Statins are nearly junk. Here is a new study, throw this one at your doc:
https://maryannedemasi.com/publicati...nimal-benefits
The summary is there is only about a 1-2% reduction in probability of something really bad happening by being on a statin (heart attack, stroke, death). 1-2% is not worth it. Read up on the absolute vs relative risk mentioned in that link, the marketing people got the doctors hoodwinked on that one. Without going into complete detail (read the article), the simple way to think about it is out of 100 people with heart issues that are taking statins, only one person avoided dying due to the statin. Certainly that is an improvement if you are that 1/100 person, and if statins had no side-effects I would sign up, but not with all the downsides.
If you want to lower your cholesterol do it with your diet.. it will help out your general health at the same time whereas statins don't. I lowered my cholesterol by a third in the last year, I am below the bad level now and my doc no longer is suggesting I take a statin.
PS I decided to read the full study just to be certain about what it was stating.. it turns out the studies were shorter than I was thinking, they were on average around 5 years. So that means the 1-2% reduction was only in a 5-year period and would get magnified if you were on the statin for a longer period. My wild guess is on average it would be something like ~5% reduction over lifetime of death and ~10% reduction over lifetime of heart attack. The actual article concludes that for people with severe heart disease there is an appreciable upside to balance the downside, but not for less severe cases given all of the bad side effects.