a national drug prescription benefit program could force some older individuals to choose between taking the drugs and buying food.
We have to look at the consequences. There is a large number of people being prescribed very expensive medication and we've had a limited number of years with the drugs.
The guidelines, released last year by the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), a division of the National Institutes of Health, replace those set in 1993. Now, patients with LDL ("bad") cholesterol of 130 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) of blood in addition to two risk factors for heart disease are eligible for medication. The previous guidelines set a threshold of 160 mg/dl plus two other risk factors.
People with high cholesterol are at risk of developing heart disease, the leading cause of death in the US. About 500,000 Americans die of heart disease each year. Other risk factors include smoking, excess weight, a sedentary lifestyle and type 2 diabetes.
The updated recommendations stress that diet with exercise is still the first-line of treatment for high cholesterol. But most people will fail to make the lifestyle changes necessary to lower their risk of heart disease and many will turn to the drugs for help.
The more recent recommendations qualify 36 million Americans for drug therapy, of whom nearly one-third are younger than 56, and more than one-quarter are older than 65. About 55% of those eligible are men.
Under the old guidelines, 15 million people aged 20 to 79 were eligible for cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Among other changes, the guidelines now recommend an even lower intake of saturated fat, a higher blood level of HDL ("good") cholesterol and more rigorous testing of fatty substances in the blood.
Circulation January 15, 2002;105
Nothing has changed since I provided these comments last year:
Prior to the new recommendations, 13 million Americans "qualified" to be placed on these drugs. With these new recommendations 36 million Americans now qualify -- nearly triple the amount.
After all, that is the answer, isn't it? If people can't lower their cholesterol by following the low-fat nonsense then they need to take these drugs to prevent them from falling prey to the number one killer in the US, heart disease.
Hogwash. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you have been receiving the newsletter for some time you will be familiar with my position on this issue. If not, I would encourage you to study the links below.
The big issue here is that these potent medications will be over the counter in the near future with a massive PR campaign to encourage people to swallow these potentially dangerous drugs.
The amazing thing about these new recommendations is that they completely ignore the previously published evidence that are quite clear in documenting that the actual cholesterol level itself is not the most important risk factor. It is actually the ratio between the level of total cholesterol and HDL.
The ideal HDL/cholesterol ratio should be higher than 25% and generally speaking the higher the better.
The ideal triglyceride/cholesterol ratio should be below 2.0.
If you did not know any better and just listened to the "experts" you would think cholesterol is an evil substance and that most of us would benefit from lowering our cholesterol as low as possible.
Not so. Cholesterol is a vitally important substance that is responsible for building our cell membranes and many of our hormones. If the level drops to low we are actually at increased risk for depression.
There are likely to be some people who benefit from them, but it is probably far less than 5% of the people who currently take them. These are individuals with total cholesterol above 350 who have inherited liver processing problems.
If these individuals take the statin drugs however, they should also take Coenzyme Q10, which is important for heart health and, like cholesterol, is reduced when one takes these drugs. The proper way for nearly everyone else to control their cholesterol levels is by reducing their grain intake by following the food choice program I recommend.
Another problem is the fact that low cholesterol is associated with numerous problems, as you can see from some of the studies below.
EFT can also be used to instill positive goals like following the eating plan.
You should consider purchasing the ten hours of videos of a workshop that I recently did on EFT as that will provide you with a basic foundation in EFT. The videos are risk free. They have a full one year guarantee refund. If you are not absolutely satisfied that the techniques you learn from viewing the tape are not worth you can return the videos for a full refund.
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