Sorry, but cholesterol is not the problem; INFLAMMATION IS! Without inflammation the arteries wouldn't be grabbing cholesterol to pack into plaque. Medical personnel took the shortcut and left the real cause still out there. And solving the correct problem would negate use of statins, Big Pharma will never allow such research to be completed.
Why doesn't your doctor know about this? Your doctor, like mine, will use the excuse that statins reduce inflammation.
Inflammation video explaining it here:
The accent is a bit hard to understand and needs to be rerecorded to a laypersons understanding.
Inflammation In Atherosclerotic Plaque Formation YouTube
The latest here:
I’m a cardiologist. This is what you need to know about the side effects of statins
Our new series The Expert View brings you specialist health advice from professionals. In this article, we hear from Dr Ricardo Petraco, an internationally recognised consultant cardiologist and researcher based at Imperial College London and the Mayo Clinic in London. He specialises in cardiovascular screening, coronary artery disease and intervention.
Around seven to eight million people in the UK are on statins, and every week I see patients who are either on or considering taking them. More than with any of their other pills, many are worried about side effects. So what are their real risks?
First, an important disclosure: I have no conflict of interest in recommending or prescribing statins. I don’t make money from doing so, and I have no relationship with the pharmaceutical companies that make and sell them to the NHS.
It’s mystifying to me that statins are so vilified, because if you had to pick the one medication in the history of cardiology with the clearest benefit, it would be them.
Statins work by lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the so-called “bad” cholesterol in the blood that leads to heart attacks, strokes and early death. Across the board, people taking a statin are roughly 25-40 per cent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, regardless of their cholesterol level at the start of treatment. And the myths about the alleged risks – cancer, dementia, cognitive impairment, sexual dysfunction – have all been robustly debunked.
Related video: New cholesterol guidelines: What you need to know (WCNC-TV Charlotte)A study led by Oxford Population Health and published in The Lancet in February 2026 pooled 23 blinded trials involving more than 154,000 people. It found no excess risk from statins for 62 of the 66 conditions listed in their package leaflets, including memory loss, depression and sleep disturbances.
However, side effects can happen and some patients have genuine concerns. Dismissing them is wrong. What we should say is: “Yes, there is a small risk of side effects with statins, but let’s talk about it. Let’s weigh that risk against the risk of having a heart attack, and then you can make a rational decision about your treatment.”
Whatever you do, don’t give up on statins because you’re worried about side effects. That daily pill could save your life.
The side effects – should you be concerned?
Muscle aches
It is estimated that around one fifth of patients refuse or stop taking statins because of muscle aches, fatigue or joint pain. Yet true statin-caused muscle ache is uncommon. A 2022 study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health found that “for every 1,000 people taking a moderate intensity statin, the treatment would cause 11 generally mild episodes of muscle pain or weakness in the first year, with no significant excess in subsequent years”. The occurrence is just over 1 per cent, and only at the start.
A lot of complaints around muscle ache are largely down to the “nocebo effect”. That means the symptom is real but the drug is not causing it – the expectation of feeling unwell is. In studies where people don’t know whether they’re taking a statin or a dummy pill, aches are reported at nearly the same rate in both groups.
At Imperial, where I’m based, my colleagues carried out a study in 2020 that recruited 60 people aged between 37-79 who had stopped taking statins because of side effects, and restarted them, but with a twist. Over a year, each patient received bottles containing a statin, bottles containing a dummy pill, and bottles containing nothing at all, rating their symptoms each day via an app. The results were illuminating. Symptoms were nearly identical whether people took the statin or the placebo.
Nonetheless, it does occasionally happen, and it is a genuine concern. If a patient feels that statins are causing aches and pains, we monitor the situation, temporarily stop the statin and restart it to see how they feel. For many, symptoms lessen with time, particularly if you start on a lower dose and increase gradually. And if muscle problems persist, we can find another way to lower their LDL cholesterol. There are always alternatives.
Severe muscle damage
Rhabdomyolysis (severe muscle breakdown) is a genuine but extremely rare side effect of statins. It happens in about one to three people out of every 100,000 taking statins each year, and less commonly still at lower doses. It is more likely if you’re on a higher dose, if you’re taking certain other medications at the same time, or if you have kidney or liver problems or an underactive thyroid.
The problem is that because people occasionally experience muscle aches on statins, they immediately associate this with rhabdomyolysis and become very concerned. Yet the chances of it occurring are negligible, and that small risk needs to be weighed against the benefit.
A 2016 report published in The Lancet remains the clearest quantification: treating 10,000 people for five years with a type of statin called atorvastatin at 40mg would cause about five cases of muscle injury. One of those five might progress to rhabdomyolysis, and 50 to 100 people would report muscle symptoms.
Over the same five years, it would prevent 500-1,000 major vascular events, including deaths and disability from strokes and heart attacks. The benefits outweigh the harms many times over.
Slightly higher risk of diabetes
Taking a statin does slightly increase your average blood-sugar level, and over five years it raises the chance of being diagnosed with diabetes by about 0.5 to 1 per cent – somewhere between one in 200 and one in 100 people.
If you are fit and well, with a normal blood sugar, you will not suddenly become diabetic by going on a statin. It’s the patients who are already borderline – with insulin resistance or obesity – who may be taken over the line from pre-diabetes to diabetes. But those are precisely the patients at highest risk of a future cardiac event, so they are the ones the statin protects most. In these cases, lifestyle interventions such as diet changes, exercise and quitting smoking are recommended alongside taking statins.
Raised liver enzyme levels
With many medications, such as paracetamol, ibuprofen and antibiotics, there is a very small risk of liver failure. With statins, this is not a clinical concern: they do not measurably increase your risk of dying from liver failure.
It’s true that about four in 1,000 people have raised liver enzyme levels on blood tests when they start taking statins, but this usually causes no symptoms and is rarely a reason to stop.
Dementia (and the brain cholesterol myth)
There is a widespread myth that taking statins causes dementia. It is based on the fallacious claim that “20 per cent of your brain is cholesterol and yet your doctor is giving you medication to lower your cholesterol”. Biologically this makes no sense. Your brain cholesterol is produced locally, by specialised cells, and has nothing to do with the cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream in LDL particles.
Cognitive impairment is not a side effect of taking statins – The Lancet’s 2026 review confirmed as much. If anything, there is a theoretical gain, because you are decreasing the chance of vascular damage in the brain. Observational studies suggest that long-term statin use may even reduce your risk of developing dementia, although that is not yet proven.
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Sleep problems
Clinical trials have shown no consistent association between statins and sleep problems, but this is something patients do worry about. Again, the picture is confounded: people on cardiac medication tend to be older, and to have other conditions that disturb sleep. The statin itself has never been shown to cause them.
A few people taking statins that cross the blood-brain barrier – such as simvastatin or atorvastatin – report vivid dreams or disturbed sleep. This is rare, and although it’s hard to conclude whether the drug is the cause, we pragmatically recommend moving the dose to the morning; and if symptoms persist, an alternative such as rosuvastatin can be tried, as it is known not to cross into the brain so easily.
Erectile dysfunction
Statins causing erectile dysfunction is another common chapter in the book of online misinformation, but the link is unfounded. Sexual dysfunction is common among patients with cardiovascular disease, and some heart drugs, such as beta-blockers, can indeed cause it.
That confuses the picture, as those are the same patients who take statins. But there is no scientific evidence that statins cause sexual dysfunction. In fact, some studies suggest they can help, possibly by improving vascular health which then improves blood flow to the genitals.
Oedema (swollen ankles)
Three weeks after stopping my amlodipine for high blood pressure the swollen left ankle is still there. Right ankle(good leg) never swelled up. I wasn't warned about edema when I started taking the drug. Now on nifedipine.
Oedema – essentially swollen ankles – does happen, but the numbers are very small and it’s not something we worry about. The 2026 analysis previously found roughly seven extra cases per 10,000 people per year, or 0.07 per cent. For comparison, amlodipine, a blood pressure tablet frequently prescribed alongside statins, causes dose-dependent ankle oedema in 5-10 per cent of users.
As told to Damon Syson
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