This sort of report makes me wonder, “Should I, at age 39, consider statins (and/or the emerging HDL-raising drugs) BEFORE my blood vessels get closer to being clogged?? Or are the side-effects of long term use too much?”
the side effects can be debilitating & doctors still put almost everyone over 50 on them - do lots of research before you even consider taking a statin drug.
Really long term effects are unknown. Quarterly dividends from selling statins are known, however, and by renorming serum cholesterol down to 100mg/Dl, these are assured. Quality of life issues from statin side effects are already appearing. I suppose the bright side is that if you start statins early enough, you will be too miserable and short-lived to care whether you get Alzheiner's or not, if you live long enough to develop it..
Someday this whole thing is going to blow up.
The best thing to do is read everything you can find, first, from legitimate peer-revied articles, NOT from Nature Food/Herbal websites, keeping in mind that any drug company funded work that shows adverse results do not get follow-on funding.
An informed decision would require/include research into natural alternatives that control excessive cholesterol.
Here is my unqualified opinion based on how I made the same decision in my mid 40s.
If you have a family history of heart disease, your cholesterol is high, and you have not been able to bring it down to a reasonably safe range without drugs, it is definitely something to consider. My doctor was very uncomfortable with how high my cholesterol was.
If you are still on the fence, go for a scan of your coronary arteries so you will know how much build up you have in them. My doctor sent me for this test. The results were good but he still did not want to leave the cholesterol so high, so I started taking the medication. I have no side effects at all.
I know what you mean - at 37, I haven’t been able to force myself to take the statins even though I got the rx filled.
One Natural statin you might condsider is red rice yeast. It has a precursor to lovastatin and has much the same effect. It is cheaper than prescription drugs but very effective. I think it also may present less risk to the liver.
I tried it since my physicians (One an M. D. and the other a D.O.) and my mom who is an R.N. made me aware of some of the research on the drug. My cholesterol is down 20 points without needing a prescription.
Tough one. If you’re an otherwise healthy guy with no diabetes or HTN, an aspirin a day would be appropriate. I probably wouldn’t put someone healthy on it prophlactically.
I was on Lipitor and it was keeping my cholesterol down, but it was also screwing up my liver enzymes. Once I went off it, my liver enzymes went back to normal.