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High Cholesterol: how do you control it?

Heart & Blood Health | Last Active: Jun 20, 2022 | Replies (49)

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@johnbishop

Welcome @harolddr, I have not heard that statins do nothing for women but help only middle-age men. I chose not to take them but to instead work on lowering the numbers with lifestyle changes. My decision was based on studies showing statins can induce neuropathy. Here are a couple of references on your question:

-- Women Versus Men: Is There Equal Benefit and Safety from Statins?: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26782824/
-- "Specifically, for every decrease of 40 mg/dl of LDL (bad cholesterol) when on treatment with a statin, the risk of major cardiovascular events was decreased by 16 percent in women and by 22 percent in men, which did not represent a statistically significant difference between the benefits in men and women." -- Efficacy and safety of LDL-lowering therapy among men and women: meta-analysis of individual data from 174 000 participants in 27 randomised trials: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673614613684

Have you discussed alternatives like lifestyle changes and diet vs taking statins with your doctor?

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Replies to "Welcome @harolddr, I have not heard that statins do nothing for women but help only middle-age..."

John, how have you done with lowering cholesterol with lifestyle changes? I'm doing the same thing because every statin I tried led to near-crippling leg cramps within the first week of taking it, even in micro doses. The good news is that, despite higher cholesterol, my echocardiogram, endopat and calcium score numbers are very good so the cardiologist isn't too worried, but I'd like to make more progress. My PCP has a woman patient with very high cholesterol, who cannot take statins either. Then the PCP added that she's 96 years old, walks a few miles every day and still does her own grocery shopping so he's not too worried about her cholesterol anymore ;-).