Sta'ins, CoQ, diabetes and Dr Andreas Eenfeldt's link

I'm not very conscientious about reading many blogs as I don't really have time to look after my own blog properly, but I will occasionally flick through the links from Stan's site and I felt that Dr Andreas Eenfeldt's link to the official Swedish data sheet for simvastatin was rather excellent. Via Google translation:

"Diabetes is a possible side effect. This is more likely if you have high blood sugar and high blood fat levels, are overweight and have high blood pressure. Your doctor will monitor you while you are taking this medicine."

Statins deplete CoQ. This means that for every electron carried from any input, NADH or FADH2, down the ETC there will be less CoQ available in the redox couple and the CoQH2 levels will be relatively high. An highly reduced CoQ couple (ie low CoQ per unit CoQH2) will drive reverse electron flow through complex I and generate superoxide. Insulin resistance. Diabetes.

I suspect that EVERYONE on a statin will step their insulin resistance up by an amount proportional to the CoQ depletion. Everyone. Just a few will cross the arbitrary boundaries between "normality", "impaired glucose tolerance" and "diabetes".

Hyperglycaemia doesn't care about labels or boundaries. You get it, you suffer.

Obviously this rather nasty side effect can be COMPLETELY avoided by putting the statin script in the bin.

If you are going to take simvastatin anyway then some coenzyme Q10 might ameliorate some of the damage you have chosen to do to yourself.

Peter