New Cholesterol Guidelines

Time to reassess whether or not you really need to be on a statin. Given the amount of influence that big pharma has in setting guidelines, it is really difficult to decide what to do. Ultimately, we're on our own and need to educate ourselves as well as we can. In November 2013 both the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation published the recommendations from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association in conjunction with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute on cholesterol guidelines. While these are prestigious publications and prestigious organizations, we still need to keep in mind that most of the people writing the guidelines get drug company money. After years and years of recommending that LDL cholesterol levels (the "bad" cholesterol) be below 100 and ideally below 70, they're now saying to ignore those guidelines. It turns out there wasn't a shred of evidence that showed attaining those levels provided any sort of protection from cardiovascular events. Hmmm.... Sounds like Roseanne Roseannadanna to me. I agree with the first part of their new recommendations. I seriously question the second part, or their conclusion. They picked four groups of people that are considered at risk for cardiovascular events and recommended that they all be on higher doses of statins. Using their calculator to determine risk (which they rather arbitrarily set at >7.5%), most people would belong on a statin. I highly recommend the book "The Cholesterol Myth" by Bowden and Sinatra. It is very readable and will open your eyes.