Statins made simple

https://youtu.be/R6FGaR7vOHk

I've tried to boil down one of the most complicated topics in medicine to a YouTube length. Let's hope it worked! Statins are the most prescribed medication in the world but most of what I read and watch online is either completely vague so as to be useless, or just plain wrong.

This is one of the most requested topics I get, and while not the most exciting, it's an important one. So I hope it helps at least one person make a decision.

I wanted to keep it short to ensure people actually watched - an in-depth lecture would of course have offered the chance to really dive into the details but my objective here is to help as many people as possible.

If you find statins confusing, you're not alone! Cardiologists and GPs probably prescribe these more often than anyone else and yet even I took a long time to really understand the enormous mass of data and coverage (which of course is impossible to read in its entirety). I want to specifically credit Professor Darrel Francis from Imperial College in London for helping me see statins in the kind of reference frame that I present in the video. Prior to that, my understanding was that kind of vague "oh this will help you, probably. I think." that you might get if you just read guidelines, which of course exist to maximise health for a whole population.

References:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31357-5/fulltext

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(10)61350-5.pdf

SAMSON n=1 study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031173

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-analysis-of-clinical-trial-data-on-cholesterol-lowering-drugs-and-targets-for-bad-cholesterol-levels/?cli_action=1617720731.908