Some people who take statins have serious side effects, including muscle pain and memory loss. Does it make sense to take an expensive drug with potentially serious side effects to try to prevent some future event?
I think this depends on your own individual risk profile. If no one in your family has had heart disease and they've all died from cancer at an advanced age, then it would probably not be worth the risks of the drugs. But if everyone in your family has heart disease and many have had heart attacks in their 40s and 50s, the risks would probably be smaller than the benefits.
I take a statin myself, as well as ezetimide (Zetia). In fact, I take them in combined form, as Vytorin, the drug that was shown to decrease cholesterol levels more than a statin alone but not to decrease the level of plaque buildup in the carotid artery any more than the statin alone. Some have also suggested that the drug may increase cancer rates. After the results were announced, many medical people recommended using a statin alone in people with high cholesterol.
A nice idea in theory, but statins alone didn't reduce my cholesterol levels one iota; they remained around 300 to 400. If my cholesterol level were 210 or 220, I'd probably think it wasn't worth the risks of the combination drug. But with the combination of diabetes, cholesterol levels that high, a preponderance of the dangerous small-dense LDL, and a family history of heart disease, I think it's prudent to take cholesterol-reducing medication. I've never had muscle aches from taking a statin.
If statins alone work for you, then it wouldn't make sense to add a drug like ezetimide. If you can improve your lipid levels with diet alone, or if you get muscle aches when you take statins, then even the statin would not be a good idea for you. If you know that you have the beneficial light, fluffy cholesterol and not the small-dense kind, then taking a statin would probably not be worth the risks.
It would be nice if decisions about drugs were black and white, if all medical decisions were simple, if we knew that Drug A was the best and worked for everyone, with no side effects. Unfortunately that isn't true, and we all need to learn as much as we can about every drug we take (as well as drug interactions) and then, together with a physician we trust, make a decision on the basis of our own unique physiology.
It's not easy; but it's important.
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