Statins

[Caroline_S]

My husband is 55 and has recently been told by our GP that his cholesterol is too high. We both eat very healthily and exercise quite a lot. so the doctor has suggested that he try using statins. He is worried about the possible side-effects as he normally tries to avoid taking pills.Are the side-effects that bad and are there big risks involved?

thanks

[Dr Jon Rees]

Hi Caroline

statins are controversial and it is difficult to summarise the arguments for and against them in this forum. For people who have had heart attacks or strokes, the evidence is pretty good that they benefit from a statin, regardless of their cholesterol level.

For people who haven't had these, there is much more debate. A raised cholesterol is thought to be a risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease but it is only one risk factor amongst many others: smoking, obesity, poor diet, lack of exercise, family history of heart disease / stroke. There is a very clever piece of software called Qrisk which allows us to feed all these bits of information in and work out the overall risk of an individual developing cardiovascular disease (heart attack, angina, stroke etc) - this is the best way of working out whether a statin may help, rather than just a high cholesterol alone.

Remember that cardiovascular risk can be hugely reduced by lifestyle change - low carbohydrate (NOT low fat) diet, taking more exercise, losing weight, stopping smoking etc and many people prefer to do this than take long term medication. There is no doubt that many people get side effects from statins - the commonest is muscle aches - but also many people take them without a problem. It is worth discussing all these factors with your gp.

Hope that helps!