Erin Allman‑Updyke and Erin Welsh

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988 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 4 Aug

Erin Allman‑Updyke and Erin Welsh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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This Podcast Will Kill You · Ep 218 The Lowdown on Statins · 4 Aug 2026 podcast

So like in 1986, only like 30% of your physicians would be like, okay.

And then it was 75% in 1995.

Better than before.

At the time that the panel was making these recommendations, there still wasn't really a good cholesterol-lowering medication available.

So the one that they had used in the study, cholestyramine, came in a sandy powder, which you had to mix into water and consume throughout the day.

So you had to consume 24 grams a day was like the goal in the study, which was like six packets of this or something like that.

No one's chasing that.

It was quite a heavy lift.

And it was made even more daunting by the GI upset that it caused in many, you know, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, stuff like that.

Yeah.

So there was clearly a need for a safe, effective, and easy medication to lower cholesterol.

Fortunately, researchers were well underway in their quest for such a wonder drug.

Okay.

In 1971, the firsthand account provider for this episode, Dr. Akira Endo, was working as a research biochemist at the Japanese pharmaceutical company Sankyo when he got an idea.

Endo had long been fascinated with Alexander Fleming's serendipitous discovery of penicillin.

And after a research stint in New York, he had become intrigued by this problem of hypercholesterolemia.

And he figured that, okay, if fungi produce antibacterial compounds like penicillin to compete with other fungi, it's not like they produce it because they're like, oh, humans could use this.

No.

Right.

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