It used to be that we simply believed everything our doctor told us. We wouldn’t dare question his or her diagnosis or a prescribed “medication” to counter said diagnosis.
But, the tide is turning. People are becoming more educated about their health and they are starting to see that pharmaceuticals are not always the best answer, and in some (if not most) cases, they actually cause more harm than good.
Such is the situation with statin drugs. These medications have been touted for years by big drug companies as the answer to all of our “bad” cholesterol problems. Has your doctor have prescribed you to take statin drugs before?
In fact, between 2011 and 2012 alone almost 30 percent (27.9 percent) of all adults over 40 were using a prescription cholesterol-lowering medication. (1)
The Cholesterol Myth
We have been told for decades that there are two types of cholesterol (lipoproteins): “good” or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and “bad” or low-density lipoprotein (LDL). (3)
Together, these two types of cholesterol make up the total amount of cholesterol in our blood and essentially, the higher our LDL (bad) cholesterol is, the higher our risk is of heart disease (atherosclerosis).
But studies have not only debunked this long-standing myth as far back as the 1930s, but new studies and evolving science continues to do so. (4,5)
In reality, research actually shows there is no relationship at all between blood cholesterol levels and the degree of atherosclerosis in your blood vessels.
Some scientists even suggest that if the “good and bad” cholesterol theory were actually correct, people with high LDL cholesterol would all be more atherosclerotic than those with low HDL cholesterol, but the truth is…they aren’t. (6,7,8,9)
In fact, one recent and very large review published in the BMJ Open journal involving close to 70,000 people further concludes there is no link between “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of people over 60 from cardiovascular disease. (10)
The authors of the study go so far as to state, “…older people with high LDL (low-density lipoprotein) levels, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, lived longer and had less heart disease.” (11)
So why do doctors continue to paint LDL cholesterol as the ultimate villain? The answer is actually quite simple—Big Pharma.
A $100 Billion Industry
Statin drugs — including such medications as atorvastatin (Lipitor), simvastatin (Zocor), and others—are the most widely prescribed drugs of all time. (12)
The only reason the “good and bad” cholesterol theory continues is that it is in the best interest of wealthy pharmaceutical companies to continue selling these drugs that amount to approximately $100 billion a year in sales.
Lipitor alone has made $140 billion since it was first introduced, making it the most profitable dug of all time. (13)
While those numbers are astounding in and of themselves, if big pharma has anything to do with it those numbers will double if not triple by 2030. (14)
According to doctors with the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, physicians should actually be prescribing statin medications to all patients with high odds of suffering a heart attack or stroke in the short-term (i.e. people who have already had a heart attack or people with Type 2 diabetes and exceptionally high levels of LDL cholesterol linked to familial risk). (15)
New guidelines now recommend that patients with a 7.5 percent risk of suffering a stroke or heart attack over the next 10 years also be prescribed statin medications.
Prior to these much stricter recommendations, cholesterol-lowering drugs were generally limited to patients deemed to have a 20 percent probability of suffering from a heart attack—about 36 million Americans—but the new guidelines will roughly double that number!
This is outrageous when you consider the results of the latest study show that a whopping 92 percent of people with high cholesterol actually live longer than those with lower levels. (