Statins and Seizures


My doctor told me my cholesterol was over 200, and that I needed to go on statin drugs. She knows I don't like to take any drugs I can't grow in the back yard, so she gave me the sales pitch. Statins are perfectly safe, as evidenced by millions of people taking them with only minor side effects, which seem to be less pronounced in men than women. I could take them with confidence, though I would have to take them for the rest of my life.

I agreed to take them, because, after all, nobody wants to invite a heart attack.

The first day I was pretty much okay, but the second day I began to feel odd. It wasn't something I can explain well, but it was one of those things where I just started having a feeling that something bad was about to happen to me. It's like your unconscious will try to warn you if there's a lion waiting for you in the bush just ahead. But it is a wee small voice after all, and not a match for the clear clarion call of the pharmaceutical companies. The operant words are, "You have to take this for the rest of your life.." It's like you just got your second shot of heroin. From now on it's a lifestyle choice.

The third day was when I had the seizure. All I remember is when it hit, and then the paramedics, and that I was unable to speak normally or think normally. I felt like I'd been run over by a truck.

Although I was pretty sure it wasn't a coincidence that the seizure came with my taking a new drug, my doctor thought this wasn't true.

"You're being irresponsible," she said. "You don't know what caused the seizure, but we have to find out. What if you had that seizure when you were driving? It could cost not just your life, but the lives of innocent people."

It was the old guilt trip: "kill yourself if you must, but spare the innocent." I had never had a seizure. I start taking stains. Three days later comes a seizure. I am a basket case for a day or so and then begin to get better. I take no more statins. I have no more problem. Except, that is, the doctor is now insisting I get an EEG and a brain scan.

"I'm sure it was the statins."

"It wasn't, Dan. This is serious."

"How much do these things cost?"

"Your insurance will cover most of it."

"So how much does it cost the insurance?"

"It's expensive."

Yea, so expensive she doesn't even want to say. Maybe she forgot. I had just watched a PBS special on medical care a few nights before, and one of the tidbits was that in Japan, which has private but regulated medical care system, one of the MRI scans costs maybe a hundred dollars.

So I went to the hospital and got the MRI of my brain and I got the EEG. The cost of these tests was four thousand dollars, with about seven hundred beyond the insurance coverage to be paid by us out of pocket.

The results were supposed to be to my doctor in two days. This was a Monday. On Friday I'd heard nothing from the doctor's office and I was on my way out of town. It was sometime the next week I heard they'd called and told Linda that there was nothing unusual for my age. But they need me to come in and go over the results. What do you think that will cost?

But the insurance will cover it.

And one thing that most likely will not happen is that somebody from that practice will file a report with the FDA that there is evidence that statins were linked to sudden onset seizure in a sixty year old male. The evidence will remain anecdotal, as in this article about the death of Dr. Allan Wooley.

Statins may be a problem but for those of us who prefer something natural, there are alternatives to prescription statins, right? There are statins in red yeast rice? Nope. They make them remove the statins from red yeast rice, which has been used in China since the Tang Dynasty, because the statin in red yeast rice is molecularly identical to the active ingredient in a patented drug. This means that if a natural yeast that grows on rice will cure you it's illegal, because it's in competition with something you have to pay the drug companies for, and forever.

All of the institutions serving the public are corrupt, and serving themselves. They are devouring us instead of serving us. It's like one of those stories you hear about an old lady who bought a pit bull for protection but the dog knew he was in charge, and he ends up eating her.

"My god Captain, this would make a hyena wretch."

"I guess we got to destroy this here dog. You got a biscuit?"

Most of the things people need medical care for don't require a doctor. A nurse would do, or a medic. Most of the medicines people need do not require going back to the doctor for renewals. If you have high blood pressure you have to check with the doctor for a refill? Why doesn't the pharmacy send a notification to the doctors office you got your refill, and if there's a problem with that, the doctor and pharmacy to can work it out.

"Mrs. Beauchamp can't be trusted to take her own blood pressure, so don't give her the pills until she pays the toll."

Maybe everything has to get so rotten corrupt that it just collapses before things can change. But I have no qualms about telling my doctors that I assume the FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies, and that they are complicit in the problem.
Six weeks after I stopped taking statins I went back in for another blood test. My doctor didn't even mention the cholesterol levels; I finally had to ask about them. I had dropped them forty points. "You can't do it with diet alone," she said. "When they go as high as yours there is a genetic component."

Let me repeat that. I dropped forty points. I did it by looking at the side of everything I buy for zero cholesterol. Then once in awhile I have a burrito and a beer. This wasn't even mentioned until I brought it up, and then it was with a disparaging observation that I still need the statins. And the fact is I wish I could take them and lower the cholesterol so that I can eat whatever I want. But the fact is they are dangerous to some people, and I think I'm one of those people.

Posted: Sat - May 17, 2008 at 10:06 PM