Cholesterol Loweing Drugs – Learn Their Hidden Dangers

Cholesterol lowering drugs have been used for quite a long time now. Originally the most often prescribed ones were statins, however recently the most commonly prescribed cholesterol lowering drugs have been Vytorin and Zetia. Lately though, it appears many physicians are actually going back to prescribing statins because they are finding these latest additions have just not been effective at reducing cholesterol levels. Statins are very effective at reducing high cholesterol levels, but unfortunately they also bring with them some severe health concerns as part of their side effects.

For instance, one area that can be quite severely damaged by statins is your liver. Statins can increase a certain enzyme within your liver, and if this increase is significant and goes unchecked then this in turn will ultimately damage your liver. It is not just statins that will do this though, another drug that we mentioned earlier in the form of Zetia is also known to cause cause liver damage. If you are on cholesterol lowering drugs I think it would be a wise idea to have your liver functioning checked regularly, because the difficulty with liver damage is that it has no prior warning signals.

Possibly the number one side effect and complaint about statins is in the way that it leaves the user with severe muscle pain and also muscle weakness. There are a host of reasons behind this but the most important one that you need to know about is because that when the statins suppress the enzyme that creates the bad cholesterol, at the same time it also suppresses an enzyme that powers all of the cells in your body. The long-term effect of this can be severe health implications for you, because when you take into consideration that your heart is a muscle then ultimately you may experience severe pain here and with it being a weak muscle possibly also experienced failure.

A further well documented side effect of statins is in the effect that it has on the brain. You see, ultimately we do need this LDL cholesterol within our bodies as it does several important functions, and one of them is carrying fats to our brain which are needed for them to function properly. Therefore when we have high cholesterol levels we are not looking to totally in eliminate LDL, just reduce the amount that there is to a safe level. Unfortunately cholesterol lowering drugs such as statins can take this too far and therefore there is not enough LDL being produced which means our brains will not function properly. The net effect of this can be poor memory and concentration, but more worryingly a lot of researchers are now starting to link the lack of LDL with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Ultimately, unless there are several more reasons for you to be on cholesterol lowering drugs you may want to look at other avenues to treat your high cholesterol levels before committing to drugs such as statins. Research is now finding that simple lifestyle decisions such as losing weight, cutting out foods that contain trans fats and exercising more can all help to reduce your bad cholesterol levels and help raise your good cholesterol levels.

If you would like to find out more about natural ways to lower your cholesterol levels that are as effective as cholesterol lowering drugs, then make sure you visit http://www.clobbercholesterol.comto find out about the safest way to lower bad cholesterol

Tags: heart disease risk factor, congenital heart disease, woman and heart disease