As you likely know our founder Graham Phillips is a multi-award winning community pharmacist. In fact he still runs three extremely busy pharmacies. Says Graham “I reached the point in my career whereby I’d won all these awards and played several very senior roles in my profession. But it seemed like the entire nation was taking a statin, an anti-depressant or both! In short we are medicating an entire society and that cannot be right!
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It was that conviction that led Graham to re-explore the science behind the pandemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and dementia. “These are brand new, man-made diseases” says Graham, “which were virtually unknown 120 years ago”
So when our good friend and crusading cardiologist Prof Aseem Malhotra published his latest book “A Statin Free Life” Graham ordered a copy immediately.
“Your genes load the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger” says Cardiologist Ross Walker in the introduction. He’s obviously been reading the ProLongevity blog!
See our ‘Surviving Covid‘ podcast episode here.
Statin’s are the world’s most-prescribed drugs and the statin industry alone is worth trillions of pounds. Most patients and indeed most health professionals see statins as true “magic bullets” which are virtually devoid of side effects while offering the promise of a massive reduction in heart disease and stroke. But Aseem takes us through the evidence that taking a statin will benefit us if our cholesterol is high but we’ve not had a stroke or heart attack (spoiler alert in those circumstances the benefit is negligible and, taking side effects into account, in most cases taking a statin for the rest of your life will likely do more harm than good)
So, what about if you’ve already had an event (stroke, heart attack)? Taking a statin for the rest of your life will surely add several years to your life won’t it? WRONG! The actual benefit is likely to be a few days. Yes DAYS, not years, not weeks, a few days.
So how did we get this so wrong? Aseem takes us through the history, how it all began, starting with some really bad science which was then hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry to convince us to take statins (and by the food industry to convince us to eat highly-processed, low-fat food).
Not content with taking on the pharmaceutical industry, Aseem explains the true causes of heart disease and how small, incremental lifestyle changes (diet; sleep; exercise; stress) can allow us to lead A Statin Free Life.
The second part of the book lays out an entire lifestyle programme. Its simply put with a 28-day programme covering everything from meditation to exercise and a month’s worth of healthy recipes.
If you want to “Live Healthy for Longer” then Aseem’s recommendations are a perfect fit with the ProLongevity programme. Want to know more? Aseem has kindly agreed to come on as a guest to the ProLongevity podcast. Look our for this episode in the near future. And if you missed it, here’s our first podcast with Aseem.
As we went to press the NHS had just made a huge announcement about a “game changing” injection which will lower your bad cholesterol even further, saving 30,000 lives, click here to learn more.
Is this just “son of statin” or a genuine life saver?
That’s a question we’ll be putting to Aseem, live, in the very near future, so follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest.
And If you want to get a copy of the book ahead of the podcast you will find it here.