Why Did My Hormones Crash When I Started Taking a Statin?

By: Dr. Linda Wright

During my residency, I was taught that high cholesterol causes heart disease. In fact, I think that’s still the story most everyone believes. But for me, this somehow didn’t compute. What does it mean that cholesterol levels are high? What is the body trying to do? I don’t think our body is trying to kill us, so what’s going on here?

The body is a very smart self-regulating system. The body raises its output of cholesterol for good reason.

We know cholesterol usually increases with age. “High” cholesterol is correlated with heart disease, but is high cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia) causing heart disease?

What Does a Number Mean?

The current “normal range” for total cholesterol is under 200. Once it gets above 200, the medical doctor sees this as a bad thing and often prescribes a statin drug to forcibly lower a person’s cholesterol level by blocking the body’s ability to make it. “High” cholesterol is common; statins are one of the top 3 drugs prescribed in the United States today. That’s terrific if you are a pharmaceutical company, but not very good at all if you are a human who wants to live a long and healthy life.

It appears that “high” cholesterol and high incidence of heart disease are correlated, i.e., they go together. But lowering the cholesterol doesn’t appear to make a difference in lifespan.

Correlation does not equal causation. Researchers have found that most major heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels. In other words, high cholesterol does not appear to be what’s killing people.

So, what does cholesterol do in the body and why does it go up with age?

Cholesterol IS a Rock Star

Cholesterol is actually a rock star in the body. It is a critical component for life. It is “the mother of all hormones.” It is a major antioxidant. It also is a major building block for cell membranes, bile acids, and we couldn’t turn sunlight into vitamin D3 without it. In fact, we wouldn’t be alive without it.

When the production of sex hormones starts to decline as we age, cholesterol says, “Hey, I can increase my output of hormones – testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, pregnenolone, DHEA, etc., to help you out.” So,our body increases production of cholesterol – the first building block of all hormones – in an attempt to restore a healthy hormone balance.

Doctors can write a script for statins, but do we really want to decrease our output of cholesterol? Statins work by blocking the enzyme that makes cholesterol in the liver. (This same enzyme also makes Coenzyme Q10 which makes energy for the heart, brain, and other organs.) Statins interfere with the body’s attempt to make more hormones, and look at the side effects produced – severe fatigue, brain fog, impotency, fibromyalgia-like pain, tendon ruptures, depression, weight gain, suicides.

Our body is not trying to kill us – it has a reason for elevating the output of “the mother of all hormones.”

It used to be that doctors didn’t get concerned about total cholesterol levels. The classic Framingham Study found that there was virtually no difference in coronary heart disease “events” for individuals with cholesterol levels between 205 mg/dL and 294 mg/dL, which describes the vast majority of the U.S. population. Even for those with extremely high cholesterol levels – up to almost 1200 mg/dL – the difference in coronary heart disease events compared to those in the normal range was trivial.

But then the 1984 Cholesterol Consensus Conference came along and arbitrarily lowered the number to 200. That defined the vast majority of the American adult population as “at risk” and thus eligible for a statin drug prescription. In 2018, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association dropped the number to 170. Now about one in three Americans has “high cholesterol.” Ka-chink. That’s a huge market for a drug. Was there a lot of science behind this? No.

How Low Can You Go?

A low cholesterol level is problematic. For years, studies have been showing a link between low cholesterol and the development of Alzheimer’s disease; at least 25% of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. In fact, there is growing circumstantial evidence that the several decades-long war on cholesterol and fat may well be the direct cause of today’s Alzheimer’s epidemic.

If you keep your cholesterol level too low, eventually your hormones, disease risk, cell-signaling pathways, and even your heart, will suffer. New research shows that a too-low LDL level could put you at higher risk for a stroke.

When cholesterol is low, the body doesn’t make much in the way of basic hormones – including testosterone – because it has a limited amount of building blocks. Patients with a low level of hormones have life problems including depression, attention deficit disorder, criminal behavior, suicides, etc.

Low cholesterol is a marker for poor underlying health.

Rethinking High Cholesterol

In 2003, Sergey Dzugan, MD, PhD; and Arnold Smith, MD, hypothesized that the underlying cause of high cholesterol is a multi-hormone deficiency. Their first clinical study was with 41 patients who all had high cholesterol– their mean cholesterol level was 254.6. After treatment with bioidentical hormones, 100% of the patients experienced a significant reduction in blood cholesterol levels –down to a mean cholesterol level of 188.6.

Bioidentical hormones are not the only way to balance hormones and normalize cholesterol levels.

A CDC study published in JAMA Internal Medicine made front page news in 2014. The study basically said it’s not the fat that is giving us heart attacks, it’s the inflammatory effect of all the sugar we eat –sodas, cakes, cookies, candy, and processed foods. Dr. Frank Hu and his colleagues at Harvard worked on that study. “Basically, the higher the intake of added sugar, the higher the risk for heart disease,” said Dr. Hu. “This study provides strong evidence that higher consumption of sugary beverages is an important risk factor for heart disease. Even moderate consumption – one soda per day –is associated with a 20% [increased] risk.”

It was Linus Pauling (1901-1994) who first drew our attention to the link between low vitamin C and heart disease. Pauling said that heart disease is a manifestation of chronic low-level scurvy, and atherosclerotic plaque is a mechanism evolved to repair or patch blood vessels and arteries damaged by chronic vitamin C deficiency.

Today, Dr. Mathias Rath makes a strong case that heart disease happens when we are low on vitamin C. Simply put, when we don’t have enough vitamin C, we don’t make enough collagen, the protein which forms healthy and elastic blood vessels.

We begin to see that high blood cholesterol is a consequence of, not the cause of, heart disease. Your overall cholesterol level says very little about your risk for heart disease. So, is it a statin we need, or might a better course of action for heart health be to consume more vitamin C and less sugary junk food? And, lo and behold, when statin drugs are not suppressing our ability to make hormones, it is easier to get the body to make testosterone.

Here’s to a Long Life

“High” cholesterol is not a sign that the body has made a mistake; it is not a case of the body asking for a pharmaceutical drug. Many studies suggest cholesterol goes up naturally as we get older; it also goes up in response to stress. But most of all, it has very useful functions in brain health. People with the highest levels of cholesterol live the longest.

Give us a call if we can help you navigate a new lifestyle. We’ll start with a search to look for what is causing your inflammation – where is the problem coming from? Let’s figure this out.