Which statin should i take

The most important thing your doctor will keep in mind when thinking about statin treatment is your long-term risk of a heart attack or stroke. If your risk is very high — for example, you've had a heart attack in the past — a statin may be helpful even if you don't have high cholesterol.

Your doctor may use an online tool or calculator to better understand your long-term risks of developing heart disease and whether a statin may be right for you. These tools can help your doctor predict your chances of having a heart attack in the next 10 to 30 years. The formulas in these tools often consider your cholesterol levels, age, race, sex, smoking habits and health conditions.

Not everyone with a heart condition needs to use a statin. Guidelines from the U. The U. Preventive Services Task Force recommends low- to moderate-dose statins in adults ages 40 to 75 who have one or more risk factors for heart and blood vessel disease and at least a 1 in 10 chance of having a cardiosvascular disease event in the next 10 years. Lifestyle changes are key for reducing your risk of heart disease, whether you take a statin or not. To reduce your risk:. If your cholesterol — particularly the LDL "bad" type — stays high after you make healthy lifestyle changes, statins might be an option for you.

You may think that if your cholesterol goes down, you don't need a statin anymore. But if the drug helped lower your cholesterol, you'll likely need to stay on it long term to keep your cholesterol down.

If you make significant changes to your diet or lose a lot of weight, talk to your doctor about whether it might be possible to control your cholesterol without medication. Statins are tolerated well by most people, but they can have side effects. Some side effects go away as the body adjusts to the medication. But tell your doctor about any unusual signs or symptoms you might have after starting statin therapy.

Your doctor may want to decrease your dose or try a different statin. Never stop taking a statin without talking to your doctor first. However, studies comparing statins to a fake pill placebo have found a very small difference in the number of people reporting muscle aches between the groups.

Also, ask your doctor if the statin you use will interact with any other prescription or over-the-counter drugs or supplements you take. When thinking about whether you should take statins for high cholesterol, ask yourself these questions:.

It's important to consider your medical reasons, personal values, lifestyle choices and any concerns when choosing a treatment. Talk to your doctor about your total risk of heart and blood vessel disease and personal preferences before making a decision about statin therapy.

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Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization and proceeds from Web advertising help support our mission. Learn More About Stroke ». In the first three groups, doctors do not need to estimate the risk of cardiovascular events. These people automatically qualify for statins. For the fourth group, which includes people without any strong symptoms of heart disease, the guidelines committee used data from the latest scientific studies to develop a risk calculator.

This tool allows doctors and patients to determine both their year and lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack or stroke and death from either of those causes. In spite of its strong basis in science, the risk estimator has drawn criticism from some doctors. That was a source of confusion for a lot of people. In fact, a recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that up to 97 percent of people between the ages of 66 and 90 qualify for statins under the new guidelines and according to the accompanying risk calculator.

This highlights one major area of debate — the apparently large increase in the number of people, especially asymptomatic people, who will be prescribed statins. Statins are not without side effects.

These include muscle pain, confusion, flushing, and rarely liver damage or memory loss. The guidelines are clear about which groups of people could benefit most from therapy — both medications like statins and lifestyle changes like eating better and exercising more — but in the fourth group, the guidelines leave room for doctors and patients decide together how best to lower cholesterol levels.

Of course, that is the very nature of guidelines, something that has been lost in the media shuffle over the past year. Another aspect of the guidelines that has created some confusion is the belief that, because there are no more LDL targets, doctors no longer need to do ongoing monitoring of LDL blood levels after a patient starts taking a statin. This is not the case. And the goal is to maintain the optimal intensity of proven therapy in order to keep LDL lower in groups that are shown to benefit.

Hitting the LDL target was just one reason for monitoring. Some patients may not respond well to statins or they may have bad side effects. Eating well and exercising have always been part of maintaining healthy cholesterol levels.

This could increase your risk for diabetes. If you have kidney disease, you should know that you might need a different dose of statins. Some high-intensity statin doses are too high for those with kidney disease.

A report by the National Lipid Association Task Force on Statin Safety states that the benefit you gain from statins depends on the level of risk you have for cardiovascular disease. The task force also says that the risk of adverse events from statins may outweigh the benefits only in people who have very low risk for cardiovascular disease.

Talk with your doctor about reducing cholesterol with diet and exercise. That is always your best option. Having too much LDL cholesterol can put you at greater risk of heart attack or stroke.

Read on to…. Your body needs some cholesterol to make hormones, vitamin D, and digestive fluids. But high LDL cholesterol levels in…. Cholesterol is a waxy, fatty substance that's found in your body and that travels through your bloodstream.

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