Must you change your diet if statins are doing the job?

Posted by heycal @heycal, Jul 5 1:50pm

Why must one eat healthier if statins are working? If one is fit, active, with good BP and cholesterol numbers, is diet modification really necessary from a medical standpoint to decrease risk of heart attack or stroke?

Is there some other measure besides cholesterol that tells you "hey, lay off the pizza and pick up the broccoli?"

I would think that as long as all your indicators for health are doing well, diet details shouldn't matter.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Heart & Blood Health Support Group.

loriesco | @loriesco | Aug 1 3:52pm

In reply to @rochelle369 "If you have genetic heart disease or not - if you have heart disease - you..." + (show)

We should be eating a heart-healthy diet even IF we don't know, or don't have a heart disease!

loriesco | @loriesco | Aug 1 3:56pm

the problem is you can't tell in many cases, so we might as well eat healthy. In my case, I didn't know and couldn't know until I got to the age where the coronary artery disease genetically kicks in. I am LUCKY I maintained excellent habits and missed massive plaque buildup in my arteries. Some of my cousins weren't so lucky and died in their 60s. Dad had a massive heart attack at 58 and he swam 3 times a week. Now they have a test "LPa" - so I got the test - found out I inherited CAD. Lucky, lucky, lucky - I incorporated a low-fat diet my whole adult life!

rochelle369 | @rochelle369 | Aug 1 3:58pm

In reply to @loriesco "the problem is you can't tell in many cases, so we might as well eat healthy...." + (show)

Yes you were lucky you maintained good habits. For people eating the Standard American Diet they should just assume they do have heart disease.

ekelly | @ekelly | Aug 1 6:09pm

In reply to @rochelle369 "Have you looked into Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr and Dr. Dean Ornish - the first two..." + (show)

Rochelle,
Thank you for taking the time to comment and for the link. While I have in part improved my diet it still needs some work. I am open to reading and learning as much as I can. Evidence based science is critical to my decisions.

gloaming | @gloaming | Aug 1 7:11pm

The 'science' is unsettling in its unsettlement. It literally is all over the place. Five decades ago, we have since learned, a Harvard 'scientist' worked with the sugar industry to bad-mouth fats, and we are all obese or headed there as a result. Nowadays, anyone with a bias or 'preference' in diets can find scads of YouTube video channels insisting, with evidence, that the Mediterranean Diet is the best, or that strict Keto is best, or that carbs are not the culprit, or that any fats are bad for you, or that Carnivore is really the best...again...all with ample evidence from published papers over the past ten years. No, really...go ahead and search in YouTube for 'Is X diet the best?'. For X, simply type in Vegan, Carnivore, Keto, Low Carb...whatever makes you giggle. You'll soon have pages 'n pages of 'doctors' (some of chiropractic, some of exercise physiology, some of nutrition, some of food science, some of physics, scores in medicine.....) showing you that what they get paid most to espouse by YouTube's hits and likes and subscriptions is the best...period.

What I have gleaned is that Keto is sustainable, but it's so hard for carb addicts that it might as well be given a miss. Low Carb is better, and somewhat easier to stick to. Vegan is almost a religion, but it has its problems in missing nutrients, chiefly vitamin B-12. Some plant oils are better than others, some get rancid quickly or have too high a content of linoleic acid. Seeds have phytic acid in them, and plants have oxalic acid, both problems in large enough quantities. because they interfere with absorption of metals like iron, zinc and magnesium. Oxalates and tannins can lead to kidney stones. Lectins in plants are also problematic. And on it goes...

I advise the reader to look into fermented foods. They take care of a lot of the plant-based problems I mentioned, but they also use up a lot of the carbohydrate content of foods of all kinds, especially plants when the fermentation takes place. Low carbs = better for those skirting around metabolic syndrome.

mayoconnectuser1 | @mayoconnectuser1 | Aug 2 8:25am

tmenss,

Why are you wanting to stop taking a statin? Do you have negative side effects?

loriesco | @loriesco | Aug 2 12:05pm

In reply to @rochelle369 "Have you looked into Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr and Dr. Dean Ornish - the first two..." + (show)

Oils are lipids and lipids are the culprit (the wrong ones!) and people don't realize they are worse than common cholesterol products like eggs and meat. HOWEVER - polyunsaturated oils reverse cholesterol. So they shouldn't be discarded out of hand! We have heart and cardiovascular disease in my family but two generations ago those great grandparents lived to mid 90s - all four. They ate heart-healthy oils like Corn oil and safflower oil ONLY. With a smidge of olive oil (a mono-saturated-neutral oil). An unprocessed food diet. Mediterranean. I do the same. I eat eggs too! Wholesome unprocessed as much as possible diet. WITH SALMON, SARDINES and the like. Dropped by cholesterol like a brick! 240 to 190 in 3 months. Eat like the eastern europeans with their "feesh." (as my Ukraine refugee would say!)

rochelle369 | @rochelle369 | Aug 2 1:41pm

Eggs and meat are very bad for you. My cholesterol went from 285 to 145 on whole food plant based diet - dr esselstyns program

heycal | @heycal | Aug 2 1:55pm

In reply to @rochelle369 "Eggs and meat are very bad for you. My cholesterol went from 285 to 145 on..." + (show)

Two different cardiologists lectured me on the evils of the various foods I like most -- except eggs. Both said while they weren't ideal in terms of cholesterol, they were pretty darn healthy otherwise and they had no real problem with me continuing to eat them daily.