Statins Suck.

And why preventing your body from making the most important building block is a bad idea.

The electron transport chain, and the diseases that follow from dysfunction of these mitochondrial complexes.

If you’ve been reading this Substack or following me on Twitter, you would know that I am not a fan of artificially reducing cholesterol. I am especially not a fan of statins - a class of cholesterol-lowering medication.

Cholesterol Good - Statins Bad.

When they were first released, statins were hailed as the second coming - an integral part of any risk reduction strategy as it relates to cardiovascular disease.

After the implementation of new penal regulations for clinical trial reporting in 2004, most contemporary data has shed uncertainty on the benefits of taking statins.

This uncertainty has paved the way for research which takes a more critical view of this class of drugs. Its continued failure to meet expectations set by fraudulent pharma-funded research has also provided the population an opportunity to question the cholesterol-basis of heart disease in its entirety.

However, the inertia of the “cholesterol bad” and “statins good” mindset continues to this day.

No matter how much research I present pointing out the physiologically irrational nature of this approach, patients and physicians alike continue to point to statistical sleight-of-hand and treatment apologia.

In this article, I will address these rebuttals and in the process provide an alternative framework for understanding cholesterol and the effects of statins.

High Cholesterol Is “Bad”

I often hear something like this in response to criticism of statins.

“Ok, statins are bad. But, how am I supposed to get my LDL-cholesterol down?”

This is a great starting point, because it is where many stumble - physicians included.

First, cholesterol or sterols are the building-block of all life:

They make up the structure of our cells, the cellular organelles, the messaging infrastructure, the insulation for our neurons, the hormones our bodies use to regulate all function, and more. We would not be alive without cholesterol.

“Ok, but high cholesterol can be bad for you, right?”

Since sterol-derived compounds are essential to life, our body has a complex and fine-tuned method of regulating its presence in our bloodstream (really, this is what we are concerned about - blood serum cholesterol).

The real question is WHY?

Why is your serum cholesterol high?

The truth is, this is multi-factorial.

For most people in the developed world, cholesterol is elevated because it is responding to inflammatory stress, tissue damage or some other cause of elevated cell turnover.

This should come as no surprise. Look at the rates of obesity, lung disease, diabetes, strokes and heart attacks, and overall mitochondrial (i.e. metabolic) dysfunction.

Can you blame your body for pumping out more cholesterol? You need it to repair and heal!

Which means, if you want to have lower cholesterol - first, stop harming your body.

The Root Cause of All Illness

Now, there is also an increasing minority of the population who have another reason for their cholesterol to be high. Particularly lean and physically active people who are on very low carb diets like ketogenic and carnivore diets.

For these people with limited stores of fat, and low carbohydrate consumption…cholesterol and lipoprotein packages are a primary source of energy. Thus, the body maintains a higher amount in these healthier and more active people.

The implication is even more striking in the healthiest and most long-living people on Earth. Most recently, a Swedish study reported biomarkers from its citizens who managed to reach the age of 100 (centenarians) after decades of observational data.