So the Scot’s feel like they have an awesome, Earth-shattering study that will change medicine as we know it! Unfortunately, this crappy ass study is about cholesterol statins. According to a recent study from Scottland, every one should be taking statins. That’s right, young healthy adults, kids, athletes, your dog, EVERYONE! Man, if I owned a pharmaceutical company, I would be clicking my heals if I got an entire country to standardize my brand of cholesterol statins.
Yeah, we LOVE it when a nation tries to persuade it’s citizens to medicate. This isn’t really going to be a law or anything (yet), but they’re saying pills that lower cholesterol should be prescribed to everyone in order to prevent them from developing heart disease. This may mean a lot of Scottish doctors will prescribe statins to people who don’t supposedly need them. Where did the idea of a healthy lifestyle go?
Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs given to those who have been diagnosed with high cholesterol. Most people who take statins experience loss of energy, migraines, joint pain and all sorts of wild side effects. The icing on the cake is that they simply don’t have any health benefits. Statin do lower cholesterol, but you can flip through this slick site to see all the facts, myths and studies about cholesterol to see why lowering your cholesterol is a very bad idea.
Just to quote a great part of the article about the study:
Now researchers at the University of Glasgow say they have proved that widespread use of statins by otherwise healthy people carries clear financial and health benefits.
“PROVED”? Are you fuckin serious? We’ll look more into how this is FAR from being “proved”. Oh, we know it carries clear financial benefits…..I bet the grant those exercising this study also feel the thrill of the financial benefits. Again, unfortunately Cholesterol statins come with any benefits, just a pile of shi’t.
A major study which followed 6,595 middle-aged men from the west of Scotland for 15 years found that those who took the cholesterol-lowering pravastatin drug were far less likely to need hospital treatment for heart disease and stroke.
What were the controls for this study? The randomly followed around a bunch of middle aged men and only observed their statin habits? What about their eating, drinking, exercise and sleep habits? What if people who take statins are generally more health conscious with their lifestyle compared to people that don’t? There are too many confounders here for them to even attempt to come to such a conclusion.
For every 1,000 patients who received a 40mg dose once a day for five years, the NHS saved £710,000, after taking into account the cost of the drug and safety monitoring.
Of course, so now we’re talking about money again. It’s always about money. Not the money people are losing though, just the money big companies are saving and the customers other markets are making. Say not to statins and do someone you love a favor.