Statins!

Steve said:It's a shame studies like this don't take into account all the reported side effects and fail to take account of the many studies showing little or no benefit from statins.

There again, why try to get people to eat a health diet, exercise and prevent the causes of CHD when you can just treat the sysmptons with pills and make drug companies and doctors rich

the article said:I Statins have been linked to ...muscle weakness..

Tony_Bonner said:
I'm on statins and this is what I'm blaming my piss poor lifting on

martinb said:
But thats just it, IMO people get the wrong advice (high carb, low fat diet), BUT it doesn't matter anyway, as they won't follow any advice(no matter if its right or wrong)
people will drink too much, eat like s**t, and have heart attacks, regardless of what you tell them to do
this might be the cheapest way to deal with that (well make a dent)

mikex101 said:
I agree that people are going to eat drink and smoke what they like. But id be dammed if feeding them all statins will make any sort of dent in either waiting lists, heart attack or stroke incidences or costs.

martinb said:
"He calculates that lowering the threshold for prescribing statins to a 10% risk of cardiovascular disease within a decade would lead to five million more people taking the drugs.
This in turn would save 2,000 lives and prevent 10,000 heart attacks or strokes every year, he said. "
Intuitively I would agree, and another 5 million on the drug does seem like a lot
but if giving statins to 5 mill is cheaper than 10,000 heart attacks, and it does what they say, its difficult to argue IMO

Steve said:
It may well lower the number of deaths, but at the same time what would happen to deaths from other causes? There are now a significant number of studies which show low cholesterol to be a risk fact in deaths from other causes.
I wonder how many healthy people would want to take a drug with known side effects just in case.

martinb said:
"He calculates that lowering the threshold for prescribing statins to a 10% risk of cardiovascular disease within a decade would lead to five million more people taking the drugs.
This in turn would save 2,000 lives and prevent 10,000 heart attacks or strokes every year, he said. "
Intuitively I would agree, and another 5 million on the drug does seem like a lot
but if giving statins to 5 mill is cheaper than 10,000 heart attacks, and it does what they say, its difficult to argue IMO