Almost everyone over the age of 60 should be taking a cholesterollowering statin, according to medical science. Age alone is a risk factor for heart disease because you’ve been chowing down on an unhealthy diet of saturated fats for years, and the diet-heart hypothesis blames fatty foods for the rise in “bad” LDL (lowdensity lipoprotein) cholesterol that clogs up your arteries.
A lifetime of eating butter, cheese and fatty meats is the problem (along with smoking or a family history of heart disease), and the bar to qualify for a statin is set low: in the US, it’s anyone over age 40 with a 7.5 percent chance of developing CVD (cardiovascular disease) over the next 10 years.
A person of any age, even as young as 25, may benefit from statin therapy, say health agencies like the UK’s NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). NICE recommends considering statins even if the 10-year risk of CVD is less than 10 percent.
But a new study claims
