I haven't commented on statins before, but as I have been reading this thread a bit, I've decided to weigh in.
Let me start by making a few observations.
1) Statins are well researched. there is lots of literature, which show that they reduce your chance of getting a heart attack or a stroke.
2) If you live in the UK and have at least one of high cholesterol, diabetes or high blood pressure you will likely be told by your GP do DN that you should take statins. There is a school of thought that everyone above a certain age should take statins.
3) Statins have side effects, e.g. muscle pains, which are documented in the medical literature, but people also report side effects, where there is no consensus.
4) The adherence rate of people taking statins is not great. Many patients stop taking it.
5) The variation of statin use varies a lot between countries. It is higher in the UK than in many other comparable countries (in Europe), but use has increased everywhere.
6) Statin is big business and one of (or the most) prescribed medication. The costs per unit have greatly reduced, though.
7) Statins are hotly debated, not only in this forum.
Let me now comment on these observations.
To be fully transparent, I am a scientist, not in medicine, but an experimental physicist. Thus I am used to interpret complex data sets, but medical research is difficult: it is often very hard to disentangle real causal effects from correlations; there is observation bias towards finding positive effects; successful drug studies is huge business; and not least there are ethical questions which sometimes prevent researchers from setting up double-blind studies with control groups. Finally, I am also a T2 diabetic who has been advised to take statins, and so far I've declined to take them All that said, I want to give statins a fair assessment.
Statins have their use. I have friends who have had a heart attack, a family history of heart problems, who are all very happy to take statins and tell me that this has and or will prolong their lives. I agree with this and would take statins if or when any of these conditions would apply to me.
Beneficial effects of statins can be overstated by quoting relative risk reductions, see the quote from
"The relative risk reduction for those taking statins compared with those who did not was 9% for deaths, 29% for heart attacks and 14% for strokes. Yet the absolute risk reduction of dying, having a heart attack or stroke was 0.8%, 1.3% and 0.4% respectively."
In other words, if you don't have a history of heart problems, ok blood pressure, controlled diabetes and only slightly elevated cholesterol, you might conclude that your risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases is low enough. This basically is why I am not taking them so far.
People are always worried about side effects, even in cases where there is no or little evidence. However, the fact that adherence rates are low must have reasons: people don't tolerate statins, i.e. side effects; statin can increase blood sugar levels, which is not something which T2s want; and, my guess, people don't perceive them necessary. What does a 1% increase of chance of dying from a heart attack in the next 10 year mean? Basically 1 in 100 people with the same conditions will die. Of course if it is you, that's tough, but you might worry about other risk factors which are higher. People also turn this risk into: it will shorten my life span by 1 months every 100 months or ~8 years, which looks low. This is not a correct interpretation, but that does not stop us. We also know that the availability of a defibrillator nearby will affect our chance of surviving a heart attack by much more.
The role of cholesterol is not as clear cut as medical establishment has seen it for years. I don't want to digress, but I also concluded that fat, eggs and cheese are wrongly blamed for heart attacks, which matters for all of us who do LCHF diet. I've learned here that a large ratio of total cholesterol to HDL might be more important. That said, I would still be worried if my cholesterol is really high and re-evaluate my decision.
People on this forum have strong opinions on statins. I hope
@bulkbiker, who started this thread with almost 500 entries, you will agree with me that you are in this category. You have looked at the evidence and read several studies. Like me you have concluded that statins are not for you. You then let others in this forum know your opinion. This is of course ok. Many thanks for compiling all this information about statin and cholesterol for this thread. This is a very useful repository. However, as a scientist, I always have a slight worry, which is confirmation bias. This applies to you, myself and all other people who contrbute on this forum, We are all at risk that once that we've formed our opinion, we still look at further evidence but (subconsciously) only pick up data which fits our conclusion and disregard evidence to the contrary. At this point our conclusion turns into a prejudice. This bias is an issue in all of science. In my field we use so called blind analysis to prevent experimenters bias, i.e. we don't look at the results until all studies are done by, for example, adding a random number to a result, which is hidden from the analysts until we are ready to publish. Another case are drug studies tended to overestimate the positive effects of a drug as only positive results were published. Now there is a requirement to publish all results, independent if a positive effect has been observed or not. To address our confirmation bias we need to take a step back once in a while, study all the evidence of why statins are useful and tally these together with our existing assessment. We then should ask ourselves or even better ask another scientist or informed person to look at the evidence and tell us if our standpoint is tenable.
Money is a great distorter and while I haven't looked into the discussion that NHS surgeries benefit from prescribing statins, such effects are well known. In know that in Switzerland doctors benefit directly from prescribing more expensive drugs, and so it happens and makes health care more expensive.
Finally, while I respect everyone is entitled to their opinion, we must be careful. We all know that the person who shouts loudest is rarely fully correct. We always need to make clear that everyone who posts a question on this forum needs to decide for themselves, if they'll take their GPs advice or not when asked to take statins. All we can do is tell them our experience and how we formed an opinion. This forum is such a great place for finding information and discussion, but If we are not kind to people, who do it differently, we could end up being an insular group of only T2s who all are anti-statin and do LCHF.
This has become a long discussion. I hope it is useful.