This is part 3 of this article. Read what the side effects are if children are given statin drugs for children with high cholesterol! SCARY!!!

The Hidden Truth: Why Government Wants Your Kids on Cholesterol Drugs…

Cholesterol is NOT the Villain in Childhood Obesity

Cholesterol has been terribly vilified, when in reality it is essential for a wide variety of vital functions in your child’s growing body, including:

* Maintaining healthy cell membranes
* Producing a variety of hormones, including estrogen, testosterone and vitamin D
* Producing bile acids, which aid in fat digestion
* Cholesterol also helps your child’s brain form memories and is vital to her overall neurological function.

On the flip side, there is strong evidence that having too little cholesterol increases your risk for cancer, memory loss, Parkinson’s disease, hormonal imbalances, stroke, depression, suicide, and violent behavior.

Before 2004, a 130 LDL cholesterol level was considered perfect. But now, many physicians are recommending levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs!

So, the guidelines have progressively widened the pharmaceutical market. If children are subjected to universal cholesterol screening, the drug companies increase their target market that much more.

Statin Side Effects: Keep Out of the Reach of Children!

In 2007, the American Heart Association first recommended the use of statin drugs for children with high cholesterol. Then, in 2008 the American Academy of Pediatrics followed suit, recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs for children as young as age 8.

Now they are concocting ways to place more and more children on statins, in spite of the overwhelming evidence for serious side effects — nearly 900 studies point to the damaging effects of these drugs.

The list of statin-related health problems includes the following:

* Muscle damage (potentially permanent), mostly related to CoQ10 depletion
* Heart damage, heart failure and strokes
* Neuropathy
* Immune system suppression
* Pancreatic dysfunction
* Hepatic dysfunction
* Increased cancer risk
* Cognitive impairment
* Depression

In addition to these risks, there are also risks from insufficient CoQ10 levels, which directly relate to the use of statins:

* Impaired white blood cell activity
* Reduced muscle strength contraction — especially for the heart muscle
* Impaired liver function
* Decreased cell growth and division
* Decreased ability to neutralize free radicals

And now, it would appear, they are pushing a massive kiddie-statin campaign, disguised as “preventative medicine.”

Pfizer has been in legal trouble a number of times over fraudulent claims about the “health benefits” of Lipitor. Lipitor is particularly damaging if you are diabetic, doubling your risk for stroke. And with childhood diabetes rates increasing by leaps and bounds, prescribing Lipitor would be extremely risky to these diabetic or pre-diabetic kids.

According to an excellent report in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine, long-term data about the safety of statins for children is completely lacking. Ferranti and Ludwig write:

“At 8 years of age, a child’s brain and other organ systems remain in dynamic stages of growth and development, raising concern that long-term pharmacotherapy initiated at this age may adversely affect the central nervous system, immune function, hormones, energy metabolism, or other systems in unanticipated ways.”

It is one thing to medicate the child who has a rare genetic defect in cholesterol metabolism, but quite another to treat masses of at-risk children whose symptoms reflect easily modifiable lifestyle factors.

As the article says, “Once this door has been opened, the pharmaceutical industry will happily walk through it.”

Technorati Tags: cholesterol, childhood obesity, obesity, statin drugs, statin-related health problems, CoQ10, kiddie statin campaign, Pfizer, Lipitor