Hi there.
I am 42-year-old male with Type One diabetes. I recieved my diagnosis in 1998 at the age of 28.
After Christmas 1997, my weight stood at approximately 12.5 stones. Although for someone of 5 feet 5 inches this wasn't exceptionally gross, but was, nonetheless, fairly chubby. (You can only poke so many new holes into your leather belts before they begin to fall apart!)
So I began my new year's resolution in January of '98 by starting on a diet and beginning to jog. Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong! Very soon the weight started to drip off me. (My trousers were now being held in place by the belt manufacturer's neatly-punched holes once more.) Hurray! But then the results of my new regime began to surprise me. I was now making new holes in my belt once again. But this time they were on the other side of the neat holes. Pretty soon I found my belt was too big for me altogether! As were my jeans, my shirts . . . in fact pretty much all of my clothes. Even my shoes began to feel big. I had also developed a raging appetite and couldn't eat enough food to satisfy it. I was also drinking like a fish: water, pop, juice, and surprisingly, tea. I had NEVER liked tea. The merest mention of it was enough to make me gag! Now here I was, craving it and consuming it in ridiculous amounts. And I was peeing like it was going out of fashion! Something wasn't right. But how much weight had I lost? I didn't know. I was too scared to look. My mother knew what was wrong of course. "You've got diabetes, you idiot! Go to the doctors'!"
I didn't believe her. I didn't want to believe her. So I didn't go. I quit the exercise (in all honesty, I was too shattered to) and I began to eat like a pig in an attempt to put some weight on. The turning point came one night: I regularly would go to my brother's house to pay him a visit, and the uphill walk home would take me about 20 minutes. I timed it one night; it had taken me 35. And my eyes were blurred and my head was dizzy. I felt like an old old man.
Friends would laugh that I'd got AIDs. (Great aren't they, friends?) But I believed I was dying of cancer. And I was scared beyond belief . . . So I adopted the ostrich tactic.
But eventually I did go to the doctors'. It took my GP about ten seconds to diagnose diabetes. And it actually came as a relief when he told me. My weight was now 5-and-a-half stones!!! He referred me to the hospital as an urgent case. The specialist at the hospital told me that I had lost over half of my bodyweight and I should be dead. I assurred him that I wasn't. He went on to say that I had about two weeks left in me at most. He reckoned you could burn a hole in granite with a drop of my blood, it was so acidic! I'd had a sneaky suspicion that I was dying, but the close proximity of Death stunned me. I nearly died of shock! The specialist tried to admit me to hospital, but I refused. I took my insulin pens, my blood-glucose meter, a multitude of leaflets, and caught the bus home. I had some soup and a roll and a shot of insulin, and then went to do some b-paving. Within half-an-hour I had experienced my first hypo.
Within four months my weigth was back around the twelve stone mark. As the years have passed, that has risen to 13, then 13-and-a-half. All thanks to those lovely (I do actually mean that sincerely) starchy carbs. I still exercise but have been unable to make any significant dent on my flab. And for the passed eight or nine years I have blindly been popping prescribed aspirin and simvastatin.
Then I heard Zoe Harcombe on the radio . . . Her words were like a breath of fresh air. I discovered her website,
www.zoeharcombe.com and then the utter genius of Dr Malcolm Kendrick, and it has has changed my life. I binned the statin because of the facts uncovered in Kendrick's brilliant book; I ditched the starchy carbs in favour of yoghurt, cheese, butter, meat, fish and lots of vegetables. And - wait for it -I lost ten pounds in one week. My weight has continued to fall steadily and not only that, I feel ten times better, fitter, alive. My mind has a pinpoint feel to it that it hasn't had for . . . well, eight or nine years actually. Statins cause brain heamorrhages and strokes, and are are linked with Alzheimer's. They don't tell you that when they scribble on that little green sheet of paper, do they?
There is so much nonsense and lies bandied around, it's time for some facts. The thing that makes me annoyed the most is the nonsense about cholesterol. "thincs", the international network of cholesterol sceptics (of which Harcombe and Kendrick are members ) believe that the prescribing of statins will go in history as one of the greatest crimes ever committed against humankind. You ask me what my cholesterol and trigyceride levels are. Well I don't actually know. And what's more, I couldn't give a monkey's! Our cholesterol levels are estimated and our triglyceride levels are NEVER even checked. NEVER. It's all one big lie after another. It's a case of bad science meets greed and wannabe notoriety. And I don't want a part of it. If they want a guinea pig, I know a pet shop that's got plenty.
If I can convince just one person to look into it and re-assess the 'care' being dished out to us trusty fools then I'll be happy. If i could convince a million, I'll simply explode with delight! And someone wil have to clean the mess up!
Richard, the anti-statiniser.