Me Blog!

About three years ago during a routine health check up I had a blood sample taken and sent off to be analysed. The results came back a few days later and I was told that my cholesterol level was 8.1. Apparently it is supposed to be somewhere between 4 and 5 or at least that’s what Padraig Harrington says on the Flora adverts.

After about a month I was also referred to a cardiovascular risk assesment clinic that does the rounds here in town every couple of months. This clinic also happens to be paid for by a certain large pharmaceutical company (the nurse is on their payroll). My first test with this roaming clinic was done with a little portable machine which after chugging away for a while announced that my cholesterol level was 5.5. Within 30 minutes of that little machine spewing out its results I had another blood sample taken by my G.P. which was sent off to be analysed properly in a lab. A few days later I was told that my cholesterol level was 8.6!

Hmm. Who do I trust? I leaned towards the actual laboratory analysis and not that little machine.

I like to consider myself fairly well informed and I certainly wasn’t going to panic at the results. But everyone else did. I was told I had to start taking cholesterol reducing drugs straight away. I begged to differ. I hate taking medication. Even something as supposedly simple as paracetemol I would take only if I had no other option. But nonetheless I took the medication as I was told and suffered rather horrific side effects. Grannymar left a comment on my old blog with a similar story. Within a few days I had incredibly painful cramps all over my body and I couldn’t sleep for any more than 20 minutes in every 24 hours.

After two months and another blood test the result was a cholesterol level of 8.1. Then the roaming clinic a few weeks later reported 8.6 and another blood test a few months later 8.6 and again at 8.1 and constantly between those two metrics for the last three years.

During that time I was prescribed three different types of cholesterol controlling medicine. All with varying levels of horrific side effects. So I just stopped taking them altogether.

At first I was given an anti-hyperlipidemic (Ezetrol) and then a statin and finally a combined anti-hyperlipidemic and statin called Inegy. One works on the liver to limit the production of cholesterol and the other on the intestine to block the absorption of fat. Ironically neither Inegy nor Ezetrol are produced by the company that sponsors the cardiovascular risk assessment clinic. No matter what way they were supposed to work I decided that the side effects were causing me such serious trouble that I had to stop taking them.

And I was glad that I did. Within a few days I was returning to normal. Then all of a sudden the cardiovascular risk assessment clinic disappeared. Last I heard from them was in January.

I tend to be cynical by nature and I am well aware the cholesterol medication is the profit leader for just about every major pharmaceutical company on the planet. But I often wondered if any of the pharmaceutical companies claims were to be believed. Especially having suffered the side effects first hand.

And then over the past few months stories start to appear.

It seems that the manufacturers of the very medicine I was prescribed supressed their trial results. So much so that the NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence – who decide what drugs are available on the NHS in the U.K.) think that they may be worthless!

Another study on the same medicine that I was prescribed showed that although they reduced the level of LDL (bad cholesterol), they do nothing about reducing the risk of stroke or heart attack caused by the build up of plaque in the arteries which is typically caused by LDL cholesterol (usually by a fatty diet and cigarette smoking).

There is more here in the New York Times and in Business Week.

Call me suspicious but would any of the links above be reponsible for the clinic keeping a low profile?

If you are curious as to who sponsors the clinic then here is a hint: Their recently introduced anti-smoking drug is being investigated into a link between taking it and suicide.