My alleged heart attack

To stop you from worrying I have not had a heart attack. Or any inkling of one.

Recently when I saw my excellent endo we had a discussion about whether I should continue to take a statin to reduce my cholesterol.

I've been taking Lipitor for about a year. I changed my use of the medicine (this may not work for you) from a 10mg pill every day to half of a 10mg pill every other day. I see a substantial reduction in my cholesterol level with this dose and I don't seem to have any of the possible side effects, thank God.

But a while ago, I read news about investigations into the benefits of taking statins. This was why I had the conversation. I was especially taken by the quote from the NY Times article.

"If a patient has had a heart attack," Dr. Afilalo said, "they generally should be on a statin."

For people who haven't had a heart attack the investigation showed there isn't as much evidence that taking statins provides a substantial benefit to enough folks to justify everyone taking it.

I was shocked by her response. "But you've already had a heart attack." For a moment I thought I was in an alternate dimension. I reminded her that I'd not actually had one. She told me that type 1 diabetes increases my risk of heart problems. Just as much as if I'd actually had one. Yikes.

Now I do really like and respect my endo. I've moved medical offices to follow her from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. But I still like to verify what I'm told, it's my natural cynical nature.

Then earlier this month I saw this news report. She was right! A recent study found that folks with diabetes (both type 1 and type 2) have double the risk for a heart attack.

So for now I'll be staying on my statin and living with yet another drug to reduce the risk of "bad things" happening in my future.


Attribution: This beautiful picture was taken by Conny. She retains all rights to the image and I'm grateful to her for letting me use it in this post.

Labels: diabetes, health, heart, risk, statins

posted by Bernard @ 5:40 PM 6 Comments Links to this post