An interesting health related topic....

I just thought this news was important enough, astounding enough, and severely under-reported enough to make a point of it...as it literally affects tens of millions of people who are told they need cholesterol lowering medicine..

First and foremost...if you have had a heart attack or a stroke, or if you have not yet discussed this with your doctor, then definitely don't change or stop any of your medicines, but consider this...
http://www.latimes.com/news/health/sns-health-statins-debate,0,5478969.story

This is a newspaper story but you can easily find more on these studies...

THREE different MAJOR studies just completed, now show overwhelmingly that taking these cholesterol lowering medicines
may NOT alter your risks much if at all.......
read as you wish....check further if interested, but here are the main points...

"Two studies and a review ...question the cholesterol-lowering "statin"
(drugs like Lipitor) use as a preventive measure.."


..statins, the cholesterol-lowering prescription drugs that rake in some $26
billion a year for their makers... do not lower death rates among patients with
risk factors but no evidence of established cardiovascular disease who take
them as a preventive measure. The new study would seem to be a blow both
to the drugs' makers and to three-quarters of statin users —
that is, those who take the drug in hopes of averting a first heart attack or stroke.

The third article, also published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, raised
questions about the financial and professional motives of the medical
researchers who conducted the highly influential study..(which).. propelled
many healthy persons without elevated cholesterol levels onto long-term
statin treatment..

The belief that statins lower the risk of a heart attack or stroke has helped
make them the second-most-commonly prescribed class of drugs in the United States..

..an analysis of 11 clinical trials that included a total of
65,229 patients, found that among patients who were
considered at high risk of heart attack or stroke but who had not had one,
statin therapy did not lower the risk of death.


..for patients without established heart disease,

"statins are more risky than helpful."

So...what we have is a lot of GOOD studies, and NOT done by the drug industry who have a vested interest in seeing millions take this medicine...

And they are convincing results....showing just maybe as many as 75-80% of all the people who have been told they need these medicines or who have been placed on them, may be gaining little or no benefit...FWIW good doctors need to heed these results and stop putting so many millions of people on terribly expensive and potentially injurious medicines when the data does not support their use so widely.

Recall, this is not just one isolated finding...
..Direct from my link..."Two studies and a review of previous studies .."

ie...THREE difference recent publications...

and also this comment....
"Nine clinical trials published in the last six years have found no benefit to the use of statins in the prevention of heart disease"

....so you decide, but I think the stuff is mostly hype and oversold......



As a corollary -- another recent study also showed that treatment of triglycerides was mostly useless........
They chose over 5000 high risk patients (patients with heart disease and diabetes) and studied the benefits of lowering their triglycerides as has been recommended for decades by some...

Guess what.....read for yourself, but here are the quotes...
"Adding a triglyceride-lowering drug to cholesterol-fighting statins provided no additional protection from heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease"
" Dr Steven Nissen, a prominent cardiologist with the Cleveland Clinic, disagreed with that assessment.
"The use of fenofibrates will decline precipitously," he predicted. "It's another troubling example of a drug that was approved that didn't work."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1419942020100314



So don't just let someone badger you into taking a lifetime of medicine without asking what's the evidence that it will help...people need to know that there's a lot of bias and untruth out there - mostly foisted on the industry by fears of liability for not treating and pressure from the drug companies who argue their medicines are necessary.
I say you should decide based on all the facts.