“And I have a good friend right now losing his mind and will eventually go into dementia if he doesn’t quit the statins.”
Sorry to hear that, but yep, winds up that the brain NEEDS cholesterol and as noted elsewhere on this thread, no evidence exists that lower cholesterol leads to a lengthened life expectancy.
23% of your bodies cholesterol is in the brain. The manufacturer admits it causes short term memory loss. But it can get way more serious than that. It was proven but not published.