I posted this review of an academic paper in the LCHF group - because it's the sort of thing low-carbers like - but I really think it's one of those things everyone should read. It's particularly relevant to the conversation about statins from a couple of weeks back.
healthunlocked.com/lchf-die...
The post is unlocked, so you don't need to join the group to read it.
Thank you for this, AwfulToad, most interesting and thought provoking. I had a look at the document and came away and relied on your precis!
I took statins years ago and stopped because they caused such pain in my ankle I couldn't bear weight on it or drive, couldn't get to work, the pain stopped as soon as I stopped taking them.
I have been offered them more recently and have declined, the GP was quite grumpy about me declining.
There is a lot of money involved in getting vast numbers of people to take tablets everyday.
There is indeed a lot of money involved. A pill that a patient needs to take for the rest of his life is the Holy Grail for pharma companies ... as long as the pill only kills him slowly, of course. If you have to invent a disease (hypercholesterolemia) in order to get those prescriptions rolling, well, so be it.
It's hard for us mere mortals to imagine $125 billion in sales from a single pill (atorvastatin), and it's even harder to imagine money like that being derived from a product which has no demonstrable benefit for the majority of its "customers". The Number Needed to Treat (NNT) for statins is somewhere between 50 and 200, depending on how you define a successful treatment. In other words, up to 199 patients on statins get nothing but side effects. This paper, I think, explains quite lucidly why that's the case.
My cholesterol is always in the 5 range and the only thing that stops pressure being put on me to take statins is that my blood pressure in within normal levels. I have been spoken to about statins and I have said that I'm not interested. My GP practice does not like it when a patient doesn't do what they want them to do. I was recently asked why I can't be like everyone else and just take calcium supplements - I choose instead to ensure I get 1200 units of calcium in my diet each day and take vitamins D3, K2 and also magnesium. You would think they would be glad for us to save them money.
We could prevent ¿90%? of non-communicable diseases by reducing the nation's consumption of (refined) carbohydrates?
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