Pfizer is getting ready to take a multibillion-dollar loss this fall when it loses patent protection on the best-selling drug of all time. But don’t expect them to sit back and watch Lipitor’s $11 billion a year in sales go down the drain. The Wall Street Journal says the company is hatching a plan to have its cholesterol-lowering drug sold over the counter.

And if they get their way, you can bet it won’t just be sold in pharmacies anymore. I’m thinking 7-11, McDonald’s, and Dunkin Donuts, for starters, where Lipitor can be billed as the antidote to cholesterol-laden convenience foods.

That’s not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds. Some researchers have already proposed doing exactly that. (Read about it here.)

But if there’s anything as bad for you as a fast food meal on your plate, it’s a statin in your body. I don’t care what you’ve been told. These drugs are bad news.

Along with the notorious risk of muscle weakness and debilitating pain, statins have also been linked to kidney failure, liver damage, cataracts, joint and tendon problems, sexual issues, and even an increased risk of diabetes.

That’s right… a drug that’s supposed to keep a supposed risk factor for diabetes in check — cholesterol — can actually help bring the disease on.

Here’s a better plan: Skip the fast food and skip the statins. Basic lifestyle changes can do a much better job of keeping cholesterol levels under control anyway.

The one bit of good news here is that Big Pharma is 0-for-2 when it comes to getting statins approved for over-the-counter sales. Merck’s plan for OTC Mevacor was rejected by the feds at least three times, along with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s bid for nonprescription Pravachol.

Normally, I spend a lot of time ripping FDA decisions — and, let’s face it, there’s a lot to rip. But in this case, the agency has managed to get it right — and they’ve already put Pfizer on notice that the bar for over-the-counter Lipitor has been set pretty high.

“They would have to provide data to show that consumers understand the treatment and recognize that cholesterol-monitoring is required,” FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess told Bloomberg News.

That’s not going to be easy, because Burgess quickly added that previous studies have shown that patients don’t get it.

“Most study participants made mistakes and chose to take the proposed over-the-counter statin when they should not have done that,” she was quoted as saying.

On the other hand, statins such as Zocor are already available over the counter in the U.K. — so maybe it’s only a matter of time before the FDA follows suit.

Who’s responsible for the antidepressant frenzy that’s led to 10 percent of all Americans taking these dangerous meds?

If you guessed shrinks, you’re only partly right. Fact is, there’s been a stunning rise in the number of non-psychiatrists dishing out mood drugs.

The worst part about it is that they’re not just prescribing them for depression. Family doctors are giving these meds out as a cure-all for practically everything under the sun.

A recent study found that the number of family doctors and other non-shrinks prescribing antidepressants more than doubled between 1996 and 2007, from 4 percent to 9 percent.

At the same time, the number of antidepressants given without any mental diagnosis at all — no depression, no anxiety, none of it — shot up at an even faster rate, from 2.5 percent to 6.4 percent, according to the study in Health Affairs.

Doctors were prescribing them for conditions like smoking, sexual dysfunction, sleep disorders and more — despite the fact that they’re approved for exactly none of those conditions.

Not only that, but long-term antidepressant use has been linked to sex problems and sleep disorders. Talk about ironic!

And while those drugs won’t do much for you, they can do plenty to you. Studies have linked long-term antidepressant use to weight gain, diabetes, cognitive decline, and cataracts… not to mention some pretty serious withdrawal issues when you eventually do stop taking them.

But what’s even worse than what we know about these drugs is what we don’t. There’s simply not enough research out there on the long-term use of antidepressants.

Or, as lead researcher Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore told HealthDay News: “Pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in long-term effects because they don’t need that for FDA approval.”

Ain’t that the truth.

It’s the one drug practically everyone’s taking–but nobody needs.

You might even be on it yourself, because docs just can’t help themselves when it comes to cholesterol meds.

I call it the “statin reflex” because every time a doctor sees a high cholesterol level, his arm reflexively goes into his pocket and pulls out a prescription pad.

It’s more reliable than the old hammer-on-the-knee test.

All kidding aside, statins do almost nothing for most people–and a new study proves again that low-risk patients who take them hoping to prevent heart disease have been badly misled.

Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration examined 14 trials involving more than 34,000 low-risk statin patients–influential studies used to push these drugs on millions–and found serious flaws in the research.

They say the researchers behind those studies cherry-picked the evidence for the most positive results… then hid data on side effects.

And that’s only when they bothered to collect it at all–side effects weren’t even reported in half of the studies.

So much for safety.

After crunching the real numbers, the Cochrane crew found that 1,000 low-risk patients would have to be treated with statins for an entire year to reduce the number of heart deaths from 9… all the way down to 8.

That’s it.

And while a life saved is a life saved, the overall cost of saving that life includes unnecessary risk to every single one of the rest of those 1,000 people being treated.

Statins come with a risk of debilitating muscle pain, liver and kidney problems and cataracts. Some people report serious memory loss to the point where it might even seem like dementia.

And those aren’t the only reasons to skip these meds, because another new study even finds that these drugs won’t always prevent strokes, as commonly touted–and might even cause them.

Researchers have found that statins can increase the odds of a hemorrhagic stroke by nearly 60 percent in patients who’ve already suffered one hemorrhagic stroke.

Yet despite serious doubts about the benefits and some very clear risks, Big Pharma continues to push statins on anyone and everyone.

In Britain, they’re available over the counter. Here in the United States, some people have even suggested we dump statins into the water, a la fluoride (and we know how that turned out).

It’s pure insanity–especially when you consider that cholesterol levels can be controlled safely and effectively without a single med.

All you need is a commitment to the same lifestyle changes that really will lower your risk of heart attack, stroke and more.

September 2008 PDF Eat your way off diabetes A drug-free plan that can slash glucose levels There’s an old saying about digging your grave with a fork and a knife. As it turns out, that adage may be true: The single greatest contributor to your developing type-2 diabetes could be your food choices. But who [...]