All men over 50 'should be offered heart pills' is the foolish opinion of the Government's heart tsar!

All men over 50 'should be offered heart pills' - Independent

Extract:

"Every man over 50 should be offered a pill to cut their risk of a heart attack, according to the Government's heart tsar.

Mass medication of the population would be the best way of cutting Britain's high rate of deaths due to cardiovascular disease, which claims more than 200,000 lives a year, said Roger Boyle, the National Director for Heart Disease.

But he acknowledged that the public was not yet ready to accept such an approach which would turn millions of "healthy" people into patients and draw accusations of a nanny state.

He called for a public debate on the pros and cons of "medicalising" the population by treating millions more people with statins - drugs to reduce cholesterol which are already saving thousands of lives. For women, whose risk is lower, treatment would be offered at the age of 60, he suggested.

Statins have been described as wonder drugs because they can reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke by a third, if the dose used is high enough, and have few side-effects. Three million patients are taking statins in England, which are preventing an estimated 10,000 deaths a year at an annual cost of £550m.

The number is set to double to six million patients under new guidance lowering the threshold for treatment published by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) in June.

Dr Boyle, who takes a statin himself - "the cheapest available" - said that since the mid- 1990s, when Britain was the heart disease capital of the world, the death rate had fallen by 36 per cent, thanks in part to the increased use of statins.

"It is not perfect yet but we have seen substantial improvement," he said. "We now need to move on. Despite the reduction in the death rate, cardiovascular disease is still the main cause of death, more than for all cancers combined. We have still got a huge task. We may no longer be the cardiovascular disease capital of the world but in a nation such as ours we ought to be achieving optimal results.""

Dr James LeFanu's articles (click on tab below this post) on the adverse side-effects of statins have made clear that they are at best a very mixed blessing, and at worst no blessing at all.

Cholesterol levels can be safely lowered at no cost and without drugs by lowering intake of salt and salty food. This would also, independently, lower high blood pressure and obesity, lower the risk of developing late onset diabetes, stroke and heart disease/attack and many other degenerative conditions including most cancers.

It's what you could call 'a no-brainer'...(o:

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
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