Whilst the debate about statins rages on, this is inevitable. Even if it is proved irreversibly that statins kill people in their thousands, there will continue to be studies put out that show the reverse. That is because there is simply too much money being made from statins for that message to be an acceptable one to industry even if true.
What is utterly clear is that many people can obtain dramatic lipid improving benefits from adopting a low carb, healthy fat lifestyle. In study after study the impact of that diet is to reduce triglycerides and increase HDL. That is exactly what I experienced with a reversal which was orders of magnitude better than any statin trial result ( I have looked at dozens of them).
The effect of that is that the ratio of HDL to LDL improves dramatically and the ratio of HDL to total cholesterol improves dramatically. Once blood tests are done after a few months of that lifestyle many many people find that their cholesterol markers have improved beyond recognition such that there is no longer any discussion at all about taking statins because they are simply not relevant. ( as is the case with me)
In most people adopting the lifestyle LDL goes down a little but the ratios become excellent. For some people they become hyper responders with both very high LDL and high HDL. That has prompted a lot of engineering research into the causes because its clear that these " high cholesterol" people are in many instances quite obviously very fit and healthy athletes.
The work of Dave Feldman has shown that far from being a health marker that moves at a glacial pace that requires long term statin usage, LDL is a highly variable marker that can be influenced in a few days by different food inputs. He has even published a protocol as to what to do to change your cholesterol in the few days before you visit a doctor , ( or have an insurance blood test) that should change your markers to a normal range.
Dave Feldman is an engineer not a doctor, Ivor Cummins is another one. Both of them have analysed what is happening from an engineering standpoint instead of a " what drugs can we use" standpoint. Both of them are worth taking a look at if one wants to actually understand the point of both diet and statins on health and cholesterol.
look up The Feldman Protocol
and see
and
Having looked at all this stuff, my comment would be - that even if statins do have a place in treatment options, that should only be AFTER one has changed diets to one which maximises health markers including cholesterol and that is an LCHF type diet.