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Rochelle Eisenberger's avatar

It seems Dr McCullough is one of the 'dissident' doctors being groomed as a trusted voice in post-scamdemic allopathic medicine. He can't turn his back on everything or he wouldn't be allowed to play. According to a healthline article from 2019: Of the 2,444 doctors in the Medicare prescribing database, almost 37 percent received industry payments (for statins).

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/brand-name-statin-your-doctor-taking-industry-money

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Linda Hagge's avatar

If you look up his score for the amount of money he has taken from the pharma industry, it is extremely high.

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Rochelle Eisenberger's avatar

I totally forgot you could look that up. Thank you!

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Sovereign Humanity's avatar

Thank you for posting this. His article was surprising to many.

A Midwestern Doctor had an excellent post about this issue in May 2023: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-can-statins-teach-us-about-the

Unbekoming had a great post about this issue as well: https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/statins

If you have time, I would be interested in learning more about the potential dangers of oxalates in food.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

Thank you for the links. I have some other posts I'm working on currently but I can add oxalates to my list.

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Linda Hagge's avatar

As any physician should have known for the last two decades, total cholesterol is completely unrelated to any negative outcomes. Statins might be associated with fewer heart attacks (barely), but they are not associated with less risk of death. The only numbers which matter are VLDL, (the LDL number alone is meaningless, or even positive) and triglycerides. An easy way to get both low VLDL and low triglycerides is to eat low-carb. Statins do absolutely nothing to lower either one of those, and destroy your mitochondria and muscle function. There is a whole branch of medicine now devoted to statin injuries. For a cardiologist to be recommending statins in this day and age is inexcusable.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

And yet, doctors continue to prescribe them. I read somewhere that doctors are taught that anyone 65 and older should be on a statin, regardless of lipid lab numbers. Either way statins and thinking that TC over 200 is dangerous is a scam.

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Linda Hagge's avatar

I could not agree more. The women in my family have hyperlipidemia. At one time my mother's total cholesterol was over 700. She lived to be almost 93. Never had memory loss. You have no idea how many times she was pressured to take statins, and now I'm going through the same thing. At least now they look at the breakdown of types of cholesterol and the ratio of "good" to "bad," and break out the VLDL. When some doctor expresses dismay at my high cholesterol I tell them to read a book. Twenty years ago I went to an excellent GP, now retired, who looked at my numbers and said "we really don't know what it means when women have high cholesterol." He was the only informed doctor I have ever had. The rest are like robots.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

It seems that higher TC for women post-menopause, is supportive since cholesterol is a precursor to many hormones.

The way I avoid the MD-statin pressure is I don't make appointments with them. I order and read my own labs. I can order labs for my clients and a consumer, if they know what labs they need, can order their own blood work-they just need someone to explain it to them but it is not too complicated. Most consumers however do not know what tests they need but I also do not think doctors order the right tests for individual patients, but that is because they do not take the time to listen to their patients. If they listened, they would understand what tests are and are not necessary. Triglycerides and VLDL are useful markers but I still think that the basic panel is not useful and the standard panel should include LDL particle size, Lp(a), Apo A1, Apo B and fasting insulin. It is not easy to find a lipid panel with all of this.

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Karen's avatar

I’m with you here. It’s been good to see Dr. McCullough change over time to questioning vaccines and allopathic medicine. But I wouldn’t touch his supplements and his advice on statins is very wrong. I’ve gone from relying on conventional doctors to reading, reading, reading everything I can. I now rely on a quantum nutrition testing group to help me with my health. Frequency is the future of medicine, if only the AMA would get out of the way.

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HArnold's avatar

Reading through most of the 100+ comments on Dr. McCullough’s post it appears almost everyone disagrees with his conclusion. It’s certainly a very odd post for him.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

It did honestly seem very odd.

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Scrub-Texas's avatar

Dr aseem malholtra, an allopathic (England) has professed for years statins have little to no advantages. The risks do not outweigh the benefits. And, Sara conspiracy (substack) has some dark observations about the organizations Dr. McCullough and other FLCCC affiliations. Trust but verify, be it McCullough’s ability to make a 360 from allopathic med after 40+ years, association with funding over health concessions, follow the money OR ? Can’t say I can throw the baby (Mccullough) out with the bath water but again everything has to be researched and taken with a big ol cattle salt block! Ugh! Love your substack!

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

Thank you and I agree, take everything with a grain of salt, do your own research and decide what is best for you.

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Hurricane60's avatar

Yes I have always been skeptical about McCullough. When he would talk about all the papers he worked on and his clinical practice he would have to work 400 hours a week to get it all done! But he does write papers with people I feel more comfortable with so who knows.

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sadie's avatar

I think McM is on a learning curve... I'm just happy he was able to turn his ship so quickly at the beginning... the rest will take time.

But I'm wondering - it was reported that those on statins fared better with covid because of the ACE2 .... is there a food that works the same way in the body with no side effects that could protect us in this covid world? I know there are lots of things out there but any that work the same way as statins? Just curious.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

I am unsure. Overweight, inflamed people with type 2 diabetes fared worse. People who may look healthy but were sick can still be inflamed or have underlying conditions that make them more susceptible to illness so I would still approach it at the individual level- know your weak areas and address them, support gut health, make sure hs-crp is below one and so forth. Just like there is no magic pill there is no magic supplement.

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FREED0ML0VER's avatar

I agree with you. His knowledge of nutrition is no doubt limited, especially if the bulk of it was obtained in med school where a fraction of a percent of the class time covers nutrition.

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Joy Lucette Garner's avatar

Good feed by the way.

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Joy Lucette Garner's avatar

He's catching hell for pushing Statins with these crappy studies. Seems he's on damage control duty for pharma these days;-)

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Katherine's avatar

I LOVE AND APPRECIATE THIS:

"Side Note: I know there are some substackers that only allow comments from subscribers. I will never do this, as I believe everyone should be able to comment. I have found that I can learn a great deal from commenters. I have no desire to suppress people that I may learn a great deal from! "

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Valerie's avatar

It doesn't make sense. I wonder if it could be AI posted under his name?

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

It's possible. I just thought then we would see a follow up post with an explanation.

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Jane Nelson's avatar

And print the info you might need someday and put it in a folder ... I had several links bookmarked precovid that are no longer there.

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

So true. Even many links I saved early 2020 no longer exist.

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Monty's avatar

Whatever his reason for posting that, whether it's what he believes or some other motive, to me it shows he is still caught in the Rockefeller 'medicine' machine.

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Hurricane60's avatar

I never have taken one and probably never will.

Graveline, Kendrick (as you mention above), A Mid-Western Doctor, Yoseph, Demassi, Lot's of trials read including JUPITER (I believe that trial was stopped early because numbers were turning against the manufacturer, not for stated reasons), NITSEM study, lots of YouTubes,

Great discussion of vitamin D and cholesterol - https://colleenhuber.substack.com/p/statin-drugs-laid-the-groundwork

Question I have - As I have seen in the vaccine world, there is no broad-based study done by CDC or NIH comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated. ICAN Network and Aaron Siri sued CDC for support on autism claim and CDC confessed they really did not have any studies to support claim. So my question is does CDC or NIH have a study that compares outcomes between statin and nonstatin users?

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Karen Brennan, PhD's avatar

As far as I know, they have compared statin and non statin users using existing data rather than conducting a longitudinal comparison. Based on this, the researchers concluded statins extend your life for two years. I cannot see beyond the abstract so I can't comment much on it. The reason why I like the book, Doctoring data, is because Kendrick explains how the data can be manipulated to make it appear as if the outcomes are positive. I go back to this- modern medicine bases the need for statins to reduce CVD risk based on the lipid panel. There is much information to dispel the belief that cholesterol is bad and low TC is good.

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