High Cholesterol Support Group

Janicecre, If there be any question as to the effectiveness of statins, you may be interested in learning about NNT scores.

An NNT score stands for Number Needed to Treat. It adresses the question "How many people need to take this drug in order for one person to benefit"

The fewer people required to take the drug for one person to benefit, the better. So just like a game of golf, the lower the NNT score the better.

The higher the NNT score, the worse. This means more people have to take the drug for one person to benefit.

Then there is the question "WHO BENEFITS?" Does that NNT score apply to just males? What about females? And what is the NNT score for Males and females above age 65?

Antibiotics have a very low NNT score. This is good! For everyone with an infection, the antibiotic will benefit almost everyone who takes it.

What are the NNT scores for Lipitor? Who benefited and who didn't? You don't even want to know.

Hi Hollaliscious,
I also inherited high cholesterol from my family. Our families liver produces too much LDL cholesterol and too little HDL (the good stuff).
My brother had a heart attack in his 30's and Ive had a cholesterol of around 240 for the past 20 years. I had a coronary calcium test a couple years ago and they found 0 calcium/plaque build up in my arteries. So luckily my estrogen is preventing me from having plaque build up. They normally don't start statins on young women until they have hit menopause for that reason.
When I was pregnant and nursing my cholesterol went up to 289. I talked to a cardiologist about it and he said that women produce more cholesterol when they are pregnant and nursing and it is really unknown how long it remains elevated. Supposedly the baby needs it. He told me to get retested when I was done nursing and it had gone down 50 points.
Now that I'm in my 40's the doctor wanted to start me on a statin and I tried a strict low-fat diet and added a handful of walnuts, 2 TBSP of crushed golden flax seed every day and 2 servings of fish a week.
Plus made sure that I walked for 30 minutes 4-5 days a week and my cholesterol went down 20 points in 3 months. So, you might give that a try.
I have a good smoothie recipe that I added the ground flax seed to if you want it. (-:
Good luck!

lnarah, is that how they can see how clogged up your arteries are from the coronary calcium test? how do they do this test?

The Coronary Calcium test looks for calcium in the arteries of your heart which indicates how much plaque you might have built up. It takes only a few minutes in a CT scanner. You don't need an IV or anything. Our hospital offers the test for $100 without a doctor's order. This test most likely saved my father's life. When my brother had his heart attack, both my parents and I went in and had the scan done. My dad's score was very bad, about 2000 and so he had a stress test right away after getting the results which confirmed that he had 2 near blockages. He was not having any chest pain or symptoms and so he would have not had a clue that he had heart disease without this test. He had heart surgery a couple weeks later and the doctor said he would have most likely had a major heart attack within the year, if he had not done this test and discovered this.
There is information on this test at the Mayo Clinic site.

Outstanding post from Inarah! Thank-you for sharing that with us about the coronary calcium test.

I think your other post is excellent too. Its more testimony that lipid metabolism is regulated via hormones. Something I have been talking about for years.