If your doctor wanted to put you on statins, how high of a risk do you think you should have for a heart attack? Minimally.

Keep in mind, these are some of the deadliest drugs on the market. So if you agree to go on them, you’re opening yourself up to side effects like muscle problems, dementia, depression, chronic fatigue, hypertension, and stroke. Even worse? They create the problem they are supposed to be fixing and preventing…heart disease!

You’d think that only people at an alarmingly high risk should even be considered as candidates for taking these drugs, right? Wrong. In fact, you’d be way off. We only wish that was the case.

According to newly published American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines, pretty much everyone should be taking these dangerous pills.

The new guidelines recommend that doctors prescribe cholesterol-lowering statins for anyone with a heart disease risk of just 7.5% or more. 7.5%! And the story only gets worse from there…

The AHA is using a new risk calculator to create these guidelines. It’s supposed to predict 10-year risk for heart attack in patients over 40.

But this calculator is hiding more than one deadly secret.

According to Harvard University’s Dr. Paul Ridker, the new calculator overestimates heart disease risk by 75 to 150%.

That means millions of people targeted for statin therapy aren’t “at risk”… even by the AHA’s ridiculously low standards. For example, a person formerly at a 4% risk is now at an 8% risk.

If you’re a white male over 62, guess what? You’re automatically at risk. Same goes if you’re a white female over 70. Even if you have no other risk factors, you are at risk. Your doctor will probably try to put you on statins.1

It makes no sense whatsoever. These criteria don’t jive at all with any of the new research. The calculator was built with data from 20-year-old studies.

The problems don’t end there. The calculator counts lots of risk factors. It looks at age, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes status, and smoking status.2

But it doesn’t include the single most important risk factor in heart disease.

The AHA admits that C-reactive protein (CRP) is the best predictor of heart disease.

CRP measures inflammation. People with higher CRP levels have a two to three times greater risk for heart disease than those with lower levels. The AHA also says that CRP is a better indicator of heart disease risk than LDL cholesterol.

The kicker is that you can keep CRP levels under control with diet and exercise.3 No need for statins! Maybe that’s why CRP didn’t make the cut in the guidelines. The AHA says that the new guidelines aren’t about prescribing more medication. But if your doctor goes by the Association’s insane criteria (7.5 percent risk level) on top of using a faulty calculator that overestimates your risk by as much as 150%, chances are you’re going to get a prescription for statins.

Prevention is the best medicine. It’s just not the most profitable. Taking steps to prevent heart disease naturally can help lower your risk and keep you off of dangerous statins altogether.

Find out your CRP levels to understand the bigger picture of what’s going on in your body.

Reducing inflammation and naturally lowering LDL cholesterol are the safest ways to avoid heart disease. And it all begins with diet.

Eating a paleo-style diet free of grains is a great start. You should put an emphasis on organic vegetables, wild-caught, cold-water fish, and grass-fed beef. Clean sources of omega-3 fatty acids will help lower inflammation as well as LDL cholesterol.4 Some of the best choices are nuts, avocados, and salmon.

There are plenty of other natural, safe, and effective ways to protect your heart. Get the scoop on the real, natural solution that one cardiologist credits with restoring heart health to almost every single one of his patients. And the easy way to implement it in your own life, today. If you want to protect your heart, I urge you to learn more now.

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References:
1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2013/11/18/controversy-erupts-over-accuracy-of-cardiovascular-risk-calculator-for-guidelines/
2 http://blog.heart.org/aha-acc-reaffirm-new-cardiovascular-prevention-guidelines-risk-calculator/
3 http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/108/12/e81.full
4 ttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6712540