One look at my cholesterol reading of 280 and the doctor wrote a prescription for a statin that I would have to take for the rest of my life.
The dentist had wanted a whole lot of tests done to make sure that I wouldn’t croak while he operated.
The blood test results showed the usual suspects: Lack of Vitamin D and high cholesterol. The first was silly because I live in Dubai that has sunshine 365 days a year. No wonder I was feeling listless and depressed.
For the past one year, I was working from home, never stepping outside except for the late-night jog. Technology had made my writing work much easier and there was no need to commute and meet my contacts. The lack of sunshine had brought my Vitamin D levels to near empty.
The bad cholesterol reading was even more meaningless because I had earlier been advised to avoid red meat, fried stuff and desserts, but had ignored it, thinking that a lean, skinny person would not die of a heart-attack.
From the local clinic, I dutifully went to the chemist (pharmacy, in India) and bought the medicines that were much cheaper (one box of 100 statin pills cost me Dh16).
I had not heard of this particular cholesterol-reducing drug. So I opened my laptop and typed out a search. The website gave the description and its chemical composition, but what caught my eye was another article in a web magazine called The Wire that had a headline, ‘Big pharma subtly but surely spinning statins out of control’.
Unlike my wife who questions the doctor endlessly, I trust the medical profession and swallow whatever medicine I am told to take.
But since I was asked to take statins, I started reading the article.
High cholesterol by the way, clogs your veins with plaque and stops blood flow to your heart and brain.
The first paragraph made me sit up and take note: Statins, it said, helped hike up loss of memory. I know I am usually a bit vague at times, but that is because I am thinking of something else or I am multi-tasking and if I am interrupted, then I lose my train of thought and wonder what I was supposed to be doing.
But imagine losing your memory all together.
The article’s author is a cardiologist based in New Delhi. He quotes a study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine that 14 per cent of almost 26,000 healthy adults also developed diabetes after taking statins.
The cardiologist notes that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has added diabetes and memory loss to statin labels.
A German medical scientist earlier told me all that noise about safe level of cholesterol is manipulated and hyped up by the pharma companies. He said 30 years ago, the upper normal range of cholesterol used to be 300mg/dl. The industry then decided on less than 200mg/dl as a safe level, which meant that 60 per cent of the population now had an elevated level.
He said it is all brilliant marketing, nobody is thinking about prevention, which is the cheapest and best form of treatment.
The Delhi cardiologist says the take-home message on statins is that they should only be prescribed to patients who have already had a cardiovascular complication.
To prevent a heart-attack, simple lifestyle changes are advised: Stop smoking, eat healthy food, maintain a healthy body weight and go for a 15-minute jog or a 30-minute walk every day or do yoga.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www. twitter.com/mahmood_saberi
