If you are reading, there is a good chance you or someone you know has been diagnosed with high cholesterol. Following on from this you may have received a medication to help lower your cholesterol level. If this does apply to you, I would like to share some valuable information about cholesterol treatments that was published recently in the Australian Journal of Pharmacy.

High cholesterol levels are a significant risk factor for heart attacks and stroke. Lowering these elevated cholesterol levels improve both quality and length of life. Cholesterol-lowering medications called “Statins” are the most common treatments we use. In fact, 30 million prescriptions are written for these medicines each year.

The unfortunate thing is that these Statin medicines seem to cop a bad rap in the media. We all would have heard multiple negative reports about these whilst possibly not ever hearing the benefits. The recent journal article I refer to breaks down the risk and the benefits and highlights the way the media can tell a “good story”.

The truths I would really like to highlight are these:

• Lowering elevated cholesterol by 2 units reduces cardiovascular disease risk by 45%.
• This cardiovascular risk reduces for every year that is taken. So, the benefits are truly seen in long term therapy,
• Medically significant side effects only occur in 0.1 to 1% of patients who take these medicines. 
• Up to 43% of people prescribed these medications stop taking them within 6 months mostly due to negative perceptions about taking these medications. 

So, to paint the picture in layman’s term:

We have a group of medicines that reduce heart attack and stroke risk by up to 45%. Nearly half the people who can gain this benefit never do because they have likely stopped their medication based on negative perceptions.

This means we have many people in Australia suffering heart attacks and strokes that were avoidable. And this will happen this year and next year and continue to happen until perception about these types of medicines are changed.The moral of the story is that perception is power, but only if the perception is based on the truth. The truth is, these medicines can save lives, but only if the people who need them take them.