Month: January 2017

Is Exercise Better Than Statins?

If you are one of the 36 million Americans taking a statin drug, or if you have been advised to take one, you should know about a new study that compares statins to exercise. Statins (Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor) are the most widely used drugs in the world, with $29 billion in sales in 2013. They are prescribed to lower cholesterol, which most doctors think contributes to heart disease.

Whether or not to take a statin is a dilemma for many, since official guidelines recommend them for virtually everyone over age 65. But as many as one in five people taking statins develop muscle aches and pains, which causes them to stop exercising. This is bad news, since exercise is important for preventing heart disease. So a group of researchers looked at ways that people taking statins could avoid muscle problems and continue to exercise.

Their surprising conclusion after analyzing dozens of studies? People are better off stopping their statins and exercising instead! The researchers reported that:

  • Exercise is equivalent to statins in preventing heart attacks and strokes, but it is better in reducing overall deaths.
  • Exercise can delay or prevent diabetes while statins increase the risk of diabetes.
  • Exercise is associated with decreased obesity while statins sometimes cause weight gain.
  • Exercise has been shown to increase quality of life, while statins have not.
  • Exercise benefits the elderly (over age 75) while statins have not been shown to do so.
  • There is more evidence of the benefits of exercise over the long-term (more than 10 years) than with statins

Not mentioned in the study were the many other side effects of statins, including memory loss and dementia, cataracts, liver and kidney damage, excessive fatigue, mood and sleep disorders, and sexual dysfunction. You can read more about these in my book.

How much exercise is enough? The authors were not specific, but a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate exercise (fast walking, biking, dancing, swimming, running) three times a week is the recommendation by many expert groups.

For those of you interested in more details about the study, it was published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine in 2016, Volume 29, pages 727-740.

Great News About Heart Disease

My father died of a heart attack when I was only sixteen. He was 58 and it was the third one that he suffered, his first at age 44. So heart disease is a subject close to my heart, no pun intended. And as you probably know, heart disease tends to run in families.

That’s one reason I am excited to tell you the great news about a recent medical study. The authors reported that your chances of having heart disease can be cut in half by following only three of four positive lifestyle practices—not smoking, not being obese, exercising regularly, and eating a healthy diet. This was true even for people like me with a strong family history of heart disease.  And these lifestyle practices are easy enough for most of us to achieve. Specifically, they are:

  • Not currently smoking
  • Not being obese—this means a Body Mass Index less than 30. You can google BMI to get the formula for determining yours, based on your height and weight
  • Exercising regularly—this was defined in the study as physical activity once a week or more, less than I would expect
  • Healthy diet pattern—eating an increased amount of fruits, nuts, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and dairy products and a reduced amount of refined grains, processed meats, red meats, and sugar-sweetened beverages

The study found that those having three of the four lifestyle factors had half the risk of heart disease compared with those with one or no factors, even in people with a high genetic risk of heart disease. Having four of these factors should reduce your risk even more, although the authors did not report this in the study.

If you are already meeting these goals, Good on ya! as my friend from North Dakota says. If not, get busy making these positive lifestyle changes. Not only will you decrease your risk of heart disease, you will also feel better and improve your overall health.