This is Dr. Duane Graveline's fourth and final book on statin drugs.
This new (August 2017) and expanded edition of The Dark Side of Statins completes the series.
All four of his statin books are equally informative, but he considered this to be both the best and the most important of his works.
The final chapter is a first-hand account of Dr Graveline's last weeks and days and the official causes of his death.
The full range of statin side effects includes cognitive dysfunction, behavioral and emotional disorders, chronic nerve and muscle damage and an ALS-like neuromuscular degenerative process, as major categories of damage.
Thousands of statin users, like myself, have been afflicted with peripheral neuropathies with a tendency to be resistant to all traditional medical treatment.
Statins inhibit not only dolichols, corrupting our DNA damage correction, but CoQ10 as well, increasing our damage load. Predictably the inevitable effect is increased mitochondrial DNA damage -- considered by many authorities to be the mechanism of our aging process as well as that of many chronic diseases.
Many of the statin side effects are permanent and weakness and fatigue are common complaints. Many statin victims say that abruptly, almost in the blink of an eye, they have become old people.
Statins block the synthesis of CoQ10 and dolichols, thereby contributing directly to the premature common chronic ills of aging. Since this involves normal physiologic processes, it is silent. By the time we become aware of it, it is already far too late and the damage has been done to those susceptible. This, in my judgment, is the truly Dark Side of Statins.
Duane Graveline, MD, MPH
About the Author: Duane Graveline M.D., M.P.H. earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in June 1955. He then spent a year as an intern at Walter Reed Army Hospital followed by a year as Chief of Aviation Medicine Service at Kelly Air Force Base. In 1958 Dr. Graveline received a Master's degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. An Aerospace Medical residency followed at the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and he completed residency training at Brooks Air Force Base receiving specialty certification by the American Board in Preventative Medicine. In 1962 Dr. Graveline was designated a NASA flight controller for the Mercury and Gemini program. In May 1965 Dr. Duane Graveline was selected as one of NASA's six scientist astronauts from 1,400 original applicants. From 1966 to1991 he practiced medicine as a family doctor in Vermont and served as a flight surgeon for the Vermont Army National Guard helicopter group. In 1982 he took six months leave to return to NASA as Chief of Medical Operations for Kennedy Space Center. After three years as an M.D. locum tenens in Virginia, he retired from medical practice in 1994. Dr. Graveline returned to KSC as NASA consultant in space medicine from 2003 - 2005.
