Cholesterol Lowering Drugs: Do They Work?

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Cholesterol Lowering Drugs – Do They Work?

The Controversy

According to a multitude of physicians around the nation, drug therapy can be considered for patients who — in spite of adequate dietary therapy, regular physical activity and weight loss — need further treatment for elevated blood cholesterol levels. In addition, recent studies have shown that 48.9 percent of men and 52.1 percent of women suffer from high cholesterol. By those statistics, if drug therapy is indeed the way to go, over half of the population should be medicated at this moment in time. Today, Suzanne sits down and speaks with pharmaceutical policy researcher Alan Cassels to discuss why cholesterol-lowering drugs, also known as statins, may not be the best option for treating this disorder.

A Healthy Target

Alan Cassels is a researcher and policy analyst investigating pharmaceutical practices at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He is only one of the many researchers who believes that healthy people are being unnecessarily medicated. He argues that pharmaceutical companies have, over time, shaped the lipids in our blood, creating a “risk factor” for heart attacks and strokes. And if that doesn’t work, marketing strategies of the world’s biggest drug companies are now aggressively targeting the healthy. Not to mention those who have gradually lowered the parameters for what is considered to be high cholesterol, are often connected to drug companies.

The Ups and Downs

Cassels believes that the benefits to these drugs are rather low, and even then are only noticeable in people considered “high risk” (i.e.: people who have actually suffered a heart attack). By taking one statin every day, the threat of having an additional heart attack may be reduced by approximately 5-6%. For the majority of people though, who are considered “low risk,” the chance of benefiting from these drugs is about 2%. Adversely, statin drugs deplete the body of an important anti-oxidant (CQ10), which could result in a potentially fatal muscle-weakening disease.