Alirocumab

Now, back to that topic of common sense that we were discussing earlier.

Doesn't it make common sense that a doctor should spend the majority of their time in counseling the patient, spend the majority of money testing the patient with blood tests and other diagnostic modalities, uh, and then the majority of the handouts should focus on the biggest parts of this pie? What's the biggest risk factor for developing heart disease and a, and a heart attack? But what we find when we, when we get feedback from patients, uh, kind of exit polls after they leave the doctor's office is, what did the doctor spend the most time talking about? And very often, what the doctor spent the most time talking about, ordered the, the most lab tests to check, and prescribed the most medications, uh, in a kinda simulacrum of pre- heart disease prevention was lipids, uh, specifically LDL cholesterol and statins, a class of drugs that doctors prescribe to patients to lower LDL cholesterol, or, uh, Repatha and Praluent, which is a new drug class that, that lowers your LDL cholesterol precipitously.

Now, so your, your question would be, well, n- shouldn't a doctor spend most of their time, most of the, the lab tests, and most of the prescriptions, and most of the handouts, shouldn't all that stuff focus on the biggest risk factor for heart attack? Yeah, I would agree.

Yes.

There must be a big slice of pie." No, it's not.

Uh, el- elevated LDL cholesterol actually comes in number thirteen or number fourteen on the list of risks for heart attack.

So it's not, it's not even in the top ten, yet the average doctor will spend the majority of the office visit time yelling at the patient about their high LDL cholesterol, prescribing them a statin or Praluent or Repatha to get their LDL cholesterol down.

And in, and in a, a s- a shockingly large pursu- per- proportion or percentage of the patient visits, they won't even test the patient to see if they have type two diabetes or early type two diabetes.

They ignore all that.

All they care about is getting you on that statin or on Repatha or Praluent.

It's inappropriate.

It's bad medical practice and it's not truly protecting you from having a heart attack.

Uh, indeed, all the statins and most of the other cholesterol-lowering medications are gonna deplete your store of CoQ10, or ubiquinone.

We're not sure yet if Repatha and Praluent, the newest PCSK9 inhibitors, if they lower your CoQ10 or not.

We need more research on that.

The next drug class is the acid blockers, whether you're talking about proton pump inhibitors or H2 blockers or even just over-the-counter antacids.

And then if you still are adamant about trying to get my LDL cholesterol under seventy, I'm gonna find a new doctor, because my goal as a human being is to live a long damn time and to live a long, healthy life." So according to this study and according to the, the data that was used to calculate, uh, the, the, um, data that's in this chart, it's much, much healthier with regards to not dying to have an LDL cholesterol of two hundred and fifty versus having an LDL cholesterol less than seventy.

So please think about it before you take any of the high-dose statins like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, or definitely before you think about taking one of the aggressively LDL cholesterol lowering drugs like Praluent or Repatha.

You're increasing your risk of all-cause mortality, that means of dying from any reason, by taking those drugs.

So in addition to the inconvenience of having to sit in the doctor's office and then stand in the pharmacy line and pay all the co-pays associated with that, you're also gonna be at increased risk of dying.