More than a million people will be put on statins on the NHS to lower their cholesterol level and prevent heart attacks, under NICE guidelines.

Statins to be given to a million more over-40s

Extract from the Telegraph:

"GPs are urged to trawl the records of patients aged 40 and over to find anyone with a one in five chance of having a heart attack or stroke and call them in for advice and drugs.

Four million people already take statins, mostly after heart attacks. But the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) wants healthy people deemed at high risk of an attack or a stroke within 10 years to have preventive drugs as well.

That would put 1.5 million more on medication and should prevent an extra 15,000 heart attacks, strokes and new cases of angina each year.

It will cost £28 million to implement in the first year.

Nice recommends checking the records of everyone aged between 40 and 75 to flag up those at high risk and call them in for lifestyle advice and consider prescribing 40mg of simvastatin, which costs about 4p per person each day.

That will be controversial as it will put healthy people on medication and the drug has to be taken for the rest of a patient's life. Statins reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke by about a quarter."

This is absolutely disgraceful. - There is no need at all for healthy people to be put on drugs - drugs with many adverse, unpleasant side-effects - for the rest of their lives in order to reduce their risk of heart disease. - The drug-free, cost-free, totally safe and extremely effective way to reduce heart disease and stroke and to reduce high cholesterol is to avoid eating salt and salty food. - People should be told the truth about the effects of salt sensitivity and decisions made about drug recommendations should not be made in order to bring profit to the iniquitous drug companies.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

vulnerable groups

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

advice for pregnant mothers

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations