New Alternatives to Statins Add to a Quandary on Cholesterol

A well thought out article on statins.  Except that they still are going after secondary issues rather than the primary one, stopping the inflammation in your arteries that collects cholesterol.
Stopping inflammation would make much more sense, but that won't occur now because statins are a huge profit center for the drug industry.
Video here:
Stopping the original inflammation that starts the process of plaque formation

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/health/new-alternatives-to-statins-add-to-a-quandary-on-cholesterol.html?emc=edit_th_20150830&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59279641
Well worth being one of the 10 free articles a month you get from the NYTimes.

Doctors have long faced a conundrum in prescribing statins to lower cholesterol and heart attack risk: The drugs are cheap and effective for most people, and large, rigorous clinical trials have found minimal side effects. But as many as 25 percent of those who try them complain of muscle pain. Others stop taking the drugs because, they say, they cause a hazy memory or sleep problems, among other side effects not documented in studies.

Now, with the approval on Thursday of the second in a powerful — and very expensive — new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs, the dilemma confronting doctors just got trickier. Should the people who need to lower their cholesterol, but say they cannot tolerate statins, be prescribed new drugs that cost more than $14,000 a year, potentially adding billions of dollars to the nation’s medical bill?

Doctors say their first responsibility is to patients, but it is hard for them or their patients to forget the price of drugs meant to be taken for a lifetime. The new drugs are approved for use by people with heart disease who cannot control their LDL, the dangerous cholesterol, by other means. Doctors say they try to work with patients to ensure that all who can safely take statins, many of which cost pennies a day, do so, but a substantial portion of patients insist the side effects are too severe.

Mre at link.