“All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison”

Paracelsus

Ok, let’s deal with the rest of my body: I’ll just list the problems; so, if I don’t mention a body part or function you are curious about, just assume it’s in an ‘OK’ state, perhaps past its prime time but still capable of fulfilling its function in satisfactory manner without the need for any auxiliary medication, if you know what I mean.

By the way, about the medication: I’m taking regularly blood pressure (mostly vessel dilators) meds. I used to take statins as cholesterol reducing drug, but after I read lots of controversial information about it, I stopped taking them. My cardiologist still prescribes it for me and even tried to increase the dosage, but I convinced him not to. He doesn’t know yet that I’m not taking them. Yeah, I like to gamble with my life that way, and I’m going to pay dearly if I’m wrong. OK, let me explain my reasoning in the next couple of paragraphs.

There is a lot of controversy around effectiveness of statins in reducing the probability of serious heart illness or death. The known official study observed two groups of patients for two years and found that there is 1.9% of deaths in the group that was taking statins vs 3% of deaths in the group that was taking placebos. Obviously the research was sponsored by big pharma and they claimed that statins reduces the chance of death by 36% (1.1 / 3). A nice marketing stunt to fool the public and the medical community. As far as I’m concerned it may reduce the chance of death by 1.1% for the first two years (unless you know you are within those 3% destined to die otherwise), but there is little research on what happens after, and there is a known effect of the statin that causes calcification of the vessels, which is strongly correlated with heart issues in the long run. My most recent CT scan showed significant calcification, which prompted me to stop taking statins completely.

Now, if you ask mainstream cardiologists, they will say that calcification is a good thing, because statins convert the softer blood vessel plaques, which are more dangerous, to less dangerous hard, calcified plaques. However, there is also a known negative interference of statins with the K2 vitamins responsible for removing calcium form the blood and absorbing it into bones and muscles where it belongs. Which may also be the cause of a well known side effect of statin: muscle pain. Adding to this my genetics (no heart issues: my dad’s death because of supposed heart failure at the age of 97 is not a valid counter-argument), the fact that cholesterol reduction is tied to few other issues, e.g. testosterone deficiency, my final decision was to drop statins. After all, dying from heart attack is so much better than dying from cancer or Alzheimer’s. Of course a stroke wouldn’t be nice if I don’t die right away, so, not everything is perfect in my plan right now. Let’s wait and see what happens.

I don’t take any other prescription meds. I take some fish oil, but prefer getting Omega-3s from food; I take NAD+ increasing supplements (mostly NR – Nicotinamide riboside) and that’s it.

This may be sufficient for a single post. I’ll continue describing the baseline in the next one. I know it’s a bit boring reading so far and posts with new changes and observations could be more entertaining, but, if you are at all interested, and you are not a gen-Z-type with non-existent attention span (which, if you’re reading this, you are probably not), please bare with me, I’ll try to finish this quickly, maybe just one more post to complete the baseline. Thanks.