Statins raise blood sugar and diabetes risk by suppressing GLP-1, a hormone that helps control glucose. A Stanford scientist explains why cardiologists and endocrinologists often miss this trade-off, and how patients end up managing conflicting health goals with no one looking at the whole picture.
When I go on statins, my glucose goes up.
Statin medications, which are prescribed to about 1 in 4 adults over 40 for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, we already kind of know they increase HbA1c and increase type 2 diabetes risk. That's known. But they also smash down GLP-1. The effect was very dramatic, like a 7-year-old could see it. But the reason I raise it is because given the nature of the study, um, that we just discussed, did you, or would you be interested in looking back to see if patients on statins predominated in the incretin effect dominant pathology.
We should definitely look at that. And to your point, actually, I'm textbook this way. That is to say, when I go on statins, my glucose goes up. I know that already for me, and I wasn't aware it might be due to the GLPs. There's another study suggesting there's a modest effect on insulin resistance when you go on statins, you increase that.
Yeah.
So, um, but the GLP-1 probably makes more sense in the sense that As I say, I grew up on statins. So I've been a little careful about that. In fact, I give my heart guy a little bit of grief on this because he wants me to keep increasing my statins. And I said, "Well, you're just trying to prevent me from getting a heart attack. You don't care if my sugar goes way off the map." And we laugh about it.
That's where we talk about, yeah, medicine being siloed. They just care about—
It is, yeah. And so he's not looking holistic, whereas I'm trying to balance this thing.
