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@ Why would I get fat?
2025-02-28 18:13:17
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD: "Three things that I look at if somebody is saying, 'Well, my doctor is telling me to go on statins. I still don't want to go on statins. What ammunition have you got for me?'
"Number one, there's a great website called TheNNT.com and that stands for 'the number needed to treat.' Go on https://thennt.com/ , put in statins. Assuming you haven't had a heart attack, click on the number needed to treat for 'without pre-existing heart disease,' because you haven't had a heart attack, so you're not pre-existing heart disease.
"I happen to look at it this morning. […] The 'number needed to treat' is how many people do you need to have on a statin for five years for one of them to avoid something. So you need 150-odd people on a statin for five years for one to avoid a heart incident. Which could be angina, which kind of feels a little bit like indigestion.
"Then on the same website, they've got the number needed to harm. So how many people do we need to have on statins for five years for one of them to suffer harm? Now we only need 50 for one of them to probably get type 2 diabetes. I think it's only we need about 10 for one of them to suffer muscle damage, which is why people who go on statins talk about muscle pain, they become less active, which has other repercussions on health. So number one, TheNNT.
"Number two is Kristensen paper [ https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007118 ] from I think it's 2015, where they said all of this stuff about, 'Oh, you need to be on statins because they're going to save your life.' Can't save many lives, we're all going to die. So the only question is by how much longer might you live if you're on a statin. So they did the analysis and said if you're on a statin for five years, you might live an extra three or four days. But you've got the side effects for the whole five years.
"Now if the doctor said that to your friend with the cholesterol of eight [mmol/L], 'Look buddy, I might be able to buy you three or four days, but I'm going to give you side effects for five years,' your friend immediately is going to say, 'No thanks, doc. I'll just quack on.'
"The third thing that's really helpful is to look at the patient information leaflet. So another confession: I used to work for a drug company and I was on the management team when I worked for the drug company. If we don't make the information in drugs accurate, by law, we could end up in jail. That's the way it works in the UK, anyway. We didn't want to end up in jail, so we made damn sure the packet information is accurate. If you know there's side effects then you need to put them in the package. […]
"Look at the patient information leaflet for statins. Look at the things that they report as common side effects. Like one in ten people are going to experience these, the chances are. There's some pretty serious stuff in there that you really don't want to get, particularly for that three to four days extra life.
"Those are the three pointers that I give people if you're still under pressure to take a statin, you maybe want a bit of ammunition to talk to your doctor about."
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD with Jerm @ 52:42—56:01 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=3162