10 Questions for my doctor: When prescribing statins or anti-cholesterol medication
An ever increasing stack of evidence show that if 100 people take a statin every day for 5 years:
- 99 of them will receive no cardiovascular benefit. Nada. Zero. Nothing.
- 1 of them will avoid a non-fatal heart attack.
- None of them will avoid death.
- Most of them will have long term side effects.
Not said lightly - backed below by a pile of evidence.
So why then prescribe statins?
Too many health practitioners still belief that elevated cholesterol is the “cause” of heart disease.
The 10 questions (Click on the button for a PDF version) for my doctor, draws from numerous books, studies and growing evidence, that there is no association between the two.
In fact data shows lower cholesterol significantly increases one’s risk of death.
An alternative model (buried by the medical industry) proposes that the blood clots the body uses to heal arterial damage, once healed, create bumps (called atherosclerotic lesions or plaques) which constricts blood flow.
The evidence for the blood clot model is much stronger than the cholesterol model. Yet the main approach to treating heart disease is still to prescribe statins (to the point, over a trillion dollars have now been spent on them).
Tragically, the benefits of these highly toxic medications are minuscule and the harms are vast. Statins are one of the most common medications that severely injure patients.
Statins actually does reduce heart attacks. But when a doctor says "by 30%," what they mean in plain language is:
"Out of 100 people who take this pill for five years, it will probably help one of them. The other 99 took it for nothing, except potential side effects."
Aseem Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist, calculated that taking a statin for a full year after a heart attack adds less than one day to life expectancy.
For men without pre-existing heart disease, statins have not been shown to extend life at all.
For women at any level of risk, the data are worse: cardiovascular deaths decrease, deaths from other causes increase by a corresponding amount, and total mortality is unchanged.
Malcolm Kendrick, who spent decades examining these trials, put it plainly:
For everyone except men already suffering from heart disease, statins do not increase life expectancy by one single day.
These numbers are published.
They are not contested. Even by the Pharma manufacturers.
What is contested is whether patients should be told about them before the prescription is written. That is why we provide you with a list of 10 questions to ask your doctor.
New 2026 guidelines from leading cardiology groups now recommend assessing cholesterol risk as early as age 30. Imagine that!
And with lower treatment thresholds.
The statin consultation typically lasts a few minutes:
Cholesterol is high. A statin is recommended. The patient agrees.
What is never discussed:
1 - the absolute risk reduction,
2 - the side effect rates from populations that were not pre-screened for medicine tolerance,
3 - the fact that the raw safety data from every major statin trial have been withheld from independent analysis,
4 - or the evidence that high cholesterol in people over 60 is associated with living longer, not dying sooner.
The horrible side effects of statins (shown in detail here):
One group of side effects are those perceived by the patient (which often make them want to stop using the medications). These include:
- A high incidence of muscle pain
- Fatigue, especially with exertion and exercise
- Muscle inflammation (whose cause remains "unknown")
- Autoimmune muscle damage
- Psychiatric and neurologic issues such as depression, confusion, aggression, and memory loss
- Severe irritability
- Sleep issues
- Musculoskeletal disorders and injuries
- Sudden (sensorineural) hearing loss
- Gastrointestinal distress
The other group are those not overtly noticed by the patient. These include:
- Type-2 diabetes, particularly in women
- Cancer
- Liver dysfunction and failure
- Cataracts
- ALS-like conditions and other central motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson's disease and cerebellar ataxia)
- Lupus-like syndrome
- Susceptibility to herpes zoster (shingles)
- Interstitial cystitis
- Polymyalgia rheumatica
- Kidney injury
- Renal failure
Each of the 10 Questions has a Key Fact and two paragraphs of evidence.
Eight questions address the statin itself:
- absolute versus relative risk,
- side effects,
- trial design and funding,
- the role of cholesterol in the body,
- treatment thresholds,
- alternatives,
- and whether the pill extends life.
Two questions address the cholesterol hypothesis the entire prescribing cascade depends on.
Here is one of the ten:
Has it been proven that high cholesterol actually causes heart disease?
Key Fact: The Framingham Heart Study — the longest-running cardiovascular study in history — found that for men over 47, there was no difference in mortality between those with high cholesterol and those with low cholesterol. More than 95% of heart attacks occur after age 48.
More evidence backing the facts given in the 10 Questions can be studied from Cholesterol and Statins: An Essay on the Most Successful Unfalsifiable Claim in Medicine (second button below).
This essay compiles research from Kendrick (The Great Cholesterol Con, The Clot Thickens), Ravnskov (The Cholesterol Myths), Demasi’s BMJ review of statin trial transparency, Sinatra (The Coenzyme Q10 Phenomenon), and Graveline (Lipitor, Thief of Memory) — alongside published data from the Framingham Heart Study, the 4S, TNT, EXCEL, and IDEAL statin trials, and the Lyon Diet Heart Study.
Focusing on high cholesterol is a red herring. Rather focus on addressing the health of blood vessels and blood flow due to chronic inflammation.
This is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle like stress, lack of sleep, lack of exercise and lack of healthy blood support nutrients in the diet.
How supplements such as CoEnzyme10, Nattokinase, Curcumin, Bromelain, Omega 3, Magnesium and many more contribute to healthy blood flow and blood vessels are shown in our Blood Pressure Stack here: