I started taking cholesterol meds at the same time I went gluten-free. I had tried niacin, but just couldn't cope with the flushing (which also itched like mad). My total cholesterol wasn't bad, but my lipid ratios weren't good. The lowest dose of Vytorin worked, keeping everything well below bad ranges, but I often wondered whether my numbers could have been bad due to gluten and I wondered how they would look now after a few years gluten-free. Now that the news about Vytorin not being any more effective than Zocor alone has come out, I stopped it and was thinking of having my doctor write a prescription for Lipitor. Since you never know if a generic has gluten I looked up "atorvastatin and gluten" on Google and found a link to one of these gluten-free forum threads referring to the book "The Cholesterol Con". I haven't read the book, but I've read lots of reviews and summaries online and I think I'm just going to say screw it and stop the cholesterol meds entirely. I have been trying to eat real, simple, unprocessed food that my great-grandmother would have recognized, and I'm going to keep that up. Butter instead of margarine, meat, veggies and fruits, cheese, beans, nuts, as little man-made food as possible. Like Michael Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". I have spent most of my working life in the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm not going to swallow their products anymore without some proof I need them. Now the Zyrtec, that I'll keep - that really does make a difference. I'm not a Luddite, I'm not avoiding drugs, but if there's no proof that lowering my cholesterol will keep me alive longer or save me from disability, I'm not going to waste my money (and my insurance company's money). Thoughts?

I think you have a good plan, as long as you keep your appointments to check those levels are not getting out of line. You may want to add olive oil, garlic and if you like it hummus to your daily diet. All will help with keeping those levels down. Remember to excercise on a regular basis also.

But from what I've read there's really no proven medical value in keeping cholesterol numbers down. It doesn't reduce deaths from heart disease, and in some populations there is actually more death in low cholesterol than in high cholesterol groups. Sure, all the doctors believe that it's necessary to keep cholesterol low because teams of doctors with links to the manufacturers of statins told them so, but the studies don't show any consistent benefit. Other things are more likely risk factors for heart disease. I'm going to eat like my ancestors, most of whom lived to 80 or more, and see how I do.

I'm pretty certain the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease is dying a slow painful death. I do think cholesterol has a role to play, but the tests they currently use to detect it are not the ones they should be using. They should be using the VAP or NMR tests and looking for small pattern LDL particles.

Anyway, I found this doctor's blog to be very helpful in understanding it all. I suggest reading the archives. You'd be surprised at what he has to say about wheat and heart disease! http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com

Also, there was a GREAT Business Week article about this entire subject: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...68052092994.htm

Statins do work in some people (1 in 250 people that take them have a benefit) but it isn't because they reduce cholesterol. Doctors have been hyped up on reducing cholesterol but as Vytorin proved it isn't what makes the statins work. Meanwhile your all cause death mortality actually goes up when you're on a statin. We have cholesterol in our bodies for a reason...