Statins and Heart Disease Effectiveness

Over a five-year period, if you take your statin religiously

and don't get side

effects, right? Because remember, the trials took out people with side

effects. So best case scenario,

your benefit of a statin is one in eighty-three for saving your

life,

right? And one in thirty-nine in preventing a

further heart attack.

A lot of people find that quite underwhelming.

Another way of looking at the statistics, Joe, and this is important for

populations,

looking at those trials, and when I, when I-- what I'm about to tell you,

when I

talk at conferences to doctors and general practitioners and,

and there's like a

gasp from the audience, right? When I tell them this,

and this is published in the BMJ. So in the r-randomized trials,

you look at an

average. How much... If I ask you that question, right?

You've had a heart attack, let's say for example, and statins

are one of the most

prescribed drugs. They're the, you know, miracle cure, whatever, the, the one of

the most potent, um, beneficial drugs in the history of

medicine.

If you take those, uh, if you take a statin for five years,

having had

a heart attack, in that five-year period, how much would you

think or hope it would add to your life expectancy?

You've, you've literally survived a heart attack,

right?

And now you've been given this pill, which your doctor's telling you, this is--

you

must never stop this. This is gonna save your life.

How much would you hope it would add to your life expectancy over a five-year

period, over that period? You know, we can incrementally-

Twenty-five percent, thirty percent.

Yeah. Okay. So a few years. About a few years extra.

Yeah.

Yeah. You want the answer?

Yes.

Just over four days.

Four days?

Four days.

Maybe those are great days, though.

Well, no, fair enough. Absolutely.

And you know-

Yeah

... but, but you know, this is-- So, and the reason I'm mentioning that is

when you

look back over the last few decades and people talk about what has

driven down death rates from heart disease, there's this assumption it's

been the mass prescription of statins, millions of people taking statins.

But the evidence suggests, there's a separate analysis done.

They looked in European countries, high-risk and low-risk people of heart

disease

over twelve years. Was there a difference in re--

was there a reduction in heart

disease death rates because of statins?

And the answer was no