Post-menopausal women taking statins have a 48 percent higher risk of diabetes

Statins strike again

If you’re a woman taking statin medications, please print this out and run, don’t walk, to your doctor’s office immediately.

According to new data from the Women’s Health Initiative, post-menopausal women taking statins have a 48 percent higher risk of diabetes than women who aren’t on these cholesterol-lowering drugs. And when the researchers factored out what they referred to as “confounding” variables, that rate skyrocketed to a whopping 71 percent.

Did you hear about this? Was it on the front page of your local newspaper? Me either.

But if this had occurred with a nutritional supplement, you’d better believe that it would’ve been front page news all over the globe, along with urgent warnings to stop taking whatever nutrient had been implicated.

So why hasn’t anyone made a peep about statins?

I can give you 7.2 billion reasons–each and every one beginning with a dollar sign. (And, for the record, that $7.2 billion figure was for 2010 sales of just one statin drug–Lipitor–in the U.S. alone…so you can imagine how much the entire class of statins must rake in each year worldwide. But I digress…)

Could this be the reason for the skyrocketing rates of diabetes? My guess is that it’s one of them. It’s especially likely considering that back in 1991 when the Women’s Health Initiative started 7 percent of women in the study were taking statins. Today that number is significantly higher, making the potential risk of diabetes much more widespread.

And what makes this finding especially maddening is that statin drugs are completely unnecessary. Their sole purpose is to lower cholesterol levels. And as I mentioned last month, there’s NO evidence that lowering your cholesterol level will decrease your risk for heart attacks or strokes.

If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels (and I don’t necessarily think you should be), there’s a much simpler, much safer solution: my New Hamptons Health Miracle.

When you follow it, your cholesterol goes down naturally (as do your triglycerides, which is even more important). And it won’t increase your risk of diabetes, which is much deadlier than high cholesterol. In fact, it does just the opposite. Not to mention that it will also help you slim down and have more energy than you’ve felt since your 20s.

All that and you get to actually ENJOY the foods giving you these tremendous health benefits. No styrofoam rice cakes, no rubbery, fat-free “cheese,” no boring, broiled chicken breast…Instead, you’ll eat the things you really want, like juicy burgers dripping with gooey, melted cheese, and Southern fried chicken (with crispy skin).

Avoiding statins–and all their deadly side effects–really is THAT simple.