Doctors want statins served with fast food

[n2doc]

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Friday, 13 August 2010

Customers of fast food restaurants could be offered a free statin along with the burger, salt and ketchup, to mitigate the meal's damaging effects on the heart, doctors suggest.

Providing the cholesterol lowering drug with every burger would help combat its artery clogging tendency, they say. The statin would perform a function equivalent to a filter on a cigarette or a seat-belt in a car. People will continue to pursue unhealthy habits but with a slightly reduced risk.

Darrel Francis from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, London, says in the American Journal of Cardiology that the reduction in risk offered by a statin approximately equals the increase in risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

Statins do not work instantly but regular fast food customers who routinely swallowed the pill with their burger would see a cumulative benefit. Trials show a daily statin reduces heart attack risk by 20-70 per cent. Dr Francis said: "Everybody knows that fast food is bad for you, but people continue to eat it because it tastes good.

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-want-statins-served-with-fast-food-2051116.html

What's next? Viagra with a condom purchase?

[burnsei sensei]

1. I think cost is more significant in the decision

than taste.

[lillypaddle]

2. Statins can have serious & significant side effects

:wtf: are they thinking???

[eShirl]

3. how about an omega-3 (fish or flaxseed) capsule instead

[HuckleB]

4. What a ludicrous article.

What "doctors want statins served with fast food?" Francis' statement does not equate to a recommendation for serving statins with fast food, and no one else is even mentioned.

More ridiculous "science" journalism.

Ugh.

[bemildred]

5. I do wonder how many doctors exactly it is they are talking about.

I assume is is very far from all of them.

[supernova]

6. Just that one author

Darrell Francis made the comparison in the journal article as a way to illustrate the risks of eating a burger corresponding to the benefits of taking a statin pill. If every time you had a burger/milkshake you had a statin, he posits that over time the statin would win out.

I really don't want to go proving his point, however. Much as I love burgers, I don't want to eat them every day. It's too heavy to eat that way. I'd rather save it for a once in a while treat.

[bemildred]

7. Yeah.

"Some doctor facetiously suggests putting statins in burgers" would more accurate, but it would not get as many page views.

I pretty much gave up fast food, I like to control what I eat directly these days,

[qb]

8. Better yet... how about some ipecac & a key to the restroom.

:puke:

[Warpy]

9. They're not very good doctors

because of the small but very significant part of the population that runs into serious trouble with statins. A bad reaction to them can be life threatening and it is also cumulative.

They need to rethink this one.