This Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Breaks Your Bones

This drug has been described as a miracle drug for high cholesterol. Some doctors even want to add it to our drinking water – at least make it mandatory for anyone over 50.

Almost everyone with high cholesterol is prescribed this drug.

But a new study from the Medical University of Vienna and published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases shows that these drugs increase your risk of a serious autoimmune bone condition by shocking 362%.

Your body breaks down your bones regularly to replace them with new stronger ones, but if it breaks them down quicker than they can be replaced, you are said to have osteoporosis. As a result, your bones are then too thin and brittle and break easily.

In 2006 and 2007, scientists collected all medical claims from almost 8 million Austrians. They isolated those who claimed for osteoporosis treatment and those who received statins for high cholesterol. They also picked people who matched them in age, sex and general health for comparison.

They were especially interested in those who had taken statins for at least one year; they wanted to see how long-term statin taking affected bone health.

They found that the statin-takers were on average 3.62 times more likely to have osteoporosis than non-statin-takers. Yikes!

The relationship between statins and osteoporosis was true for both men and women, but not for people taking very small doses.

In fact, those who took 10 mg or less per day had a smaller osteoporosis risk than the general population, but doctors almost never prescribe such a small amount.

Most statins started to pose a risk at 20 mg per day, making these drug takers almost twice as likely to develop osteoporosis.

A daily dosage of 40 mg saw the risk of developing osteoporosis skyrocket to over 5 times more when compared to people who didn’t take any statins.

So why does this happen?

During and after menopause, women are likely to develop osteoporosis because they have much lower levels of estrogen than at other times during their lives.

Estrogen is not the only sex hormone that has this effect; research shows that low levels of other female sex hormones, as well as low levels of testosterone in men, also play havoc with our bone density.

We usually think of cholesterol as something bad, but it is also a useful substance that is, among other things, one of the essential building blocks of sex hormones.

So, because statins artificially reduce our cholesterol, they interfere with the production of sex hormones, therefore raising the risk of weak brittle bones.

This is why it is a better idea to lower our cholesterol via natural methods like diet and exercise so that our bodies can reduce it in their own way.

And the easiest way to normalize cholesterol in no time is to cut out this ONE ingredient you didn’t even know you were consuming…