Maybe…. and in my case no cardiovascular disease, reasonably okay healthwise for born 1958, yet at no request of mine steered to take statins when in my opinion unrequired. The only factor mentioned in our conversation at the GP clinic to prompt being prescribed statins was borderline cholesterol, which is something i’m working on with diet anyway.  We’ve now got blood pressure down and the weekly or more cause of panic attacks namely my wife has now left this planet. By panic attack i mean rigid steel bar right up my central core, horrible pain, steel tube in throat, along into jaws, temples, iron band around my head and my usual exhortation to shut the f up. No-one could ever tell me what this was whist she was alive, two years after her death a Pharmacist admits ‘panic attack’. At worst case it also generated a v intense burning at the base of my spine. Luckily no pain down left arm. And I got out of marriage alive.

Apart from asking what i did for a living there was utterly no enquiry as to my frame of mind, daily chores / activity, outlook on life – nothing. Nor diet and what i would term pleasure or happiness or hobbies and enthusiasms. Tweaking any of these things would be as good as a daily statin.

I took then for a month and stopped (this was a year ago) with no intentions etc  …. the fatigue was horrible, a problem I already raise when at the Docs. My own answer is to find one own ‘natural high’ to without drugs get happy, live life from what suits one-self, generate ones own happiness. I’m lucky i have my own little one–man business and i have incredible freedoms.

What did alarm me is that statins can prompt Parkinsons and / or diabetes. I mentioned the latter and all i got from the glib, slimey ‘Pharmacist’ at the GP Clinic was that “we can control that with diet” … and for the former its the last bloody thing I need as i live alone. Even when she took my BP couldn’t even tell me the answer, without my prodding as to …..

Seems to me we need some ‘joined up thinking’.

 

Postscript, my wifes death was totally avoidable, with hindsight the Docs were blind to the obvious. Paramedics insisting here in this house she slows her breathing when in fact with undiagnosed blood clots on the lungs needed to breathe rapidly. When ordered to breathe slower in my arms she responded “I can’t I can’t” …. ten days morning and night this fast breathing and mentioned five times to the professionals over this ten day period … NOT ONE REALISED this obvious sign. Forty years ago my dad dieing of cancer was undiagnosed until his last few weeks (a fortnight). I’ve seen other things too, other people whose deaths i think were as much the result of Paramedic incompetence as anything else, Mr s in the next town whom i gardened for, he too suffered when kept out in the cold by the Paramedics, they had no knowledge of him having a ‘weak chest’ yet his voice would be (and gasping) an instant giveaway.  Its baffling the lack of accumulated expertise, the fog and bullshit of procedure, protocols, as if automatons rigidly adhering to a checklist whilst the patient dies. Forgetting what they witnessed yesterday and every day previous.

To my mind the problem with the NHS is attitude.