|
To protect yourself from having a heart attack, accumulating data suggest that one of the most important things you can do is get your LDL (bad) cholesterol not just down, but way down. Striving for LDL levels of 100 and below is good, but dropping to 80 and lower may be even better.
LDL levels of 81
The latest research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), involved 8,800 European patients. All had previously suffered heart attacks. The trial found that patients who reduced their LDL levels to an average 81 with high-dose statins significantly reduced their risk of major coronary events like heart attacks and strokes at the 4.8 year follow-up compared to patients who reduced their LDL to 104 on usual-dose statin therapy.(1)
In a JAMA editorial accompanying the study, Christopher P. Cannon, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School wrote that the study’s findings show that aggressive LDL lowering is the ideal – “lower is better.”
The JAMA study’s findings echo those of another large 4,162-patient study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004, which concluded that LDL cholesterol levels of 62 were even better than levels of 95 at preventing death, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular-related problems in people with heart disease.(2)
Drugs’ adverse side effects
In both studies, mega-doses of statins (a doubling and tripling of regular doses) drove LDL levels way down. But in both studies, mega-doses weren’t without their problems. Suffering from adverse side effects, like muscle pain and elevated liver enzymes, patients on the high doses stopped taking their medications at twice the rate of patients on regular doses.
Drug-free alternatives
“That’s why drug-free alternatives like the Pritikin Program are so important,” advises Dr. William McCarthy, UCLA School of Public Health and member of the Pritikin Scientific Advisory Board. “For people who cannot tolerate maximum doses of statins, or for those who simply want to minimize their dependence on medications, the Pritikin Program – or a combination of low-dose statins plus the Pritikin Program – offers a much safer option for lowering LDL cholesterol to levels significantly below 100.”
1. JAMA, 2005; 294: 2437.
2. New England Journal of Medicine, 2004; 350: 15.
|
Printer Friendly Version