This is from a book about the MEMORY LOSS caused by statins.
The writer is a former U.S. ASTRONAUT AND FAMILY DOCTOR.
spacedoc.netlipitor thief of memory.htmlOpen ↗
Binding: Trade paperback Publisher: Infinity Publishing,
Haverford, PA Date Published: January 2004 ISBN: 0-7414-1881-
91 Description: 156 pages; 5.5 x 8.5 (inches) Price:
US$17.95 Source: Buy Books on the Web.com
Excerpt: My personal introduction to the incredible world of
TGA occurred six weeks after Lipitor® was started during my
annual astronaut physical at Johnson Space Center. My
cholesterol had been trending upward for several years and
all was well until six weeks later when my wife found me
aimlessly walking about the yard after I returned from my
usual walk in the woods. I did not recognize her,
reluctantly accepted cookies and milk and refused to go into
my now unfamiliar home. I "awoke" six hours later in the
office of the examining neurologist with the diagnosis of
transient global amnesia, cause unknown. My MRI several days
later was normal. Since Lipitor® was the only new medicine I
was on, the doctor in me made me suspect a possible side
effect of this drug and, despite the protestations of the
examining doctors that statin drugs did not do this, I
stopped my Lipitor®. The year passed uneventfully and soon
it was time for my next astronaut physical. NASA doctors
joined the chorus I had come to expect from physicians and
pharmacists during the preceding year, that statin drugs did
not do this and at their bidding I reluctantly restarted
Lipitor® at one-half the previous dose. Six weeks later I
again descended into the black pit of amnesia, this time for
twelve hours and with a retrograde loss of memory back to my
high school days. During that terrible interval, when my
entire adult life had been eradicated, I had no awareness of
my marriage and four children, my medical school days, my
ten adventure-filled years as a USAF flight surgeon, my
selection as scientist astronaut or my post retirement
decade as a writer of medical fiction. The names of my books
were like the names of my children – gone from my mind as
completely as if they had never happened. Fortunately, and
typically for this obscure condition, my memory returned
spontaneously and again I drove home listening to my wife's
amazing tale of how my day (and hers) had gone. Transient
global amnesia is the sudden inability to formulate new
memory, known as anterograde amnesia, combined with varying
degrees of retrograde memory loss, sometimes for decades
into the past. Until recently, the most common trigger
events for these abrupt and completely unheralded amnesia
cases have been sudden vigorous
times quite subtle, and cerebral angiography. In the past
four years a new trigger agent has been added – the use of
the stronger statin drugs such as Lipitor®, Zocor® and
Mevacor®. Transient global amnesia is but the tip of the
iceberg of the many other forms of statin associated memory
lapses that are reported from distraught patients. Far more
common are symptoms of disorientation, confusion and unusual
forgetfulness. These lesser forms of memory impairment can
be easily missed in many individuals because, to a certain
degree, that is the nature of us all. The development of
statin drugs was an inevitable phenomenon. When two
molecules of HMG-CoA next combined to form the ubiquitous
mevalonic acid, the enzyme, HMG-CoA reductase was required.
This enzyme could quite easily be inhibited and suddenly a
multibillion-dollar industry was born with the development
of the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors known as the stain
drugs. Whether Lipitor®, Mevacor®, Zocor®, Pravachol® or the
ill-fated Baycol®, all use the same mechanism and are merely
variations of the same process as marketed by different
pharmaceutical companies to insure market access. Statin
drugs, while curtailing cholesterol, must inevitably inhibit
the production of other vital intermediary products that
originate further down the metabolic pathway beyond the
statin blockade. The pharmaceutical industry has long been
attempting to develop a means by which interference with
cholesterol production might be achieved beyond the point
where these vital intermediary product originate but up to
now have failed. The inevitability of significant, serious
and even lethal side effects has been knowingly accepted.
Ubiquinone coenzyme production is one of these collaterally
damaged compounds of great concern. Biosynthesized in the
mitochondria--the tiny powerhouse of the cell that is
responsible for cellular respiration and energy--ubiquinone
is mandatory for proper cardiac muscle function and the
health and well being of muscle cells and peripheral nerves.
In addition to statin myopathy and rhabdomyolysis we now are
seeing peripheral neuropathy and congestive cardiac failure.
The dolichols are another area of collateral damage from
statin use. This class of compounds are involved in an
intricate process of cellular activity involving message
transport. Proteins manufactured there in response to DNA
directives are packaged into transport vesicles that are
shuttled across the cytoplasm to their various destinations.
Without dolichols there would be intracellular chaos as
various proteins could not be directed to their proper
target and would, in effect, be dead-lettered. The post
office analogy, though childishly simple, comes very close
to describing dolichol's function as we understand it today.
And there is more, much more. On 9 November 2001 Dr.
Pfreiger of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of
Science announced to the world the discovery of the identity
of the elusive synaptogenic factor responsible for the
development of the highly specialized contact sites between
adjacent neurons in the brain known as synapses. Not
surprisingly to specialists in the field, the synaptogenic
factor was shown to be the notorious substance cholesterol!
The so-called glial cells of the brain, long suspected of
providing certain housekeeping functions, were shown to
produce their own supply of cholesterol for the specific
purpose of providing nerve cells with this vital synaptic
component. Since the lipoproteins that mediate the transport
of cholesterol, including both LDL and HDL, are too large to
pass the blood-brain barrier, the brain cannot tap the
cholesterol supply in the blood. The brain must depend upon
its own cholesterol synthesis, which the glial cells
provide. The highly lipophilic statin drugs easily cross the
blood/brain barrier and interfere directly with glial cell
synthesis of cholesterol. There is no doubt that the present
notoriety of cholesterol has all but obscured its
physiological importance and necessity in our bodies.
Cholesterol is not only the most common organic molecule in
our brain, it is also distributed intimately throughout our
entire body. It is an essential constituent of the membrane
surrounding every cell. The presence of cholesterol in this
fatty double layer of the cell wall adjusts the fluid level
and rigidity of this membrane to the proper value for both
cell stability and function. Additionally, cholesterol is
metabolized into other essential body steroids known as the
steroid hormones and is therefore the sole source for the
formation of the
control the reproductive process and make possible our very
existence. The pharmaceutical industry would lead us to
believe that rapidly bottoming out our natural cholesterol
levels through the use of their highly touted statin drugs
is a relatively innocuous process of definite benefit to
society. But as we learn more each day of this ubiquitous
and unique substance, we must question the veracity of their
medical advisors. Cholesterol is perhaps the most important
substance in our lives. And now we are learning that
statin's role in cardiovascular risk reduction may have
little or nothing to do with cholesterol or LDL levels and
depend instead upon anti-inflammatory mechanisms unique to
this class of drugs. Surprisingly, we are discovering that
our 40-year war on cholesterol through the use of drugs and
the now infamous low fat/low cholesterol diet seems to have
been grossly misdirected. We have become a nation of
fattened sheep, prone to type 2 diabetes and with unchanged
proneness to arteriosclerosis. Despite this rapidly growing
reality, our public still remains desperately focused on
cholesterol and statin sales have never been more
aggressively marketed.
Duane ' Doc' Graveline
Author Biography Duane Edgar Graveline MD, MPH
Born and raised in Newport, Vermont, Dr. Graveline fondly
recalls his life on a dairy farm during the depression era
and his eight years at the nearby one-room school where the
same teacher guided him from the alphabet through algebra.
Following graduation from the Vermont College of Medicine in
1955, Dr. Graveline interned at the famed Walter Reed Army
Hospital during the time our space pioneers were just
beginning to study the medical effects of spaceflight.
Becoming a flight surgeon and doing space medical research
was almost inevitable to this young doctor with stars in his
eyes. Soon came the Today show, international recognition
for his research on zero gravity deconditioning , his unique
position as medical analyst of the Soviet bioastronautics
program, assignment as NASA flight controller and finally,
in 1965, his selection as a scientist astronaut.