Last week I finished reading 'The great cholesterol con' by Dr Malcolm Kendrick (Scottish).
His conclusions:
-statins don't work for 100% of women (extremely bad for pregnant women as well), work for only 5% of men (those who already had a heart failure, and those can safely avoid statins too).
-diet has no relationship to cholesterol
-countries with the highest saturated fat intake have the lowest heart disease deaths. Countries with the lowest fat intake have the highest heart disease deaths .
Compare :France: 15%fat intake, 75 deaths/100/000/year
Ukraine:7.5% fat intake, 730 deaths/100/000/year
note :official WHO data.
I too had recommendations from my AME 'to do something' about my BP. I took statins until a year ago when I started reading and discovering.
What is bad is processed foods with synthetic additives of any kind. Sugar and wheat are also real culprits for weight gain. There is a big gap between what the scientists (independent please) find and know and what is communicated to the general public. Cholesterol is a 2 billion GBP business in the UK alone, statins are the most profitable product of big pharma and we, patients and doctors are being brainwashed to death.