GTA Episode

[MDB]

My husband is on a low dose of Zocor and has complained about problems with his memory. This is a man who takes COQ10, and two clinically proven natural memory optimizing products. Two days ago he had what I believe, after reading Doc's site, was an epsiode of GTA. He and I were discussing this very issue this morning and I went on-line to do more research on statins and came across this site. My experience with doctors and medications has been that they are unaware of most of the side-effects of the meds they prescribe and so you have to do your own research. We simply have to get the word out to more people about the dangers of these medications.
As a professional involved exclusively in preventive health, I find that the amount of research I have to do into drugs and their side-effects is quite over-whelming at times. Working with individuals who are under a physician's care and often on not one, but several medications, can be daunting and frustrating as many of their health complaints are no longer realted to their original problem, but are the side effects of the medications they are taking. Of course, I can't advise them to stop taking their meds and many of them are in a state of near mental/emotional paralysis because they simply don't know what to do. Doctor's often frighten their patients into staying on medications and of course, no one wants a repeat of the problem that sent them to the doctor's office , so they often feel they have to stay on medication.
It's a slippery slope for the under-informed!
Keep up the good work, Doc!

[sos_group_owner]

Hi MDB,

My husband took Zocor (2 yrs), then Lipitor (5 yrs) and also took 100mg of CoQ10 daily. The 5th yr on Lipitor, the cardio increased his dose from 10mg to 20mg for no apparent reason. Looking back, that is when my husband had several bouts of TGA, in addition to several other side effects.

Your synopsis of how patients are treated today is "right on". Most doctors are in the dark about all the various statin side effects and just prescribe more meds to treat side effects. We did the whole route of being referred to a Neurologist, Neurospychologist, both of which mis-diagnosed Alzheimer's type dementia... and recommended even more drugs.

My husband stopped all statins 16 months ago. No more incidents of TGA, but still some short term memory loss. We no longer focus on lowering cholesterol. We focus on the inflammatory factors: homocysteine, CRP (C-Reactive Protein) and Lp (a) - Lipoprotein (a). Also control triglycerides using cinnamon.

Cinnamon also controls blood sugar for those that are diabetic.

It is very frustrating and yes, we need to do our own research. We are so fortunate that Dr Graveline truly understands just how powerful statins are and provides this forum, info on his website and his book.

Fran