--- title: Statins and Memory: Study Shows Little Risk of Memory Problems description: Some cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, could contribute to short term memory lapses, but new data show that risk may not be real canonical: https://time.com/3912512/statins-memory/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-08T15:28:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:59.400Z article:section: Health og:title: Memory Loss Not Caused By Cholesterol Drugs After All og:description: Some cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, could contribute to short term memory lapses, but new data show that risk may not be real og:url: https://time.com/3912512/statins-memory/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacb3d57e4f43c2f8/6988536ca988ca07656b2e79/gettyimages-128585544.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5400 og:image:height: 3038 og:image:alt: 128585544 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Memory Loss Not Caused By Cholesterol Drugs After All twitter:description: Some cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, could contribute to short term memory lapses, but new data show that risk may not be real twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltacb3d57e4f43c2f8/6988536ca988ca07656b2e79/gettyimages-128585544.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Memory Loss Not Caused By Cholesterol Drugs After All > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=04905f94-1762-4661-96c6-c70f23d15f2b&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jun 8, 2015 3:28 PM UTC  Lipitor (Atorvastatin calcium) is a synthetic lipid-lowering agent created to reduce elevated blood cholesterol levels when accompanied with diet changes. Lowering blood levels of fat and cholesterol can help reduce the risk of heart disease, strokes, ang Lipitor (Atorvastatin calcium) is a synthetic lipid-lowering agent created to reduce elevated blood cholesterol levels when accompanied with diet changes. Lowering blood levels of fat and cholesterol can help reduce the risk of heart disease, strokes, ang Chris Gallagher—Getty Images/Photo Researchers RM  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jun 8, 2015 3:28 PM UTC About 25 million Americans currently take a drug to lower their cholesterol, so it’s no surprise that the most popular among them, statins, consistently top the list of best-selling prescription medications. But recent studies hinting that they were associated with memory problems have led some patients to shy away from them. According to the latest data, though, there’s probably no need to avoid taking statins for this reason if a doctor prescribes them to protect against heart disease. In a [report](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2301148) published in _JAMA Internal Medicine_, Dr. Brian Strom, chancellor of biomedical and health sciences at Rutgers University, and his colleagues say that while statins may contribute to short term memory issues, these tend to resolve over the long term and that such memory problems are not unique to the statins. **MORE:** [Who Really Needs To Take a Statin?](http://time.com/120958/who-really-needs-to-take-a-statin/) Previous studies had reported a possible connection between statins and memory loss, but those studies compared statin users to non-statin users. In his study, Strom included another group for comparison: people prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that were not statins. Among a large group of 482,543 statin users, 26,484 users of non-statin cholesterol-lowering drugs and 482,543 controls who weren’t on any drugs, Strom and his team found that both cholesterol-lowering drug groups showed short-term memory problems in the first 30 days after they started taking their medications compared to the controls. For statin users, the increased odds of memory lapses was four-fold, and for the other drug group, nearly the same, at 3.6-fold. Because both groups taking drugs showed similar memory effects, Strom says that it’s unlikely that statins are uniquely to blame for the short-term cognitive issues. And because statins and the other cholesterol-lowering drugs work in vastly different ways, it’s also unlikely that the effect can be blamed on the drugs themselves. Strom proposes that the groups’ short-term memory issues, which were recorded by doctors in the patients’ medical records, is more likely the result of these patients simply being more aware of and sensitive to any changes in their functions after starting a new medication. In other words, people may have been having memory issues before they started their medications, and the problems might have occurred if they had not started taking them, but the symptoms became more noticeable because the users were more attuned to changes after filling their new prescription. The control group might have been experiencing similar memory issues but didn’t report them to their doctors; therefore, the issues might not have been recorded. “People on new medicines are more likely to notice a problem, more likely to blame problems on the drug and more likely to go back to the doctor and report these problems,” Strom says. **MORE:** [Statins May Seriously Increase Diabetes Risk](http://time.com/3732605/statins-may-seriously-increase-diabetes-risk/) While it’s possible that the drug-taking group is also at higher risk to begin with for memory-related problems, since they have more potentially vessel-blocking cholesterol in their blood that can also impede blood flow to the brain, the results remained strong even after the group adjusted for risk factors such as diabetes and other blood-related conditions. What’s more, Strom and his team also looked at users who might have been prescribed statins, stopped taking them because they were uncomfortable with the short-term memory issues, and then were prescribed them again at a later time. These patients did not report memory problems at the same rate, suggesting that the effect has less to do with the drugs themselves than with a hyper-vigilance for any changes associated with new drugs—the second time around, the drugs weren’t novel any more. “If the memory problems were real, we would expect that those who took statins for the second time would develop memory problems again,” he says. “The fact that we saw this as a problem so infrequently in this group suggests that it was more because the statins were a new drug the first time around.” Based on the results, Strom says he informs his own patients that for some, statins may be linked to a short-term memory issue but that these tend to disappear over the long term. He also warns that even the short-term problems may not be a true effect of the drugs but rather a misinterpretation of the studies. “People should not steer away from statins because of a fear of short-term memory problems,” he says, “because they probably are not real.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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