{"id":114080,"date":"2025-09-02T21:25:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T21:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114080\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T21:25:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T21:25:13","slug":"statins-should-be-available-over-the-counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/114080\/","title":{"rendered":"Statins should be available over the counter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to The Workup<\/a>, a new First Opinion column from Vishal Khetpal.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a saying in medicine: Statins should be in the water. While this may be hyperbolic, as a cardiologist, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s too far from the truth. Despite being around for a generation, statins \u2014 a specific class of drugs used to lower cholesterol levels \u2014 remain among our strongest tools for reducing a person\u2019s risk for experiencing a life-altering heart attack and stroke. Many Americans with risk factors for heart disease should be taking them.<\/p>\n

Yet far too few actually do. Although the reasons for this are undoubtedly complex, I think the time has come to take a different, more simplified approach. Statins are safe, effective, and cheap. They should be available over the counter.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to The Workup, a new First Opinion column from Vishal Khetpal. There\u2019s a saying in medicine: Statins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,4379,137,490,4334,1677],"class_list":{"0":"post-114080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cardiovascular-disease","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-medication","13":"tag-pharmaceuticals","14":"tag-stat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}