Heart Health
Statin users eating more calories and fat
If you're taking a cholesterol-lowering statin, don't use it as an excuse to slack off on your diet and sneak in extra calories and fat. Apparently, that's what statin users have done in recent years, according to a JAMA Internal Medicine study that looked at diet records from nearly 28,000 adults over a 12-year period.
People who took statins ate 10% more calories and 14% more fat during 2009–2010 than they did in 1999–2000. No such increases were seen in people who were not taking statins, the researchers found. Among statin users, body mass index (BMI) scores rose an average of 1.3 points, which translates to about 9 pounds of weight gain over a decade.
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