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If you have high cholesterol levels, one of the first recommendations your doctor probably gave you was to diet and work out physically.<\/p>\nIf you have high cholesterol levels, one of the first recommendations your doctor probably gave you was to diet and work out physically.<\/p>\n
But then he\/she probably prescribed you the most common cholesterol lowering drugs \u2013 Statins \u2013 unknowingly that all the workout you\u2019d do after that would be mostly useless.<\/p>\n
Or so it seems, according to a disturbing study featured in today\u2019s article.<\/p>\n
In a 12- week study conducted at the University of Missouri on participants who had a history of health markers indicating metabolic disorders such as obesity, high cholesterol and other issues, researchers wanted to see the effects of combining exercise to a treatment plan using statin drugs.<\/p>\n
Research has shown that increasing physical activity can reduce the risk of someone with high cholesterol of having a heart attack by more than 50%. It also shows that statin drugs can in some cases be helpful in reducing high cholesterol, despite the dangerous side effects.<\/p>\n
[adrotate group=”5″]The expectation was that if statins \u2018improved\u2019 health and exercise does too, that applying both as part of a treatment plan would have an even bigger impact.<\/p>\n
The results were not only NOT what the researchers expected, but they were also disturbing.<\/p>\n
The participants in the study were separated into two groups. In one, the participants were prescribed 40mg of a popular statin drug. In the other, no drugs were taken. Both groups were assigned a supervised regimen of exercise 5 days a week.<\/p>\n
Muscle biopsies and other health indicators were taken at the beginning and the end of the study. <\/p>\n
The exercise-only group saw what researchers considered a significant improvement in muscle health- over 10% on average.<\/p>\n
However, the group taking the drugs saw a less than 1% improvement, despite being on a similar diet and exercising at the same levels.<\/p>\n
This indicates that the improvements that could be realized through exercise are all but undone when statin drugs are introduced into the body.<\/p>\n
Instead of dangerous statin drugs, we recommend using simple lifestyle changes to get your cholesterol level under control. <\/p>\n