Niacin vs statins for lowering cholesterol For decades now we’ve been told to take cholesterol-lowering statin drugs despite the fact that they are remarkably ineffective unless you are a man and have already had a heart attack. Just how poor the evidence is and how little effort has been made to discover the number of people troubled by side-effects was highlighted in a review of statins by the respected Cochrane Collaboration at the beginning of 2010. It analysed trials involving 34,272 people who hadn’t had a heart attack and found little evidence that taking a statin would protect people from having a first heart attack unless their risk was classified as high. These are drugs given to about four and a half million healthy people in the UK.
A study in the Lancet five years ago found that even though the drugs prevented a few heart attacks, none of the patients lived any longer as a result. That’s bad enough – if you are told this pill will cut your risk of a heart attack, you assume that it will also make you live longer. But it gets worse. Men over 69 didn’t benefit from taking statins at all. They didn’t live longer and didn’t have fewer heart attacks, and women of any age didn’t benefit either. That’s right, not at all. Niacin (vitamin B3) is available on prescription in high doses of 500mg. It is by far the most effective cholesterol-lowering substance because it not only lowers the ‘bad’ LDL, it also lowers triglycerides and lipoprotein(a) – all by about a quarter, and it raises the good HDL. No drug does all this. It also reverses atherosclerosis (arterial thickening) and risk of cardiovascular events. Quite a few studies have proven its benefit when given with statins, versus statins alone, although one recent trial failed to show a clinical benefit.
The best review on niacin, published in Pharmacology and Therapeutics last year, is by Dr John Chapman and colleagues who concludes “available clinical evidence demonstrates that niacin-based therapies effected marked improvements across all components of the atherogenic lipidFats, oils, waxes and sterols are collectively known as lipids…. profile (HDL, LDL, triglycerides), together with a regression of atherosclerosis as evidenced by change in coronary artery stenosis and luminal diameter, and reduction in the progression of intima-media thickening; such changes translated into a reduction in clinical events.” Niacin is usually given in a dose of 1,000mg a day (500mg twice a day) although slightly better results are achieved with 2,000mg a day. Most trials have been on a slow-release form called Niaspan. Niacin also works but makes you blush for up to 30 minutes. Niacinamide does not. Inositol hexanicotinate, the non-blush form, should work but there’s no definitive trial on it.
Lipoprotein(a) and vitamin CWhat it does: Strengthens immune system – fights infections. Makes collagen, keeping bones, skin and joints firm and strong. Antioxidant, detoxifying pollutants and protecting against… – Linus Pauling’s legacy
Working with Matthias Rath, Dr Linus Pauling’s last discovery was that lipoprotein(a) is an independent predictor of heart disease. They proposed that when the arteries become damaged, the body makes more of a proteinProteins are large molecules consisting of chains of amino acids. Proteins are essential nutrients for the human body – they are a building block of… called apoprotein(a), which attracts fatThere are many different types of fats; polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, hydrogenated, saturated and trans fat. The body requires good fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) in order to… and becomes lipoprotein(a), which then sticks to damaged areas in the arteries –effectively repairing the damage. They proposed that a lack of vitamin C was one cause of increasing lipoprotein(a), called Lp(a) for short, and showed that giving high dose vitamin C (eg six grams a day) together with the amino acid lysine (three...
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