I made the decision yesterday to unilaterally stop taking Lipitor. I’m 79, and losing short-term memory rapidly. I’ve never been one to take supplements because my mother taught us to eat, and provided, real food, even though it was not always easy. Fresh fish are expensive, so I don’t have a work-around for that.
Smart move. I am not a medical doctor, as you all know. So none of this is medical advice. But statins are not safe. I do not know if there are correlations between statins and short-term memory loss--am not totally sure that you are implying that here--but the "unintended consequences" that are downstream of pharmaceutical interventions are often extreme.
Fresh fish is expensive, indeed. But some things are free. Movement. Sunlight. Taking walks outdoors as often as possible is an extraordinarily valuable health intervention that we can all do, unless we are literally incarcerated, or unable to walk.
Seemingly unrelated, but in the spirit of "get off the meds": When I was a professor, many of Evergreen's students were on mood-disrupting (or "enhancing") drugs, until suddenly that switched to many of them being on cross-sex hormones (because I ran field trips every quarter, I collected health histories from students every quarter as well, so saw the changes happen.) While it was still speed (for ADHD) for the boys and anti-anxiety and anti-depressants for the girls, many of whom had been on these things since elementary school (I wish that I was kidding here), professors were advised by the administration to never ever recommend that students go off their meds, because being in a "new place" (away at college) was enough trauma for them, and they needed to stay on their meds. I ignored the administration on this front (among others), and counseled many students--those who asked me, which was many--to get off those meds. Many of them did. It wasn't always easy. But none of them, so far as I know, went back on them again. And they were better for it.
As far as "mood-disrupting" drugs go, doesn't that also apply to hormonal contraception? There are many girls who get put on the pill early in puberty so you don't even know what the normal baseline would be.
Sara, I've heard much about statins and have decided that if someone makes a decision for themselves to stop taking it, that's okay. It sounds like you've weighed the possible consequences and benefits to stopping.
Where I'm very careful is in avoiding telling others to stop (I'm still unsure if they help or harm. Just like I am RE the 81mg aspirin debate) and in particular, telling my husband to stop.
I've left that up to him. He's 71 (I'm younger than he is, 60s - a child bride I was :) ). He's been on statins for 35+ years because his cholesterol and/or others in his lipid profile were not optimal according to the accepted medical evaluations.
Steve (my husband) is an electrical engineer, still working, still enjoying his job. The end of July, he collapsed at his work station and his workmates called an ambulance. He had suffered an ischemic stroke. And no, he is not vaccinated.
He spent 5 days in the hospital (not sure he needed to be in for 5 days, but...) and suffered absolutely no permanent damage/effects from the clot in his brain. The neurologist said this was "atypical" and his recovery was "remarkable". Yes, for which I'm so thankful. He was back to work 8 days later.
They scanned his carotids and heart while he was admitted and there were not blockages (so much for his high/bad lipids [which btw I don't think his #s are that bad, really]). So what did they do? Put him on Plavix (for now), and doubled his statins... from 40 mg Simvastatin to 80 mg Lipitor (Simvastatin at 80 mg is not recommended, thus the change). And keep taking that baby aspirin, of course. I honestly believe they do this rotely. They couldn't explain where this clot came from (cryptogenic they fall back on, but liked to blame it on 'cardiac' - yet his heart is great according to all the testing), so they prescribe what they're taught are prophylactic. Just in case. Just so we don't get sued. Just _____( fill in the blank).
Do I personally think 80 mg of Lipitor is excessive? Yes, I do. I thought 40 mg of Simva was excessive! Steve know this, but I won't ask him to stop taking it. That has to be his decision and his alone. If he stopped and something terrible happened, I would be left asking "what if?". Even knowing that a stoke happened despite statin + 81 mg, I'd still be left with "what if he hadn't stopped" if another incident occurred.
You see, our 25 year old son David died 2 years ago, after we all got Covid. (Heather knows our story) I'm left with the remainder of my life asking "what if?s" From What if I had told him/made him take Ivermectin? to What if we hadn't taken him to the hospital and instead kept caring for him at home? I could have given him "the paste", but I didn't. What if I had?
There are times when losing your child feels ruinous, but adding constant self-blame to it would be unbearable. When those thoughts come, I tamp them down now.
I think that's sufficient to explain why I won't ask Steve to ditch his statin. (I'm not even sure about the Plavix? Who knows about that either!) I lost my son. I don't want to lose my husband. If he decided for himself to stop, I would be alright with that. I'd be at peace with it.
Does this make sense?
I think it's perfectly fine for you to question the benefit-harm of your Rx and decide what you did opt to do.
PS The cardiologist and the neurologist both told Steve to begin following the Mediterranean Diet. He said, "I don't like fish". ;) Yup, he's one of those that Heather's Selection notes. Neither physician recommended fish oil, nor Vascepa. Thankfully!
I am so sorry your son didn’t isn’t make it. There are ALWAYS those “what ifs”. In our family, in the last 2 years, three of my nephews in the 50 to 60 age group have died a sudden death, cardiac. None with active Covid, but all with recent infection or vaccination. The families were devastated, of course, as all are, and have questions no autopsy could satisfy.
As for the statins, I’m 5 years out from a cardiac stent, and now I have exacerbations with A-fib. I’m 79, but still prefer to live as long as I am up and about, and consider myself “healthy”. I worked as an RN until four years ago. I hear and read the dangers of statins, and just think I’ll stop the Lipitor and go from there. My new Internal Medicine provider wears a mask, and said “they” can stay ahead of the curve with Covid vaccines, unlike the flu vax, which is 6 months behind. I ask myself if I should return. Maybe I would be better served to stay bare-footed and in the kitchen, or outside scratching and petting my cat.
They're at it again here. Mask mandates from RWJ for both its hospitals and provider facilities. So our FP has to mandate masks for patients in the office. No choice. Funny that RWJ is also pushing the vaccine for 6 months (!) and older "In its statement, RWJBarnabas Health encouraged all staff and patients six months or older to get the COVID-19 vaccine", yet our RWJ-affiliated FP has never once objected to us declining it. Even last week when my husband was in for his annual physical.
I had just this morning watched Joe Rogan’s YouTube interview with Dr. Aseem Mulhatra on statins, and the doctor mentioned side effects that might could be attributed to statins, and this was among them. Many of the community peoples’ comments included memory loss as a consequence of taking statins.
May I take this opportunity to tell you how very, very much I enjoy and learn from you and Dr. Bret on Darkhouse? Ihave the sweatshirt to prove it, and look forward to wearing it this winter, hoping to elicit some curiosity and conversations.
I was put on anti-depressants (off label) for insomnia as a young mom. My daughter was about 18 mo. old, so sleeping through the night reliably, and she had just weaned herself from nursing. No one told me that insomnia could be caused by the hormonal changes associated with cessation of nursing. I was also never told that these drugs are dependency forming. I was not told about any side-effects at all, nor was I given any counsel about lifestyle changes I could make that would help. After many years of "set and forget," I began to question what I was doing with these drugs and tried to taper with the advice of a medical practitioner. Even w/o going "cold turkey," I still suffered horrifying withdrawal that completely upended my life for a while. Honestly, I have never felt worse. I had to go back on the meds because I could not live with the withdrawal. That pretty much ended any trust of pharma and much of my trust in the medical field in general. I am on my second tapering attempt now, and it has taken over a year to decrease from 50 to 12.5 mg. The final stages involve taking a liquid form of the antidepressant so I can taper mg by mg. I had to research on my own to find a psychiatrist who specializes is helping people get OFF meds and use other means to control their depression/anxiety, etc. Naturally, none of this is covered by my insurance so I'm paying entirely out of pocket. I'm one of the lucky ones. To anyone reading this, if you encourage people in your life to get off SSRIs, please know that without adequate support and a plan to go VERY slowly (especially if one has been taking them for longer than 6-9 mo.), the withdrawal can be deeply unpleasant and distressing. I'm not saying don't do it, but proceed with caution and lots of research.
It's a terrible struggle to come off of many of these meds, and so many are on SSRIs.
One of our daughters had a new family practitioner run thyroid levels on her and they were low(ish). He recommended folate and B12, and guess what? She feels a marked improvement and mentions this to others as a possible benign aid.
That’s good to hear. My daughter has been on SSRI for about a year. It has really helped her anxiety and panic attacks, but I don’t want to keep her on it too long. Teens are very resistant to the easy solutions, eat good food, get outside and off the damn phone.
They do help many with anxiety and PAs, but they end up being lifelong. Our daughter is no longer a teen and actually was an adult when she began taking SSRIs. I'm not surprised that the folate and vitamin helped her. She's a picky eater like her dad and I'm sure that isn't helpful.
It was just nice that a doctor was interested in looking for a way to help beyond just pushing pharmaceuticals.
Methylfolate specifically seems to help with some forms of depression, which may lead one to consider that it's not actually the folic acid, it may be the methyl groups that are lacking. Trimethylglycine might be worth a look.
This physician was suspicious, tested her for thyroid function and it was low-ish.
He put it all together and suggested folate and B12 aiming to improve thyroid function and prior anxiety and PSs. She said it seems he got it right because she feels great improvement. This was a success without more pharmaceuticals getting involved.
Let’s see a Pharma company makes one drug, funds fraudulent studies to prove the drug is a miracle drug and then demonizes other options? I feel like I have heard this story before.
The heart group is aptly nicknamed A-Ha! (As in “A-Ha: that’s who’s responsible for this total mess in healthy heart recommendations.”) Wonderful column, Heather. It’s been a long time since I’ve trusted anything the FDA or the CDC or any other of the alphabet-soup agencies approves of. If something says, “not approved by the FDA” I figure it’s not only probably safe but also effective. The world is truly upside down. Same with the jab - which I was admittedly really nervous about at first so decided to wait for at least three months to see how things went since Paul Offit told Peter Attia that he (Paul) was going to wait that long. Then I heard that New York city’s Krispy Kreme shops would give one a free donut for the rest of the year if you showed your vaccine card and I just knew the jab was more than just a way to keep our health. Nothing I’ve heard or read since has changed my mind. And most of my ability to stay away from all that nonsense has been because of you and Bret and Dark Horse -I can’t thank you enough.
For those concerned about statins, I highly recommend Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s book The Clot Thickens. Solid science and great wit, not a bad combination. Like Heather’s column here!
Thank you for this. Herbal medicines face a similar issue. "Science" tries to pinpoint what "they" believe works and do "the science" with that single ingredient. When it doesn't work, they shout, "it doesn't work, trust us, we know!" They refuse to step back and look at things as a whole. I can go on and on and on. Thank you to both you and Bret. You two have helped to keep me sane the past few years.
Thank you, and you are welcome. I remember first considering herbal medicine explicitly when I was in grad school in the 1990s in Michigan. I was TAing a class called Practical Botany, and the botanist/mathematician professor (George Estabrook) was a big fan of ethnobotany and ancient wisdom; his work was in the rocky hills of Portugal, among people who were still doing most things as they had several generations earlier. So along with having us have the students make ferments and design gardens and force bulbs, he would sometimes go on (positive) rants about herbal treatments, and about how daft it was to force modern, time-untested treatments on people who were doing just fine, thank you very much. He unfortunately died far too young a few years back; I have wondered these last 3+ years what he would be making of all of this.
Without ignoring the thesis of this piece regarding the Pharma machinations, I am inclined to believe the Ray Peat metabolic health folks who have long warned about the danger of PUFAs, including Omega 3s.
Interesting. I know almost nothing about the research / story on omega-3s, tending to ignore, as I do, the kind of reductionist thinking that assures us that the single most important molecule has finally been discovered that will cure all of our ills. (I do wonder, for instance, on what basis "fatty fish" were understood to be the key to the Inuits' good health, as opposed to whales, seals, or seabirds. My suspicion is that it was understood, by whomever / whatever it is that turns health advice into a global phenomenon, that convincing WEIRDos to start eating whales, seals, or seabirds was not going to work. So they chose the part of the Inuit diet that we already have a taste for, or at least some of us do).
All of that said--the possibility that omega-3s in isolation from the food in which they normally occur are actually harmful is news to me, but not shocking. Personally I wouldn't take Vascepa (obviously), or fish oil supplements, precisely because we do not know what we do not know, and ingesting single molecules absent the environments in which they evolved, the environments in which our bodies have a long history digesting and dismantling them, will sometimes have unforeseen consequences.
Speaking of developing a taste! I was a travel nurse for a while, and one assignment was to Kotzebue, Alaska. In March, one of the indigenous Intuits brought raw whale blubber, diced, in a zip lock bag, for all of us temporary workers to sample. Try as I might, she would not defer to my declination, so, to avoid an embarrassment, I took a piece. I had to cheek it and wait until she left to spit it out. She said the people of her village were repairing and preparing their tools and vessels to begin the whaling season. I asked her if she enjoyed it, and she laughed robustly (and she was a statuesque woman), and said, “What do you think??? I’m an Eskimo!!!.
I am receptive to the Ray Peat metabolic health adherents because of the recent authoritarian pandemic madness. Peat's ideas challenged conventional wisdom, advocated scientific rigor, and understood the corruption of pharma (e.g. recognizing that increases in serotonin are likely tied to increased depression). Read Ray Peat on the origins of SSRI development--it will sound nutty, but according to Peat, SSRIs came from CIA research and the agency's desire to find a compound that did the opposite of LSD (which had a pro-dopamine effect, encouraged creativity, but made people less obedient). (https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/serotonin-disease-aging-inflammation.shtml)
I'm not suggesting the foregoing links are definitive as to anything, but if you dig in, you will get to a familiar place. That place is recognizing the reality that people cite studies for propositions not backed up by the actual results, and as Heather Heying has noted, poor study design, execution, and material omissions regarding conflicts of interest.
ugh... well, anecdotally, I've been taking a krill oil supplement for a few years now. My hdl was so very low, albeit active and cycling ~120 miles per week. It went from 38 to 60 in 3 months where it has remained. Will there eventually be unintended health consequences? Perhaps, but not taking it puts me back to square one. That said, no Big Pharma meds for me (like the bisphosphonates they are so eager to shove down our throats). It's exhausting to remain so vigilant but here we are.
You probably won't have any health consequences. The studies were flawed, but that doesn't mean the omegas the Inuit consumed were the lone cause of their higher mortality and stroke rates. The amount of fish consumed was probably much higher than we'd imagine or consume ourselves, and other things in their diet were/are sparse i.e., vegs et al. Hard to imagine that a moderate amount of krill oil is harmful.
I think my greatest UGH with all this is the how predictive HDL levels are as to stroke and CVA. If you see my comment here discussing my husband's recent stoke, you'll see that it all seems to be a guess that's become MEDICAL FACT. His HDL has always been 40, 42, 43. For 3 decades+ they've been testing for that. Wasn't that suppose to mean his arteries were being clogged for decades? Well, his carotid and coronary arteries were paten/clear after they tested post-stroke.
I suspect these "facts" about lipids are untrustworthy.
Ugh is right. It can be exhausting trying to watch out for the watchers...
In their quest to make sure we all "trust the FDA/Medical Societies/Public Health they seem to be making it MORE obvious to not trust anything they promote. That is, if you have critical thinking skills and any common sense!
The trouble with science is that it is so messy and hard to understand. Better to go with the marketers. No equivocation there! I get to feel good about myself INSTANTLY, no research required!
@Doomberg wrote about an allegedly ground-breaking cancer medication a few months ago. Seeing something fishy (pun intended) the team came up with a framework to evaluate such claims.
my doctor tested both my husband and I this past spring for our annual whatevers and one of her recommendations based on the results is that we needed more fish oil. I've never thought about this whole thing around fish oil, but I can definitely see how this may all be bs.
Hi Heather, unrelated to your post but related to your podcast my husband seems to have also had the Covid bout Bret has had recently. We are both unvaxxed but had continued ivermectin prophylactically. He tested negative but all his symptoms lead us to believe it was Covid. I did not get it although we live in a small condo. I think my vitamin D was much higher as I was spending LOTS of time in the sun without sunscreen this year and unfortunately his work does not allow the same benefit. His sore throat had cough lingered for almost 2 weeks despite a round of daily ivermectin and the other supplements. We also live in WA so it was intriguing to me when I heard Bret’s story on your podcast and I’m assuming you didn’t get it either. Any thoughts on why? When we had it in 2021 we all got it (us and our daughter) and we were living in a much larger home. Lastly, thank you both! Your podcast and Natural Selections are weekly blessings.
Yep. You are right. Who can a guy trust. I trust you two a lot. One of the many things I love about you two is that you admit when you are wrong, update, AND admit it.
On topics like this, you may want to check out Examine.com. They are actually more nerdy than you two and that's hard to do. They spend less effort on opinions and more effort reviewing and cataloging studies. I'd be surprised if you don't find them honest actors.
There is by the way another pharma fish oil called Lovaza which also contains DHA ethyl esters, the advertising looks very similar - without the stink lines on the fish. "The most common adverse reactions (incidence >3% and greater than placebo) were eructation, dyspepsia, and taste perversion." It seems to be off-patent now.
Dosage is 4 capsules a day, 120 capsules cost $881+ according to a quick google. Maybe compare that to the local Sushi place and avoid taste perversion.
I made the decision yesterday to unilaterally stop taking Lipitor. I’m 79, and losing short-term memory rapidly. I’ve never been one to take supplements because my mother taught us to eat, and provided, real food, even though it was not always easy. Fresh fish are expensive, so I don’t have a work-around for that.
Smart move. I am not a medical doctor, as you all know. So none of this is medical advice. But statins are not safe. I do not know if there are correlations between statins and short-term memory loss--am not totally sure that you are implying that here--but the "unintended consequences" that are downstream of pharmaceutical interventions are often extreme.
Fresh fish is expensive, indeed. But some things are free. Movement. Sunlight. Taking walks outdoors as often as possible is an extraordinarily valuable health intervention that we can all do, unless we are literally incarcerated, or unable to walk.
Seemingly unrelated, but in the spirit of "get off the meds": When I was a professor, many of Evergreen's students were on mood-disrupting (or "enhancing") drugs, until suddenly that switched to many of them being on cross-sex hormones (because I ran field trips every quarter, I collected health histories from students every quarter as well, so saw the changes happen.) While it was still speed (for ADHD) for the boys and anti-anxiety and anti-depressants for the girls, many of whom had been on these things since elementary school (I wish that I was kidding here), professors were advised by the administration to never ever recommend that students go off their meds, because being in a "new place" (away at college) was enough trauma for them, and they needed to stay on their meds. I ignored the administration on this front (among others), and counseled many students--those who asked me, which was many--to get off those meds. Many of them did. It wasn't always easy. But none of them, so far as I know, went back on them again. And they were better for it.
As far as "mood-disrupting" drugs go, doesn't that also apply to hormonal contraception? There are many girls who get put on the pill early in puberty so you don't even know what the normal baseline would be.
Sara, I've heard much about statins and have decided that if someone makes a decision for themselves to stop taking it, that's okay. It sounds like you've weighed the possible consequences and benefits to stopping.
Where I'm very careful is in avoiding telling others to stop (I'm still unsure if they help or harm. Just like I am RE the 81mg aspirin debate) and in particular, telling my husband to stop.
I've left that up to him. He's 71 (I'm younger than he is, 60s - a child bride I was :) ). He's been on statins for 35+ years because his cholesterol and/or others in his lipid profile were not optimal according to the accepted medical evaluations.
Steve (my husband) is an electrical engineer, still working, still enjoying his job. The end of July, he collapsed at his work station and his workmates called an ambulance. He had suffered an ischemic stroke. And no, he is not vaccinated.
He spent 5 days in the hospital (not sure he needed to be in for 5 days, but...) and suffered absolutely no permanent damage/effects from the clot in his brain. The neurologist said this was "atypical" and his recovery was "remarkable". Yes, for which I'm so thankful. He was back to work 8 days later.
They scanned his carotids and heart while he was admitted and there were not blockages (so much for his high/bad lipids [which btw I don't think his #s are that bad, really]). So what did they do? Put him on Plavix (for now), and doubled his statins... from 40 mg Simvastatin to 80 mg Lipitor (Simvastatin at 80 mg is not recommended, thus the change). And keep taking that baby aspirin, of course. I honestly believe they do this rotely. They couldn't explain where this clot came from (cryptogenic they fall back on, but liked to blame it on 'cardiac' - yet his heart is great according to all the testing), so they prescribe what they're taught are prophylactic. Just in case. Just so we don't get sued. Just _____( fill in the blank).
Do I personally think 80 mg of Lipitor is excessive? Yes, I do. I thought 40 mg of Simva was excessive! Steve know this, but I won't ask him to stop taking it. That has to be his decision and his alone. If he stopped and something terrible happened, I would be left asking "what if?". Even knowing that a stoke happened despite statin + 81 mg, I'd still be left with "what if he hadn't stopped" if another incident occurred.
You see, our 25 year old son David died 2 years ago, after we all got Covid. (Heather knows our story) I'm left with the remainder of my life asking "what if?s" From What if I had told him/made him take Ivermectin? to What if we hadn't taken him to the hospital and instead kept caring for him at home? I could have given him "the paste", but I didn't. What if I had?
There are times when losing your child feels ruinous, but adding constant self-blame to it would be unbearable. When those thoughts come, I tamp them down now.
I think that's sufficient to explain why I won't ask Steve to ditch his statin. (I'm not even sure about the Plavix? Who knows about that either!) I lost my son. I don't want to lose my husband. If he decided for himself to stop, I would be alright with that. I'd be at peace with it.
Does this make sense?
I think it's perfectly fine for you to question the benefit-harm of your Rx and decide what you did opt to do.
PS The cardiologist and the neurologist both told Steve to begin following the Mediterranean Diet. He said, "I don't like fish". ;) Yup, he's one of those that Heather's Selection notes. Neither physician recommended fish oil, nor Vascepa. Thankfully!
I am so sorry your son didn’t isn’t make it. There are ALWAYS those “what ifs”. In our family, in the last 2 years, three of my nephews in the 50 to 60 age group have died a sudden death, cardiac. None with active Covid, but all with recent infection or vaccination. The families were devastated, of course, as all are, and have questions no autopsy could satisfy.
As for the statins, I’m 5 years out from a cardiac stent, and now I have exacerbations with A-fib. I’m 79, but still prefer to live as long as I am up and about, and consider myself “healthy”. I worked as an RN until four years ago. I hear and read the dangers of statins, and just think I’ll stop the Lipitor and go from there. My new Internal Medicine provider wears a mask, and said “they” can stay ahead of the curve with Covid vaccines, unlike the flu vax, which is 6 months behind. I ask myself if I should return. Maybe I would be better served to stay bare-footed and in the kitchen, or outside scratching and petting my cat.
They're at it again here. Mask mandates from RWJ for both its hospitals and provider facilities. So our FP has to mandate masks for patients in the office. No choice. Funny that RWJ is also pushing the vaccine for 6 months (!) and older "In its statement, RWJBarnabas Health encouraged all staff and patients six months or older to get the COVID-19 vaccine", yet our RWJ-affiliated FP has never once objected to us declining it. Even last week when my husband was in for his annual physical.
https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/health/2023/09/29/covid-mask-mandates-rwjbarnabas-health-hospitals/71007567007/
Frozen fish would probably be fine, or nature's fish oil capsule: Roe (fish eggs).
I had just this morning watched Joe Rogan’s YouTube interview with Dr. Aseem Mulhatra on statins, and the doctor mentioned side effects that might could be attributed to statins, and this was among them. Many of the community peoples’ comments included memory loss as a consequence of taking statins.
May I take this opportunity to tell you how very, very much I enjoy and learn from you and Dr. Bret on Darkhouse? Ihave the sweatshirt to prove it, and look forward to wearing it this winter, hoping to elicit some curiosity and conversations.
I was put on anti-depressants (off label) for insomnia as a young mom. My daughter was about 18 mo. old, so sleeping through the night reliably, and she had just weaned herself from nursing. No one told me that insomnia could be caused by the hormonal changes associated with cessation of nursing. I was also never told that these drugs are dependency forming. I was not told about any side-effects at all, nor was I given any counsel about lifestyle changes I could make that would help. After many years of "set and forget," I began to question what I was doing with these drugs and tried to taper with the advice of a medical practitioner. Even w/o going "cold turkey," I still suffered horrifying withdrawal that completely upended my life for a while. Honestly, I have never felt worse. I had to go back on the meds because I could not live with the withdrawal. That pretty much ended any trust of pharma and much of my trust in the medical field in general. I am on my second tapering attempt now, and it has taken over a year to decrease from 50 to 12.5 mg. The final stages involve taking a liquid form of the antidepressant so I can taper mg by mg. I had to research on my own to find a psychiatrist who specializes is helping people get OFF meds and use other means to control their depression/anxiety, etc. Naturally, none of this is covered by my insurance so I'm paying entirely out of pocket. I'm one of the lucky ones. To anyone reading this, if you encourage people in your life to get off SSRIs, please know that without adequate support and a plan to go VERY slowly (especially if one has been taking them for longer than 6-9 mo.), the withdrawal can be deeply unpleasant and distressing. I'm not saying don't do it, but proceed with caution and lots of research.
It's a terrible struggle to come off of many of these meds, and so many are on SSRIs.
One of our daughters had a new family practitioner run thyroid levels on her and they were low(ish). He recommended folate and B12, and guess what? She feels a marked improvement and mentions this to others as a possible benign aid.
That’s good to hear. My daughter has been on SSRI for about a year. It has really helped her anxiety and panic attacks, but I don’t want to keep her on it too long. Teens are very resistant to the easy solutions, eat good food, get outside and off the damn phone.
They do help many with anxiety and PAs, but they end up being lifelong. Our daughter is no longer a teen and actually was an adult when she began taking SSRIs. I'm not surprised that the folate and vitamin helped her. She's a picky eater like her dad and I'm sure that isn't helpful.
It was just nice that a doctor was interested in looking for a way to help beyond just pushing pharmaceuticals.
Methylfolate specifically seems to help with some forms of depression, which may lead one to consider that it's not actually the folic acid, it may be the methyl groups that are lacking. Trimethylglycine might be worth a look.
This physician was suspicious, tested her for thyroid function and it was low-ish.
He put it all together and suggested folate and B12 aiming to improve thyroid function and prior anxiety and PSs. She said it seems he got it right because she feels great improvement. This was a success without more pharmaceuticals getting involved.
That's a good physician.
Let’s see a Pharma company makes one drug, funds fraudulent studies to prove the drug is a miracle drug and then demonizes other options? I feel like I have heard this story before.
Precisely.
The heart group is aptly nicknamed A-Ha! (As in “A-Ha: that’s who’s responsible for this total mess in healthy heart recommendations.”) Wonderful column, Heather. It’s been a long time since I’ve trusted anything the FDA or the CDC or any other of the alphabet-soup agencies approves of. If something says, “not approved by the FDA” I figure it’s not only probably safe but also effective. The world is truly upside down. Same with the jab - which I was admittedly really nervous about at first so decided to wait for at least three months to see how things went since Paul Offit told Peter Attia that he (Paul) was going to wait that long. Then I heard that New York city’s Krispy Kreme shops would give one a free donut for the rest of the year if you showed your vaccine card and I just knew the jab was more than just a way to keep our health. Nothing I’ve heard or read since has changed my mind. And most of my ability to stay away from all that nonsense has been because of you and Bret and Dark Horse -I can’t thank you enough.
For those concerned about statins, I highly recommend Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s book The Clot Thickens. Solid science and great wit, not a bad combination. Like Heather’s column here!
Thank you for this. Herbal medicines face a similar issue. "Science" tries to pinpoint what "they" believe works and do "the science" with that single ingredient. When it doesn't work, they shout, "it doesn't work, trust us, we know!" They refuse to step back and look at things as a whole. I can go on and on and on. Thank you to both you and Bret. You two have helped to keep me sane the past few years.
Thank you, and you are welcome. I remember first considering herbal medicine explicitly when I was in grad school in the 1990s in Michigan. I was TAing a class called Practical Botany, and the botanist/mathematician professor (George Estabrook) was a big fan of ethnobotany and ancient wisdom; his work was in the rocky hills of Portugal, among people who were still doing most things as they had several generations earlier. So along with having us have the students make ferments and design gardens and force bulbs, he would sometimes go on (positive) rants about herbal treatments, and about how daft it was to force modern, time-untested treatments on people who were doing just fine, thank you very much. He unfortunately died far too young a few years back; I have wondered these last 3+ years what he would be making of all of this.
My Goodness, that mineral oil placebo group was thoroughly abused. Shameful.
The increases in interleukin-6, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and 48.7% in interleukin-1β?!
"Not so fast, buster." Inflammation overload!
48.7% % for a pro-inflammatory cytokine? Wow...
They ought to have know this would happen with mineral oil. Oh, that's right. Silly me. I'm sure this was by design.
Again, shameful.
Without ignoring the thesis of this piece regarding the Pharma machinations, I am inclined to believe the Ray Peat metabolic health folks who have long warned about the danger of PUFAs, including Omega 3s.
Here's Georgi Dinkov (Haidut) on the subject:
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/pufa-are-potent-immunosuppresive-agents.39389/
*edit* - lol @ Endnote 3 - Dr. Demento!
Interesting. I know almost nothing about the research / story on omega-3s, tending to ignore, as I do, the kind of reductionist thinking that assures us that the single most important molecule has finally been discovered that will cure all of our ills. (I do wonder, for instance, on what basis "fatty fish" were understood to be the key to the Inuits' good health, as opposed to whales, seals, or seabirds. My suspicion is that it was understood, by whomever / whatever it is that turns health advice into a global phenomenon, that convincing WEIRDos to start eating whales, seals, or seabirds was not going to work. So they chose the part of the Inuit diet that we already have a taste for, or at least some of us do).
All of that said--the possibility that omega-3s in isolation from the food in which they normally occur are actually harmful is news to me, but not shocking. Personally I wouldn't take Vascepa (obviously), or fish oil supplements, precisely because we do not know what we do not know, and ingesting single molecules absent the environments in which they evolved, the environments in which our bodies have a long history digesting and dismantling them, will sometimes have unforeseen consequences.
Speaking of developing a taste! I was a travel nurse for a while, and one assignment was to Kotzebue, Alaska. In March, one of the indigenous Intuits brought raw whale blubber, diced, in a zip lock bag, for all of us temporary workers to sample. Try as I might, she would not defer to my declination, so, to avoid an embarrassment, I took a piece. I had to cheek it and wait until she left to spit it out. She said the people of her village were repairing and preparing their tools and vessels to begin the whaling season. I asked her if she enjoyed it, and she laughed robustly (and she was a statuesque woman), and said, “What do you think??? I’m an Eskimo!!!.
I am receptive to the Ray Peat metabolic health adherents because of the recent authoritarian pandemic madness. Peat's ideas challenged conventional wisdom, advocated scientific rigor, and understood the corruption of pharma (e.g. recognizing that increases in serotonin are likely tied to increased depression). Read Ray Peat on the origins of SSRI development--it will sound nutty, but according to Peat, SSRIs came from CIA research and the agency's desire to find a compound that did the opposite of LSD (which had a pro-dopamine effect, encouraged creativity, but made people less obedient). (https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/serotonin-disease-aging-inflammation.shtml)
And another example is the notion that first nations peoples were healthy. They consumed a high PUFA diet. See, e.g., noting high rates of stroke https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/popular-fish-oil-study-deeply-flawed-new-research-says-1.2637702
I'm not suggesting the foregoing links are definitive as to anything, but if you dig in, you will get to a familiar place. That place is recognizing the reality that people cite studies for propositions not backed up by the actual results, and as Heather Heying has noted, poor study design, execution, and material omissions regarding conflicts of interest.
ugh... well, anecdotally, I've been taking a krill oil supplement for a few years now. My hdl was so very low, albeit active and cycling ~120 miles per week. It went from 38 to 60 in 3 months where it has remained. Will there eventually be unintended health consequences? Perhaps, but not taking it puts me back to square one. That said, no Big Pharma meds for me (like the bisphosphonates they are so eager to shove down our throats). It's exhausting to remain so vigilant but here we are.
You probably won't have any health consequences. The studies were flawed, but that doesn't mean the omegas the Inuit consumed were the lone cause of their higher mortality and stroke rates. The amount of fish consumed was probably much higher than we'd imagine or consume ourselves, and other things in their diet were/are sparse i.e., vegs et al. Hard to imagine that a moderate amount of krill oil is harmful.
I think my greatest UGH with all this is the how predictive HDL levels are as to stroke and CVA. If you see my comment here discussing my husband's recent stoke, you'll see that it all seems to be a guess that's become MEDICAL FACT. His HDL has always been 40, 42, 43. For 3 decades+ they've been testing for that. Wasn't that suppose to mean his arteries were being clogged for decades? Well, his carotid and coronary arteries were paten/clear after they tested post-stroke.
I suspect these "facts" about lipids are untrustworthy.
Ugh is right. It can be exhausting trying to watch out for the watchers...
In their quest to make sure we all "trust the FDA/Medical Societies/Public Health they seem to be making it MORE obvious to not trust anything they promote. That is, if you have critical thinking skills and any common sense!
The trouble with science is that it is so messy and hard to understand. Better to go with the marketers. No equivocation there! I get to feel good about myself INSTANTLY, no research required!
@Doomberg wrote about an allegedly ground-breaking cancer medication a few months ago. Seeing something fishy (pun intended) the team came up with a framework to evaluate such claims.
1. Who is involved?
2. Where was it published?
3. Where are we in the scientific process?
4. What is the scientific context?
5. What can we expect next?
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/hold-my-beer
my doctor tested both my husband and I this past spring for our annual whatevers and one of her recommendations based on the results is that we needed more fish oil. I've never thought about this whole thing around fish oil, but I can definitely see how this may all be bs.
Hi Heather, unrelated to your post but related to your podcast my husband seems to have also had the Covid bout Bret has had recently. We are both unvaxxed but had continued ivermectin prophylactically. He tested negative but all his symptoms lead us to believe it was Covid. I did not get it although we live in a small condo. I think my vitamin D was much higher as I was spending LOTS of time in the sun without sunscreen this year and unfortunately his work does not allow the same benefit. His sore throat had cough lingered for almost 2 weeks despite a round of daily ivermectin and the other supplements. We also live in WA so it was intriguing to me when I heard Bret’s story on your podcast and I’m assuming you didn’t get it either. Any thoughts on why? When we had it in 2021 we all got it (us and our daughter) and we were living in a much larger home. Lastly, thank you both! Your podcast and Natural Selections are weekly blessings.
Yep. You are right. Who can a guy trust. I trust you two a lot. One of the many things I love about you two is that you admit when you are wrong, update, AND admit it.
On topics like this, you may want to check out Examine.com. They are actually more nerdy than you two and that's hard to do. They spend less effort on opinions and more effort reviewing and cataloging studies. I'd be surprised if you don't find them honest actors.
Interesting- I tossed all supplements about 10 years ago. I prefer food source.
There is by the way another pharma fish oil called Lovaza which also contains DHA ethyl esters, the advertising looks very similar - without the stink lines on the fish. "The most common adverse reactions (incidence >3% and greater than placebo) were eructation, dyspepsia, and taste perversion." It seems to be off-patent now.
Dosage is 4 capsules a day, 120 capsules cost $881+ according to a quick google. Maybe compare that to the local Sushi place and avoid taste perversion.