AnUser
#1821
Lovastatin is an older drug it is also lipophilic meaning it can cross the blood brain barrier easily.
Rosuvastatin is hydrophilic meaning it has a harder time crossing the BBB.
If you also knew about the cognitive side effects before taking it, you could’ve been primed for a nocebo effect.
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José
#1822
Your statement is inaccurate and incorrect.
Have you reviewed the published work by William B. Parsons Jr. MD?
If you are that interested in Niacin.
Locate a copy of
Management of the hypercholesterolemic patient
W B PARSONS Jr. Ill Med J. 1959 Mar page’s 120 -127
It’s interesting when it comes to cognitive issues. If you just ask a patient something general you’ll get a different response than if you ask specifics like, “ how’s your focus, word retrieval, memory, and sharpness”.
Many people swear to Mendelian randomized studies on this site, unless those same studies show cognitive impairments from statins.
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José
#1824
Monacolin K{ which is Lovastatin] is one of the active natural compounds in Red Yeast Rice{RYR].
In the US the FDA required the removed on. Monacolin K from RYR “supplements”.
RYR only been use in Chinese Medicine for a few thousands years.
In my view grow/ferment your own RYR.
You can keep the statins.
AnUser
#1825
It’s a statin drug as it’s a HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor, it’s the first statin drug to get to the market as far as I can tell.
The size of the effect matters… like the apoB-lifespan effect or apoB-ASCVD effect, which are massive.
You will probably never find a large effect on cognition in mendelian randomization since it is highly polygenic. Meaning each gene have very small effect.
You did prove there is a mechanism, but not the size of the effect. And many of us are taking precautions by using hydrophilic statins. Simply saying statins are bad for cognition when there is hydrophilic statins seems like it is lacking nuance.
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Statin use decreases the chances of dementia and Alzheimers. Statin use increasing cognitive impairment has been discredited many times. I don’t know why this is even mentioned anymore.
Here is one example of a recent meta-analysis:
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I am in the UK and I bought an Italian version which definitely had the active statin in the RYR.
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There is quite a lot of debate about HMG-CoA reductase inhibition. I have not personally tried to get to a final conclusion about the arguments, but as cholesterol is a key part of cellular metabolism it would not be surprising if there were all sorts of effects from inhibiting it. On a purely personal basis I remember having specific problems recalling certain information when I was taking RYR.
I am OK with my cholesterol figures anyway. Hence I would not say I have a massively strongly held viewpoint on this.
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I confess that I had not consulted this 1959 review article in a defunct state medical journal 
. This article contains no clinical trial at all, let alone one with hard outcomes: it lays out the author’s clinical experience that niacin lowered total cholesterol in 44 patients in his clinic.
We have several large, randomized controlled trials now showing both that niacin lowers LDL-C and raises HDL-C and yet has no effect on hard outcomes.
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José
#1830
You can pontificate all you want about statins.
I have no interest in any statin.
As I have posted before in my view there are a plethora of compounds available that work equal or better than statins.
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This MR study was just published in 2022 in a major cardiovascular journal. It shows causal relationship of the mechanism of action of statin drugs on cognition as well as reaction times. It also showed a loss of cortical surface area. This doesn’t have to lead to Frank AD for the results to be concerning, especially if there’s other options, and considering that the absolute reduction in total mortality is less than one percent in primary prevention trials using statins.
We don’t know that certain statins are the exception, nor can we say that the concern over cognitive impairment has been discredited. Even mild cognitive issues, like word retrieval difficulties or mild recall problems, can be very distressing to most people.
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2022.05.041
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AnUser
#1832
Citrus bergamot… might be a statin.
José
#1833
…“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”… ~ Soren Kierkegaard
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AnUser
#1834
You haven’t established that citrus bergamot is safer than statins.
Simply not having enough data to prove it isn’t safe isn’t proof of safety.
“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”
This is supplements 101. At least you know what you’re getting with statins.
I would want to tell you how horrible citrus bergamot extracts are, like you’re doing for statins. All of those different chemicals in it. But I can’t, because there isn’t data. It’s a dirty drug with lots of active chemicals.
It would be naive to think it is safer because it is natural.
7 Likes
LaraPo
#1835
Would be nice though to have something besides statins to handle high cholesterol. Statins give me muscle and joints pain, and trigger herpes virus sometimes. Cannot tolerate rosuvastatin every day, but continue taking it 3 times a week, which is not enough. Was taking bergamot as well, but I agree with you that it’s a dirty drug, and will most likely discontinue. I also take psyllium husk. Just got a script for ezetimibe, but it may affect kidneys. There’s nothing ideal!
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You can try Pantethine, but is may make for more bruising.
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I am not championing bergamot but common sense tells me that it is probably as safe or safer than statins.
Why, first it is from a citrus rind which would tell me that it is probably good for you because of the flavinoids it contains.
“Citrus peel and its extracts are rich in flavonoids, which are beneficial to human health”
Second, it has been used in Earl Grey tea for over two centuries. Where are the negatives? I am sure if you search hard enough you can find a “minority report”. But, no one, not even California 
, has issued a health warning about bergamot.
I believe the studies cited by Joseph are pretty convincing and I am going to give it a try.
Why, because there are many more negative reports about statins, especially for older people. I took statins for decades with no ill effects, but I quit statins about a year ago. I have managed to keep my lipid levels in the “good” range in spite of taking rapamycin, mainly by decreasing my rapamycin dose to 5mg taken weekly.
My goal is to increase rapamycin to the maximum level I can and still keep my lipids in check. So, by taking bergamot I may be able to increase my rapamycin dose and still keep my lipids in check.
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Seems like a good strategy. Statins of all varieties give me both muscle pains and severe constipation. Pantethine was doing the same . No issues over several months on even 1500 mg bergamot, so I suspect a different mechanism of action. Studies aren’t revealing significant side effects.
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I stopped citrus bergamot because my lipid profile showed no improvement after 4 weeks on it (Jarrow formulas brand). Ezetimibe on the other hand had a large impact, and I recently started bempedoic acid. I will test again soon to see how the bempedoic acid is performing.
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José
#1840
And you are naive to think statins are safe!
The fact is they are not.
