Hi, richey - Thank you SO MUCH for recommending listening to Dr. David Diamond's video re statins. OMG! It was amazing! It is the 2nd such video I have watched that comes to the same conclusion. Dr. Diamond's video, however, is much more fact filled and detailed. This notion of lowering cholesterol is so wide-spread though, and statins drugs are pushed so hard by physicians that I think this trend will continue as long as the American Heart Association is in the pockets of drug makers :(. I was a little confused about the 250 mg. 2x a day for 3 weeks...were you talking about eh Cipro you were taking that has a well known side effect of join and tendon problems, including the Achilles tendon? PS I tried the Red Yeast Rice, but it contains a natural statin, which gives me personally the same affect as prescription statins, that and anything with stanols. 🙂 Listening to Dr. Diamond made my day today. 🙂