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Type 2 Statins?

E

evie_60

Newbie
Messages
4
Location
Dumbarton
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Hi

Just found out late Dec that I have Type 2, I have been put on statins and metformin but my cholesterol is only 3.1 do I need to take the statins.
 
evie_60 said:
Hi

Just found out late Dec that I have Type 2, I have been put on statins and metformin but my cholesterol is only 3.1 do I need to take the statins.
Click to expand...
Hi, we can`t tell you whether or not to take meds, that has to be your choice. I would like to add however that I personally wouldn`t think of taking statins with cholesterol that low, the jury is still out on whether statins offer any advantages for women anyway as I don`t think that the studies for women have been carried out but I could be wrong on that one. Do plenty of research before you make your mind up on this one and good luck and welcome to the forum :).
 
Hi evie_60. There must be a medical reason why your Doctor has you on Statins? My Cholesterol has been 3.1 for the last 6 months, and when I questioned my Doctor in November, 2015 as to do I need to take Statins? His reply was to stay on them! So that's what I am doing - following his advice.:)
 
liam1955 said:
Hi evie_60. There must be a medical reason why your Doctor has you on Statins? My Cholesterol has been 3.1 for the last 6 months, and when I questioned my Doctor in November, 2015 as to do I need to take Statins? His reply was to stay on them! So that's what I am doing - following his advice.:)
Click to expand...
Will be staying on them till the doctor says otherwise. :)
 
Hi @evie_60,
You are entitled to a discussion as to why statins are being recommended and it has to be your choice whether you take them or not once you know why.
I would go back to your G.P. and ask him why and an excuse such as "we prescribe them for all diabetics" is not a discussion.
 
liam1955 said:
Hi evie_60. There must be a medical reason why your Doctor has you on Statins? My Cholesterol has been 3.1 for the last 6 months, and when I questioned my Doctor in November, 2015 as to do I need to take Statins? His reply was to stay on them! So that's what I am doing - following his advice.:)
Click to expand...
Snap, me too! When I asked the doc why I needed to take them when my Cholesterol had reduced to 2.9, he said because we don't want it to go up again!
 
evie_60 said:
Hi

Just found out late Dec that I have Type 2, I have been put on statins and metformin but my cholesterol is only 3.1 do I need to take the statins.
Click to expand...
You do know that too low cholesterol isn't very healthy either, don't you?
My GP was about to put me on ACE inhibitors at diagnosis as this was in line with good practice. Thing is my blood pressure already was very low and lowering it further might have killed me.
So do a bit of reading on statins and cholesterol and make up your own mind.
 
My doctors reason for the addition of Statins to Metformin was that the TWO are treatments for type 2!!! Then told by the pharmacist that the dose was too high......... Not sure on this one, I get the impression different people follow different studies published in the Lancit!!!
 
KimDaleManor said:
My doctors reason for the addition of Statins to Metformin was that the TWO are treatments for type 2!!! Then told by the pharmacist that the dose was too high......... Not sure on this one, I get the impression different people follow different studies published in the Lancit!!!
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure that statins don't treat type 2 diabetes. They just lower your blood cholesterol levels.
 
KimDaleManor said:
My doctors reason for the addition of Statins to Metformin was that the TWO are treatments for type 2!!! Then told by the pharmacist that the dose was too high......... Not sure on this one, I get the impression different people follow different studies published in the Lancit!!!
Click to expand...
Unfortunately statins are known to cause diabetes as a side effect so I doubt the effectiveness of statins as a diabetes treatment.
 
This may be why some doctors are prescribing statins for diabetics regardless of their patient's cholesterol levels (from the American Diabetes Association current guidelines):

"The American Diabetes Association is recommending a less stringent diastolic blood pressure target for people with diabetes and that all people with diabetes take either moderate or high doses of statins, in keeping with recent changes to guidelines for cardiovascular risk management enacted by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA)."

http://www.diabetes.org/newsroom/pr...-disease.html?referrer=https://www.google.ca/
 
Anyone point me in the right direction for the risk to heart disease/problems even on a statin?
I guess I'm a risk with diabetes and extremely overweight. Mind u I was of risk of having a downs baby and offered a termination. Baby is healthy with no downs in sight. Hum.... they can get it wrong!
It's all about risk factors and built up from research.
One things for sure. You have to die from something!
Does anyone know if their diabetes has suffered because of taking a statin?
 
Thanks @Totto

I'll post my standard response and links regarding the non-evidence for statins and women:

Personally, I will never take statin drugs again and no doctor will be able to convince me otherwise. I had horrendous side effects. I've also done my own research and found that they are not useful for women anyway. Here's just some of the research I've found on the subject:

http://www.whp-apsf.ca/pdf/statinsEvidenceCaution.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3303886/

Note in the conclusions of the last study:

"If our findings are generalizable, clinical and public health recommendations regarding the ‘dangers’ of cholesterol should be revised. This is especially true for women, for whom moderately elevated cholesterol (by current standards) may prove to be not only harmless but even beneficial."

Plus:

http://www.virginiahopkinstestkits.com/statinswomen.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1973295,00.html
 
Unfortunately doctors just follow guidelines that are not necessarily applicable in every case - nor do they always know why. My total cholesterol was 5.5 and I was told to take a statin. I refused and would never take one - ever! Ask your doctor if the practice gets extra money for every diabetic on it's books and for every diabetic prescribed statins - then ask yourself if they can be impartial?

The case for statins seems shaky at best, Cholesterol has been shown NOT to be implicated in causing heart disease by recent research. Cholesterol around 5.5 used to be thought of as optimal and it has definitely been shown that too low a level is as bad if not worse than too high. Cholesterol is essential for many bodily functions - the brain is more or less made of it and it is needed to keep cell membranes healthy.

I asked my doctor why i should take statins if my cholesterol was fine when statins were designed expressly to lower cholesterol. Her answer was vague in the extreme that they had been 'shown to have other benefits' but she could not specify what these might be or what studies and been done to show this.

From NHS own guidelines if you have a 10% chance of cardiac event in next 10 years (they class every diabetic as having this whatever their personal circumstances) then taking a stain every day might prevent 4% of those. So 100 people need to take a statin every day for 10 years to possibly prevent 4 of them having a cardiac event. But 6 of them will have an event anyway and 90% would never have had one with or without statins. In the meantime every one of those people is exposed to the risks in taking a drug every day for 10 years with a number of known side effects. Is it worth it? Only you can decide that but it is worth being informed rather than just accepting the doctors word - they don't always know or are just going on what the drugs company reps are telling them and drug company reps want to sell drugs!
 
evie_60 said:
Hi

Just found out late Dec that I have Type 2, I have been put on statins and metformin but my cholesterol is only 3.1 do I need to take the statins.
Click to expand...

In theory, your Doc should have entered your details in the QRisk calculator: http://www.qrisk.org/ You could have a go at this yourself and see what comes out.

I don't take statins. I have declined all offers of statins until I can see proper research, including a decent female sample to persuade me I am misguided.

Good luck with it all.
 
Hi, first post on this site.
I was intending to float my recent experience and discussions with my GP about Type 2 and Statins, then noticed this thread.

I was put on statins (simvastatin) back in the early 2000s, family history etc etc. A few years ago I was diagnosed Type 2 and put on Metformin, then subsequently Gliclacide. Then I read an article that seemed to implicate long term use of statins with the onset of Type 2. My cholesterol levels were stable, so I discussed my concerns with the GP; the upshot is, after reaffirming my concern that statins might be the cause of my Type 2, I came off the statins. I was having 3 monthly HBA1C blood checks, the 1st post statins saw my HBA1C crash back to pre diabetic level, subsequent tests show I'm maintaining those levels. I'm still taking the Metformin and Gliclacide, but these prescriptions are under review pending future blood checks.

So that's my experience and I'd be interested to hear what other Type 2 members have been advised and whether they had been on Statins long term before the onset of Type 2.

Cheers.
 
@vinced1957 - Hi :). I was diagnosed with Type 2 in the year 2000. It was in 2002 that I was diagnosed with High Cholesterol and was prescribed Atorvastatin then and I am still taking it 14 years later, my Cholesterol has always been under 4 every time my Bloods are done.
 
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