Sun, Aug-15-21, 08:53
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Senior Member
Posts: 4,057
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185
BF:
Progress: 98%
Location: Herndon, VA
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Quote:
Consequently, NHS-trained consultant cardiologist and researcher Dr Aseem Malhotra’s latest book, A Statin-Free Life – A revolutionary life plan for tackling heart disease – without the use of statins, is bound to raise blood pressure in certain medical quarters.
In it, he examines the claims for statins – including whether lowering cholesterol really is the key to preventing heart disease.
Most astonishingly – but always citing data – he claims there is no convincing evidence that statins have lowered death rates from heart disease on a population level. Furthermore, that there is no consistent correlation between lowering LDL cholesterol and reduction in heart attacks.
"It’s a useless biomarker in terms of predicting someone’s risk of heart disease and therefore we shouldn’t obsess about lowering it," he says. Instead, he believes the best predictor of the risk of heart disease is reached by measuring the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, or 'good' cholesterol.
Such views flatly contradict the established view and the advice given by charities such as The British Heart Foundation, which point to major studies such as the one published in the Lancet in 2019 where University of Oxford and University of Sydney scientists analysed data from 28 randomised controlled trials involving a total of 186,854 patients. It found for every mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol, statins reduced the risk of a heart attack by 25 per cent and a stroke by 21 per cent.
When this is put to him, Dr Malhotra says it doesn’t correspond to "the totality of evidence." Last year, he and two other cardiologists undertook an independent analysis to determine whether this statement withstood scrutiny. "We published it in the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine – systematically reviewed, peer reviewed – and we found there is no clear correlation with LDL lowering and reduction in heart attacks and strokes."
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Cholesterol wars continue. As for the sentence in bold, I'm surprised that Malhotra didn't explain the difference between Relative Risk and Actual Risk (while he may have, it wasn't explained in the article). Pharma loves to use Relative Risk in their statistics due to it often favoring the drug over the placebo by a wide margin. However, it's all statistical manipulation allowing them to make wild claims. I agree with Jean, it's the pharmaceutical companies that can't live without selling statins, one of the largest revenue generators in history. Perish the thought of doing away with them.
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