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Health

Cholesterol wars: Does a pill a day keep heart attacks away?

Statins lower cholesterol, which lowers heart-disease risk. The official line justifies many people popping these pills – but the evidence is not so clear-cut

By Michael Brooks

8 February 2017

heart artwork

Pop a heart pill?

Simon Danaher

IT STARTED in 2014, with a routine health check. I was 44, and fit enough to have completed a string of Olympic-distance triathlons. I exercised most days, at the gym, on a football pitch, running or cycling. Admittedly, my body mass index always came up as “obese”, but that never worried me. I am the very definition of big-boned.

The problems began when a nurse did a finger-prick test of my blood cholesterol. She said I’d have to come back. “The machine seems to be broken,” she said. “I’ve never had a reading this high.”

It wasn’t broken. Further tests confirmed that my blood cholesterol was almost double the healthy level. It was probably genetic, my doctor said. Changing diet and lifestyle wouldn’t help. The only solution was medication: statins.

So, I was being invited to join the club. In the past 30 years, cholesterol-reducing statins have become some of the most widely prescribed drugs globally – small wonder, when heart disease and strokes are among the world’s biggest killers. In the UK, official guidance is that people with normal levels of cholesterol should take statins if their risk of a stroke or heart attack within 10 years is deemed to be higher than 10 per cent. The American Heart Association’s recommended trigger level is 7.5 per cent.

Even so, I’d been vaguely aware of a backlash against statins – and even against the idea that cholesterol really is a bogeyman for your heart. With my own health on the line, I set out to find some clear answers.…

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