UK - Martin Hannan: 'Wonder drug' drove me out of my mind
Martin Hannan: 'Wonder drug' drove me out of my mind
Date: 15 July 2009
By Martin Hannan
SOME prominent medical chaps recently suggested to my utter horror that healthy middle-aged and elderly people could benefit from taking cholesterol-lowering statins, the so-called wonder drug of our age which is the real reason why Britain's heart mortality rate is dropping.
Apart from balking at the lunatic Hitlerian principle of mass medication of healthy citizens, I would urge anyone, healthy or otherwise, who is considering taking statins to read about my statin experience. It's painful, personal and as true as I canADVERTISEMENTtell it.
I am a diabetic, overweight – call me fat and I'll bash you – and the wrong side of 49. Heart attack territory, they call it, so I take every test the NHS offers in a bid to delay humankind's planned obsolescence, aka death.
Almost three years ago, routine blood tests showed I had a raised cholesterol level of 7.8 – a score of six or greater means you are at risk of developing heart disease. I was prescribed statins by my GP, a wonderful man I trust with my life. I took a medium dosage statin, one tablet of 40mg a day. I had no problems tolerating the pill, and my cholesterol level went down to under six.
At my annual diabetic check-up at the Royal Infirmary last autumn, no doubt due to increasing tolerance of the statin, my cholesterol level had shot up 30 per cent. The specialist recommended that my statin dosage be doubled from 40mg to 80mg. My own doctor went along with that view, since I had no problems with the lower dose statin.
What happened over the subsequent months was a nightmare. I began to lose my mind – I actually said so on several occasions to my family.
My concentration level evaporated, I felt spaced out a lot of the time, and my ability to write for hours at a time just disappeared. I would stare at the screen and the keyboard for many minutes and be unable to focus, never mind write.
This was disconcerting, to say the least, as I was in the middle of writing my latest book, Once Were Lions, about the British Lions – what do you mean, you haven't bought it yet? – and instead of my normal 1,500 to 2,000 words a day, I was battling to carve out 500.
I knew something was seriously wrong, but couldn't work it out. I put it down to writer's block, but in truth I feared the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Somehow I managed to finish the book, but I was late delivering the material. My other work suffered as I simply slowed up. "Old age" said a friend, and I thought he was right.
I couldn't remember names, phone numbers, even where I had left my mobile phone or watch – I got fed up counting the number of times I put something down and couldn't find it two minutes later.
Then on 12 March in the Daily Telegraph, a brave writer called Christopher Hudson wrote about how he had discovered that taking a statin had affected his mind. I wept as I read his symptoms – they were almost exactly similar to mine.
I hit the internet and found to my utter amazement that statins are blamed for some terrible side-effects, from muscle damage to mental breakdown, and that as long ago as 2006, senior medical people had serious misgivings about the drug.
In the British Medical Journal, Swedish physician and cholesterol expert Dr Uffe Ravnskov and his colleagues claimed there was a possibility of mental and neurological problems from high dosage of statins. But you don't read about such opposition widely – not when statins are the most prescribed drug in history and there are PR campaigns spinning out the "good news" about the pills at the centre of this multi-billion-pound industry.
Off I went to my GP, and we agreed I should stop taking the statin. Within a fortnight I felt better, and after six weeks my nightmare was over. I still had memory lapses, but I could write fluently again – proof to me that the statin was the cause of my problems. The trouble is that after three months my cholesterol level shot up to over 8.0 and in the face of a heart attack, my doctor suggested I should go on a lower dose, back to the 40mg a day level.
So far I have had no recurrence of my mental problems, and my cholesterol level is this week back down at 6.0.
That's the point – statins do as they say on the packet and reduce cholesterol. As my case shows, there is no doubt about that positive effect.
Yet from my own experience, and that of many other people, as a quick Google on "statin and side effects" will show, there is a body of evidence which shows that statins, especially in high dosages, could affect you mentally and physically.
I am specifically not saying that everyone should stop taking statins, but I do think the medical profession should investigate the side-effects seriously and quickly, and make all reports public.
As for giving them to healthy people, the next step will be to make statins compulsory, and it will be the great fluoride-in-your-tapwater battle all over again. I know which side I will be on.
Date: 15 July 2009
By Martin Hannan
SOME prominent medical chaps recently suggested to my utter horror that healthy middle-aged and elderly people could benefit from taking cholesterol-lowering statins, the so-called wonder drug of our age which is the real reason why Britain's heart mortality rate is dropping.
Apart from balking at the lunatic Hitlerian principle of mass medication of healthy citizens, I would urge anyone, healthy or otherwise, who is considering taking statins to read about my statin experience. It's painful, personal and as true as I canADVERTISEMENTtell it.
I am a diabetic, overweight – call me fat and I'll bash you – and the wrong side of 49. Heart attack territory, they call it, so I take every test the NHS offers in a bid to delay humankind's planned obsolescence, aka death.
Almost three years ago, routine blood tests showed I had a raised cholesterol level of 7.8 – a score of six or greater means you are at risk of developing heart disease. I was prescribed statins by my GP, a wonderful man I trust with my life. I took a medium dosage statin, one tablet of 40mg a day. I had no problems tolerating the pill, and my cholesterol level went down to under six.
At my annual diabetic check-up at the Royal Infirmary last autumn, no doubt due to increasing tolerance of the statin, my cholesterol level had shot up 30 per cent. The specialist recommended that my statin dosage be doubled from 40mg to 80mg. My own doctor went along with that view, since I had no problems with the lower dose statin.
What happened over the subsequent months was a nightmare. I began to lose my mind – I actually said so on several occasions to my family.
My concentration level evaporated, I felt spaced out a lot of the time, and my ability to write for hours at a time just disappeared. I would stare at the screen and the keyboard for many minutes and be unable to focus, never mind write.
This was disconcerting, to say the least, as I was in the middle of writing my latest book, Once Were Lions, about the British Lions – what do you mean, you haven't bought it yet? – and instead of my normal 1,500 to 2,000 words a day, I was battling to carve out 500.
I knew something was seriously wrong, but couldn't work it out. I put it down to writer's block, but in truth I feared the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Somehow I managed to finish the book, but I was late delivering the material. My other work suffered as I simply slowed up. "Old age" said a friend, and I thought he was right.
I couldn't remember names, phone numbers, even where I had left my mobile phone or watch – I got fed up counting the number of times I put something down and couldn't find it two minutes later.
Then on 12 March in the Daily Telegraph, a brave writer called Christopher Hudson wrote about how he had discovered that taking a statin had affected his mind. I wept as I read his symptoms – they were almost exactly similar to mine.
I hit the internet and found to my utter amazement that statins are blamed for some terrible side-effects, from muscle damage to mental breakdown, and that as long ago as 2006, senior medical people had serious misgivings about the drug.
In the British Medical Journal, Swedish physician and cholesterol expert Dr Uffe Ravnskov and his colleagues claimed there was a possibility of mental and neurological problems from high dosage of statins. But you don't read about such opposition widely – not when statins are the most prescribed drug in history and there are PR campaigns spinning out the "good news" about the pills at the centre of this multi-billion-pound industry.
Off I went to my GP, and we agreed I should stop taking the statin. Within a fortnight I felt better, and after six weeks my nightmare was over. I still had memory lapses, but I could write fluently again – proof to me that the statin was the cause of my problems. The trouble is that after three months my cholesterol level shot up to over 8.0 and in the face of a heart attack, my doctor suggested I should go on a lower dose, back to the 40mg a day level.
So far I have had no recurrence of my mental problems, and my cholesterol level is this week back down at 6.0.
That's the point – statins do as they say on the packet and reduce cholesterol. As my case shows, there is no doubt about that positive effect.
Yet from my own experience, and that of many other people, as a quick Google on "statin and side effects" will show, there is a body of evidence which shows that statins, especially in high dosages, could affect you mentally and physically.
I am specifically not saying that everyone should stop taking statins, but I do think the medical profession should investigate the side-effects seriously and quickly, and make all reports public.
As for giving them to healthy people, the next step will be to make statins compulsory, and it will be the great fluoride-in-your-tapwater battle all over again. I know which side I will be on.
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9:30 AM
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