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Sep 20, 2023Liked by Dr Paddy Barrett

Another refreshing dose of common sense in this irrational world. Thanks Dr. Paddy!

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Informative article. My father has been on atorvastatin and ezetimibe for years and he's in his late 70's and highly physically active.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Vascepa. I've seen some doctors rave about it.

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A couple of comments: I tried atorvastatin 5mg and tested my self frequently on sudoku puzzles from the same site and of the same difficulty. The measure was the time to solve. I then switched to rosuvastatin and did the same. There was a very noticeable increase in time to solve on atorvastatin. I am apoe4/3 and my father, a physician died at 73 from Alzheimers no longer knowing any of us. Since all siblings carry one apoe4 variant and my mother lived to 94 without substantial dementia I'm guessing that my father was homozygous for apoe4 which carries a high risk for early onset Alzheimer's.

second comment: I took the Boston Heart sterols test and my desmosterol is 124 but it is marked red apparently meaning too high yet low desmosterol is associated with alzheimers?

The other numbers are lathosterol < 54 Beta-sitosterol 70 and campesterol 245.

My lipids on 5 mg rosuvastatin and 10mg of ezetamibe: apoA1 120 apoB 70 Hdl 41 ldl 45 trigs 46 TC 95. I also use coconut oil as a butter substitute.

I seem to both tolerate statins well and they seem to be quite useful as my lipids untreated are in fh range. I had a partial pericardiectomy April 11 and a single bypass along with some other "as long as wer'e in there" repairs probably due to a virus or covid or the 3 vaccinations I took for it but no-one knows for sure.

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Seems like a lot going on and always hard to know when it comes to N of 1 experiments. I think as long as your APOB is controlled with a therapy that you are tolerating that is the primary goal. I can’t really make individualised comments here but it sounds like you are well on top of things. Best of luck and stay well.

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Statins do more harm than any good!! No mention of particle size. No mention of the ratios.

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This seems to only be looking at dementia side effect as a function of lower LDL/ApoB circulating in the blood stream, rather than a specific side effect of statins. Some have concerns about statins crossing the blood brain barrier in APOE 4 individuals, thus affecting the levels of cholesterol in the brain myelin. For that we would need to see the data parsed for APOE 4 carriers vs non APO E 4’s. Has this research been done for statins?

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This is about as good as we can get. (https://paddybarrett.substack.com/p/apoe4-and-cardiovascular-risk ). All the data that suggests a potential dementia risk is based on mechanistic data, which is not supported in any way by the outcome data.

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Dr Paddy thanks for your great work. What about rosuvastatin dose, going up to 40 mg. (from 20 mg. whitout side effects) may be riskier for desmetrol loss?

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I wouldn't be too worried but always best to do in consultation with your physician who is familiar with interpreting desmosterol and APOE results.

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