DO STATINS BOOST YOUR HEALTH?
YES
NO ONE wants to take medicines unnecessarily, myself included. I would never want anyone to take a medicine if the harms outweighed the benefits.
Fortunately for all of us, when it comes to statins we have a huge wealth of robust, valid evidence to guide us.
Statins reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from cardiovascular disease by around one third. This benefit has been shown time and time again in some of the best trials undertaken.
Benefits
The benefits are seen in a very wide range of people. These trials also measured side effects.
The evidence could not be clearer. For people with existing cardiovascular disease and those currently healthy but at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the future, the benefits of statins hugely outweigh the harmful effects.
In these trials, patients were randomly allocated to a statin or a placebo. This produces two groups – one that takes a statin and the other that doesn’t.
The trials were also double-blind, so neither patients nor their doctors knew what they were taking.
Statins have a valuable role alongside our efforts to prevent disease through improving lifestyles and the conditions people live in.
Instead of rejecting science we should all be making use of the best science to help prevent cardiovascular disease by improving peoples’ lives and lifestyles, and where appropriate, offering people statins.