According to researchers at Imperial College London, if fast food outlets offered cholesterol-lowering statins, then these drugs would offset the unhealthy effects of knocking back a cheeseburger and milkshake... The suggestion, to make ‘risk-reducing supplements’ (i.e. side-effect ridden statins) available just as easily as unhealthy fast food, is made in a paper by Dr Darrel Francis, a cardiologist at Imperial's National Heart and Lung Institute...

It is insane that government agencies and medical authorities continue to recommend dangerously low cholesterol levels as a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks. In addition to lowering inflammation, the real key to heart health is not just your overall cholesterol, it’s getting the right balance between your levels of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol and the ‘bad’ LDL, as well as paying attention to their ratio levels with your blood triglycerides and lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a)...

Cholesterol has been turned into a villain when, instead of being your enemy, it is actually one of the building blocks for every cell in your body. Simple as that. For those of you on cholesterol-lowering statins, hold on to your hats, because this information could change your life.

The statin drug Lipitor is already approved for children in the US (since 2002) but not yet as the EU-approved chewable type. Children are generally excluded from drug studies before a new medication is approved. US researchers from West Virginia University said that universal cholesterol screening among children will allow early diagnosis and appropriate treatment of children with high cholesterol, hopefully preventing arterial disease. They added that the ripple effect of universal child screening "could lead to the prevention of premature cardiac events in adults that may have otherwise gone undiagnosed."

JUPITER, a two year study, involved 18,000 patients and was designed to see if Crestor reduced heart attacks and strokes in patients with high inflammation in the blood stream, but with low-to-normal cholesterol levels. The trial ended early when a provisional analysis showed a 44 per cent reduction in the risk factors... The logic probably was that with results that positive, why continue the study? Now, according to an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers who took a second look at the findings of JUPITER say that the results are flawed.

Turning a rat poison into a widely used drug for humans is not the only irregular thing about Warfarin. Its path to become one of the most frequently used prescription-only anticoagulants was paved by an unusual series of events too. Luckily, the Daily Health is ready to serve you an all-natural alternative which has no side effects and probably won’t do any harm to rats either. When nattokinase is dropped onto an artificial blood clot and left to stand at body temperature, the clot gradually dissolves and disappears completely within 18 hours. Dr Sumi said that it showed “a potency matched by no other enzyme.”

The latest research findings have revealed a simple way to lower homocysteine levels – like raised cholesterol levels they’re another contributing factor that can increase your risk of heart disease.

Japanese researchers, from the Osaka University, found a reduced risk of heart failure in men, and a lower risk of heart disease and stroke in women, whose diets contained high amounts of the B vitamins folate and vitamin B6.

I bet you’ve heard this before: An aspirin a day will keep stroke away.

If you’re a regular reader of the Daily Health e-alerts, you will know that we’ve warned against this type of advice for many years. Aspirin can cause serious, and sometimes even fatal, gastrointestinal injury and bleeding and (contrary to popular belief) can actually increase stroke risk, especially in the over-75s.

In a report published in the March 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Johns Hopkins and Swedish researchers claim that an experimental drug called eprotirome lowers cholesterol by up to 32 per cent in patients already using statins - an effect equal to doubling statin drug doses. According to the researchers, eprotirome brings all the benefits without the harmful side effects associated with statin drugs.

Aspirin increases the likelihood of major bleeding in the brain, stomach or elsewhere in the body, and experts warn that the beneficial effects must be weighed against the risk of harm.