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Some of the best-selling drugs on the planet are being sold on the basis of a myth. Big Pharma claims its cholesterol-lowering statin drugs can cut the risk of a heart attack by as much as 50 percent – but that’s a number that doesn’t come close to telling the full story. In the studies used to push these drugs, very few patients suffered heart attacks at all. In the JUPITER trial for Crestor, just 1.36 percent of patients on a placebo suffered a heart attack, versus 0.77 percent of those on the drug. While that’s a reduction in relative risk of nearly half, the absolute reduction in risk is just 0.59 percent, according to the new analysis in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology. Numbers like that shouldn't be used to justify drugging tens of millions of Americans, especially when the drug itself can cause diabetes, muscle dysfunction, memory loss and more. It’s time for a common-sense approach to cholesterol. High levels don’t always require treatment because your body needs a certain amount of cholesterol, even LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. And when you do need to bring your levels down, simple lifestyle changes and some natural supplements such as red yeast rice will usually do the job.
References:
Efficacy, Safety Of Statins Exaggerated, Finds Review http://www.science20.com/news_articles/efficacy_safety_of_statins_exaggerated_finds_review-153408
JUPITER: a Few Words of Caution http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2798141/
