I have just learned that statins can cause diabetes or make it worse, along with some causing other problems. Perhaps others here have already discovered this information.
Here is some of an article about it:
In treating thousands of patients with pre-diabetes, diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease, I have noticed one thing: Lowering insulin through diet and lifestyle corrects almost all of the risk factors for heart disease. It lowers blood pressure, increases good cholesterol (HDL), lowers triglycerides and bad cholesterol (LDL), leads to weight loss, lower levels of inflammation (C-reactive protein), and thins the blood. Lowering insulin even increases the light fluffy harmless cholesterol and lowers the level of small dense harmful cholesterol particles.
Lowering insulin is a good thing. However, statins--the best selling class of drugs on the market--appear not to do this. Do they actually increase the risk for diabetes and thus heart disease by increasing insulin levels?
The Truth about Statins and Insulin
The answer, according to a recent study in the Lancet, is yes statins do increase the risk of diabetes.(ii) The authors completed a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished randomized controlled trials from 1994 to 2009 for a total patient group of 91,140 who were treated with statins or a placebo. In the patients treated with statins there was a 9 percent increase in the risk of diabetes. The authors suggest this is a minimal risk and that current guidelines for cholesterol treatment should not change. I would suggest we think a little more deeply.
