Hacker News Reader

Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

This is utter bullshit. I was told repeatedly to get on Statins for high cholesterol. Finally the company nurse said: look, you need this but first I'll let you try red yeast. WTF? OK. It's a natural source of the same thing. It dramatically reduced my cholesterol and triglycerides -great. I was kind of excited to have such great results while giving the finger to big pharma (who isolated lovastatin from red yeast and patented it). Then the muscle aches started. I was completely unaware of that side effect, but reducing my dose helped - which I did only after being informed that it's a common side effect. You can also reduce it by taking CoQ10.

You can't have a psychological side effect if you're not even aware of it.

View on HN

They didn’t say all side effects were attributable to nocebo effects.

>You can't have a psychological side effect if you're not even aware of it.

You can just by chance, though you also can consciously forget you were told or read something like one of the common side effects.

edit You mention being told to take statins several times before a nurse offered you a second choice. Why had you been so reluctant if you didn't know of the common side effects?

Stop blaming the patient for the drugs problem. I don't like taking medications in general. I had heard that statins do lower cholesterol, but that studies (right or wrong) showed no decrease in mortality so why bother. That's it. I was actually pleased with the red yeast results - the lower cholesterol would get doctors off my back and the reduced triglycerides was IMHO a very good thing! But yeah speculate about chance, or my subconscious remembering something I didn't care about if I ever did hear it.

This is straight up some jackass trying to use a cute term - nocebo - to deflect blame for side effects onto patients. That's a thing too.

So basically you don't think the placebo/noncebo effect exists and you don't think doctors are suggesting things based on a concern for your well being. Instead they're making up over a century of studies so they can blame patients for side effects.

This all seems much less likely than you heard something about cholesterol medicine causing muscle pain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com