Subject: RE: cholesterol medicines and exercise big john h - 2008-02-28 9:25 PM Mike The Bear, his statement of "but for some people who do not want to change their eating and exercise its an easy way to lower cholesterol" might sound mean but he is mostly correct. My best friend is a doctor and he said America is fat and lazy and poorly nutritioned. MANY people see a pill as a magic elixir to make them healthy. He said there are way too many people on statins who don't need to be - people with only marginally high total cholesterol, etc.. He says doctor's get paid to write scripts so they do. I asked my doc (my old doc) about taking zetia instead of a statin or the beenfits of red rice yeast and he basicly laughed at me and said take crestor. i refused. i started taking red rice yeast. i lowered my total cholesterol 100 points with NO statins. there are people who need them i suppose. i mean if you don't smoke, don't drink, have a great diet, exercise constantly and still have HIGH cholesterol (over 250) then I would think a statin would probably be ebenficial if plant sterols, red rice yeast, cold water fish oil, etc. didn't help you first I never said his post was mean; I said it was condescending. Velocomp didn't ask for alternatives to statins. He asked whether statins would affect his training. The post was condescending. I agree that the majority of people need to clean up their diet and exercise. But as I said and Velocomp confirmed, your own body makes 80-90% of its cholesterol. Eliminating cholesterol from your diet will only have a small effect, and it may even have no effect at all depending on what other factors are involved. There are complex mechanisms that cause the body to produce, and perhaps overproduce, cholesterol. The idea that cleaning up your diet will automatically lead to good heart health is oversimplified. |