Worried About Your Cholesterol?

Have you ever felt under attack from messages from commercials, companies, and doctors.

In fact, the title of this post sounds like a TV commercial... You are informed that high levels of bad cholesterol are the ticket to an early grave and must be brought down.

Some researchers have even suggested—half-jokingly—that the medications should be put in the water supply, like fluoride for teeth.

Used by more than 13 million Americans and an additional 12 million patients around the world, producing $27.8 billion in sales in 2006 and spent well over 10 billion in marketing.

The drugs are thought to be so essential that, according to the official government guidelines from the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), 40 million Americans should be taking them.

Let's get to the point, there is wide spread promotion and use of cholesterol lowering drugs, and research now conclusively reveals that these medications only have a benefit for people that have already had a heart attack, and it's not guaranteed to help them either.

Businessweek.com posted a article asking tremendous questions and revealing many facts about the business of statin drugs.

These questions surround most drugs, not just statins. One dirty little secret of modern medicine is that many drugs work only in a minority of people.

"There's a tendency to assume drugs work really well, but people would be
surprised by the actual magnitude of the benefits," says Dr. Steven Woloshin,
associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Businessweek.com

The fact is that these medications have overt symptoms in 10-15% people that take them.

Does that mean that they are harming the other 85-90% of people on an sub clinical level?

I highly recommend reading the Businessweek.com article, and if you want to know more check out these other resources:

Dangers of Cholesterol Medications - B2HC
Does Cholesterol Matter? - Natural News
Why Cholesterol May Not Be the Cause of Heart Disease - The Huffington Post