clear what they are because their chemical names all end in -
statin. An estimated twenty million Americans take statins,
making them the most widely prescribed class of drug in the
world. The most commonly sold variant is rosuvastatin,
which regularly makes it to number one on the list of top-
selling drugs in the United States. This is a big business,
netting pharmaceutical companies $35 billion in sales in
2010.
Long before my mom began to show signs of cognitive
decline, she was put on one of these drugs, when it was
determined by one of her physicians that her elevated
cholesterol needed to be treated. Even though she’s never
had a heart attack or stroke, when she told me over the
phone that she began taking the drug (I was in Los Angeles
at the time), I assumed that it was safe and par for the course
of “getting older.” Plus, a doctor prescribed it. How could it
be anything but safe?
The problem is, statins are not like seat belts—they often
have unintended side effects, or what my friend psychiatrist
Kelly Brogan calls, simply, “effects.”
As you’ve learned, cholesterol is important for many
things, including immunity, hormone synthesis, and healthy
brain function. Evidence suggests that while statins do
reduce total LDL, they do little to reduce the proportion of
small LDL, which is actually the most risk-promoting, easily
oxidized variant of LDL. This is because statins decrease the
amount of LDL created by the liver, but don’t solve the
underlying LDL recycling problem described earlier. In fact,
some studies have shown that statins can actually increase
the proportion of small, dense LDL.^20 Many physicians,