If you are dealing with diabetes, you need to know you are at high risk for heart attack, even if you've never been concerned before about cholesterol or heart disease.
Las Vegas internist Dr Mahfoud Beajow of Quality Care IPA says diabetics are in the very highest risk group. He said, "We put them in the same category as a person who had a previous heart attack. Your highest risk of a heart attack is having a previous heart attack and diabetes is right up there."
Dr Beajow told me that many of the side effects of diabetes can be reduced with aggressive management of the disease, but not heart attack. He offers an analogy, saying to patients, "We are Maryland Parkway. Now imagine driving on that street at 35 miles an hour. When you have diabetes, it's like driving at 75 miles an hour. Could you get in an accident? Your chance is much higher at 75mph."
The American Diabetes Association now recommends that if you are over 40 and have diabetes, you should consider taking a cholesterol medication regardless of what your cholesterol level is.
For more information:
http://www.diabetes.org/You may have heard that certain cholesterol-lowering drugs can raise your risk of diabetes. This article explains what to make of that:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/cholesterol-drugs-linked-with-diabetes-risk/
