Imagine looking out your window and seeing smoke billowing from your neighbor’s house.
You call 911. In no time, fire trucks roar up and unload a bunch of elaborate equipment that the firefighters speedily put to work blowing away the smoke. Very effectively, too.
Meanwhile, the flames consume the house, leaving a pile of ash.
Wouldn’t you think the fire department had missed the point?
The news media covered two companion articles in the latest New England Journal of Medicine that reported research showing that C-reactive protein causes heart disease, adding it to LDL cholesterol as yet another bad chemical your body makes.
The articles and the news that reported them are blowing smoke.
That C-reactive protein is an important factor in heart disease is old news. What was new about this research was that it allegedly proved the relationship.
How? With a drug experiment funded by pharmaceutical companies.
Statins are the most widely used drugs for heart patients. The researchers used statins to treat people who had heart attacks. What they found was that statins consistently lowered C-reactive protein levels AND the number of heart attacks and hardening of the arteries.
From these results the researchers and the so-called experts interviewed in the news concluded that even more aggressive treatment with statins is called for. This follows on the heals of new standards for aggressive statin therapy to lower LDL cholesterol, even though, as the researchers acknowledge, half of heart attacks happen to people with normal LDL. This new research opens new vistas for statins: if your LDL is normal, maybe you’ve got high C-reactive protein. More statins patients!
What is C-reactive protein?
It’s part of your body’s immune response. It’s a response to inflammation. It’s smoke to fire.
The researchers acknowledged that statins are effective with LDL and C-reactive protein because statins lower inflammation.
Here’s the problem. The aggressive statins strategy is only one of all-too-many examples of medical practices that assault you body. LDL cholesterol is bad. C-reactive protein is bad. Let’s blow it away.
We should be asking what C-reactive protein is doing and why our immune system is making it. Then we can figure out how to work with our immune system and support our body in its work.
Not blowing smoke.
