Doctors Now Advocating Statins for Children

It seems that endocrinologists, cardiologists, and several other medical groups in the medical world are promoting statins like never before. Not only are they now promoting them for children above the age of five years of age, but the also have flooded the medical journals with information that many (almost 50 percent) of eligible adults are not taking statins.

I cannot prove this, but it seems that there must be a lot of money to be made from promoting statins and many medical groups are thus promoting statins. This statement is beginning to have more significance - “Statin use has become what appears to us to be a kind of religion, an unchallengeable article of faith among some doctors.”

One in five children and adolescents had at least one abnormal cholesterol measure, according to new data from the CDC. "While the authors do not focus on this, some of the very high total cholesterol and non-HDL-cholesterol values are likely due to genetic causes such as familial hypercholesterolemia," wrote Daniels, who was not involved with the study. "The heterozygous form of familial hypercholesterolemia occurs in approximately one in 250 individuals."

Obesity is also listed as a potential risk factor, as nearly half (44.3%) of obese children and adolescents had some form of abnormal cholesterol, more than three times that of their normal weight peers (13.8%). Obese children and adolescents also saw statistically significant differences in high total cholesterol (11.6%) compared with those who were normal weight (6.3%) and overweight (6.9%).

Switching to the adults, nearly half of American adults who should be taking cholesterol-lowering drugs do not, according to research published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The CDC study team analyzed national data from 2005 to 2014 and found that 36.7% of U.S. adults — 78.1 million people aged 21 and older — were eligible to take cholesterol-lowering medications or was already taking them.

Many of the medical groups now believe that with statins now being generic, the benefits now favor statins and are pushing them very aggressively. There are few doctors that warn about the side effects and most never even consider that most statins deplete the levels of CoQ10 or Coenzyme Q10 made by our bodies. Most doctors do not even test for this and some people will develop problems because of this.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), statins lower your body’s levels of coenzyme Q10. As your levels go down, the side effects of statins increase. Taking CoQ10 supplements might help increase the levels in the body and reduce problems.