And so, in general, although there are some potential side effects long-term for statins, in most cases, if your doctor has identified you as having high cholesterol and needing a statin, the risks greatly outweigh, or sorry, the benefits greatly outweigh the risks.
If your risk is very low, you probably won't need a statin, unless your LDL is above 190 mg/dL (4.92 mmol/L). If your risk is very high — for example, you've had a heart attack in the past — a statin may be helpful even if you don't have high cholesterol.
St. Luke's cardiologist and board-certified in Lipidologist, Sobhan Kodali, MD, states, “If you know you are at high risk for heart disease or stroke, the benefits of statins far outweigh the risks."
While statins are highly effective and safe for most people, they have been linked to muscle pain, digestive problems and mental fuzziness in some people who take them and may rarely cause liver damage.
Statins work for people of all ages
For every mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol, statins reduced the risk of an MI by 25% and a stroke by 21% across all age groups. Even in the oldest group, statins lowered the risk of a severe event by up to 20% for every mmol/L reduction.
Fear of side effects and perceived side effects are the most common reasons for declining or discontinuing statin therapy. Willingness to take a statin is high, among both patients who have declined statin therapy and those who have never been offered one.
Because many factors are involved, your cholesterol numbers may be considered normal and yet you may still be found to be at an elevated risk for heart problems. As a result, statin medications are now used to lower the risk of heart disease and heart events in most anyone found to be at high risk.
If you're taking a statin medication to lower your cholesterol, you will need to keep taking your prescription, or your cholesterol will likely go back up. Stopping your statin can put you at risk of having heart disease and other preventable health problems like stroke and heart attack from high cholesterol.
Side Effects of Statins: Risk Versus Benefit
Like all drugs, statins bring the risk of side effects. Muscle pain, liver damage, increased blood sugar, and fuzzy thinking are the most common – which can scare some candidates off.
For people diagnosed with coronary heart disease or stroke there is proven benefit, so your GP or cardiologist will recommend you take a statin. If, as in your case, you do not have CVD, you nevertheless may have been offered a statin following a health check by your GP or nurse.
A low-dose statin like atorvastatin (Lipitor®) is safe for most patients, including those with mild liver enzyme abnormalities. Many people have fatty liver disease due to obesity. Losing weight can help to correct the liver enzyme tests.
Summary: As many as one in two patients stop taking statins, reduce the dose or take them irregularly because they believe the cholesterol-lowering drugs cause muscle pain and other side-effects.
As a general guide, total cholesterol levels should be: 5mmol/L or less for healthy adults. 4mmol/L or less for those at high risk.
Adults age 75 and older may not need statins.
Their doctors usually prescribe statins to prevent heart disease. But for older people, there is no clear evidence that high cholesterol leads to heart disease or death.
Joseph A. Hill, M.D., Ph. D. The controversy in the United Kingdom started in 2013 when the British Medical Journal (BMJ) claimed statins were being overprescribed to people with low risk of heart disease, and that the drugs' side effects were worse than previously thought.
Statin use is associated with increased calorie intake and consequent weight gain. It is speculated that statin‐dependent improvements in lipid profile may undermine the perceived need to follow lipid‐lowering and other dietary recommendations leading consequently to increased calorie intake.
Bempedoic acid, a daily pill already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, significantly lowers cholesterol and the risk of heart attacks, new research finds.
No, your cholesterol will likely return to the level it was before taking the medication a few months after stopping the medicine. How long does it take for statins to get out of your system? It can take a few months for your cholesterol levels to return to what they were prior to the medication.
A person is considered at high risk for developing heart disease if their total cholesterol level is higher than 240 mg/dL, LDL levels are higher than 160 mg/dL (190 mg/dL is even higher risk), and if the HDL level is below 40 mg/dL.
Statins may lower blood pressure — the evidence is still thin — but if they do, the effect is small. Few of the multitude of trials testing these cholesterol-lowering medicines checked blood pressure before and after and kept the use of blood pressure medicines constant.
Statins don't just lower cholesterol levels but also reduce the risk of fatty plaques breaking off from walls of your arteries, reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Ezetimibe is a tablet that lowers cholesterol. It may be prescribed if statins cannot be taken, or alongside a statin for extra cholesterol-lowering. It's a 'cholesterol absorption inhibitor' that limits the absorption of cholesterol in the small intestine.
In total, a pooled analysis of 36 studies found that statins were associated with a decreased risk of dementia (OR 0.80 (CI 0.75-0.86). For Alzheimer's disease, the association with statins based on 21 studies, was also reduced (OR 0.68 (CI 0.56-0.81).