A story in The Daily Telegraph late last year labelled the UK “Pill Nation”, highlighting that half of the population is now taking daily prescription medication, with about a quarter of adults on three drugs each and millions of pensioners on at least five. I recalled that article recently when a client of mine came under pressure from her cardiologist, who warned her that she was putting her life at risk if she didn’t start taking statins. The thought of ever increasing numbers of people globally being put on statins and other pharmaceutical drugs makes me want to share a website I was introduced to some months ago. It’s called The Number Needed to Treat or The NNT at www.thennt.com.

In short, the website provides estimates for the number of people needing to be treated by particular drugs or therapies in order for one person to be healed (NNT) or harmed (NNH). In an ideal world, the NNT statistic would be 1 - ie, for every one person treated for a condition, one is healed. However, in reality, many drugs are way less successful than this.

I find The NNT website a pretty good way of looking at drug effectiveness and risk. For example, if we consider statins, which are commonly prescribed by many GPs and consultants to adults with high cholesterol, the results are:

NNT

No statistically significant mortality benefit

1 in 217 avoided a non-fatal heart attack

1 in 313 avoided a non-fatal stroke

NNH

1 in 21 experienced pain from muscle damage

1 in 204 developed diabetes

So, by the website’s estimates, 217 people have to take statins for one person to avoid a heart attack. But - and here’s the really disturbing part - by taking statins, an individual has a greater risk of developing diabetes than he or she does of avoiding a stroke or heart attack.

While researching this, I’ve also discovered that there are NNT/NNH statistics for the Mediterranean diet for heart disease prevention, with the results being:

NNT

1 in 61 avoided a stroke, heart attack, or death

NNH

None were harmed

Deciding whether or not to take drugs is a personal choice but being informed of potential benefits and risks is vital to that process. If our doctors are not giving us this information, then it’s sensible that we look elsewhere to inform ourselves.

If you have concerns about drugs that you or your loved ones are taking, then I highly recommend that you discuss the concept of NNT with your doctor, take a look at the NNT website, or simply google the name of the medication and “NNT” to find the results.

So many health concerns can be addressed through alternative medicine, diet and lifestyle choices which do not come with the negative side-effects. Please DM me if you have questions or would like to discuss this further.

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