When any of you hit the age of 40's, 50's, 60's or even as young as 30's, you will be almost certain, to be advised by doctors, to take cholesterol lowering drug. One really good drug which is a big hit around the world, especially Malaysia, LIPITOR. Sounds familiar? This drug, is only one of the many statin drugs sold in the market, and there are a number of other cholesterol lowering drugs.
This hypothesis, has mesmerized scientists, doctors and the general public for years, exuding a siren song that none can resist, dragging us all to our doom on the sharp rocks of illogicality. When you look at the eye-watering profits being generated, it hasn't exactly dragged pharmaceutical companies to their doom, YET. Indeed, once everyone believed that a high cholesterol level was the single cause of heart disease, the gold rush was on to discover drugs, that could lower cholesterol levels. A highly successful god rush, lead by big pharmaceutical companies.
Merck, for many years, the world's biggest pharmaceutical company, managed to obtain lovastatin, from the US army. Mankind has entered 'The age of Statin'. Pfizer, who bought the marketing rights from Warner lambert, for the drug called Atorvastatin, which is world best selling drug, with profits which would make your eyes water.
Bayer, mixed the wrong chemicals together and discovered cerivastatin, so powerful that it allegedly killed hundreds of patients and had to be withdrawn. All of these drugs make billions and billions of dollars of profit for their companies.
At first, doctors weren't keen on statins. Many of them didn't believe in the cholesterol hypothesis, and were far from certain that lowering cholesterol levels would do much good. However, the statin companies embarked on a series of massive clinical studies to so called 'prove' that lowering cholesterol with statins would work. I will discuss about the studies and scientific research on later post.
Right now, I would want to discuss about heart disease. What is heart disease? You may Google and do your own homework about find out about heart disease, but I will give you my own knowledge and explanation. The term 'heart disease' is virtually meaningless. There are hundreds of them, most with complex names, such as myocarditis, ventricular hypertrophy, etc. However, the one that kills most people, is not truly a disease of the heart at all. It is a disease of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. It is called atherosclerosis. Well, athero, describes the build up of grey-white fatty gunk in the artery walls. These thickening sometimes called plaques. Sclerosis, means thickening and hardening.
Plaques are generally thought to progress from an initial 'fatty streak' found in the arteries which gradually becomes thicker and bigger. Eventually, plaques can reach to the point where they actually calcify, turning arteries into stiff, almost bonelike tubes. At some point during their development, plaques turn into something that looks like a cyst or goo lurking within the artery wall. This goo, is made of all sorts of stuff, mainly fats, dead white cells, broken down bits of blood clots, etc.
The great danger with this type of plaque, is that the thin wall surrounding the goo bursts or breaks down. This 'goo' exposure, sends a powerful message to the blood-clotting system, and results in a blood clot, forming over the burst plaque. If the blood clot is big enough, then it completely blocks the blood supply to whichever organ that particularly artery was supplying. Are you guys following me so far? Confused? Bear with me here, trying my best to be not so technical.
Ok now, if that organ happens to be the heart, then the heart muscle downstream will become starve of oxygen. It may then 'infarct', meaning, cell death. Myocardial, means heart muscle. Medically speaking, this is called myocardial infarction. In other words, heart attack. It is estimated that about 50% of heart attacks are fatal, and people mostly die in the first hour.
Before we move on, I need to provide a little more information about 'infarctions' elsewhere in the body. Because although plaques most often develop in the arteries supplying blood to the heart, plaques are capable of developing elsewhere in the body too. Quite often, big plaques form in the arteries in the neck, which is the carotid arteries. As these arteries supply blood to the brain, this is clearly a danger spot. What most often happens, is that a clot forms over the carotid plaque, then a bit breaks off and travels up to the brain through ever smaller arteries. Once the clot reaches an artery that is too narrow for it, it gets stuck, and this dams up the blood supply to an area of the brain, leading to a brain infarction, or known as cerebral infarction. Heard of stroke? Now you have a clearer picture how a person suffers from stroke episode.
The other version of stroke, occurs when an artery in the brain bursts, causing a bleed into the brain tissue. This is called cerebral haemorrhage. You need to do a brain scan to know for sure, what type of stroke has occured. Has any of you know anyone who suffers stroke before? Heard about their real experiences?
Moving on, apart from heart and brain, you can have infarctions in the gut, kidneys and eyes as well. In fact, you can have infarctions almost anywhere in the body. Sounds scary? Perhaps, the scariest place to develop big plaques, is in the aorta, the major blood vessel that leads out of the heart and down through the chest and abdomen. If the aorta develops big plaques, the wall can lose structural integrity and balloon outwards, creating a big great 'aneurysm'. This is like having an unexploded bomb in your chest, waiting to go off. And when an artery this big fails, BOOM! There goes your previous life!
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