Dr. Michael Hartwell isn't just any doctor.
With 32 years of clinical cardiology in Boston, he's treated more than 15,000 patients with cardiovascular problems. He was an associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Published dozens of studies in respected medical journals.
And for most of his career, he followed the standard protocol: high cholesterol, prescribe statin.
"It's what we all did," says Dr. Hartwell. "It's what we learned in medical school, what the guidelines mandated, what pharmaceutical companies promoted."
But something started to bother him.
"I saw patients who took statins religiously for years. Their LDL numbers were perfect. But when we did imaging studies of their arteries, many still had plaques forming. Some even getting worse."
And there was another problem he couldn't ignore.
"Out of every 10 patients I put on statins, 3 or 4 would come back complaining of side effects. Muscle pain. Chronic fatigue. Memory problems. Some simply stopped taking them on their own."
Dr. Hartwell was stuck in a dilemma.
On one side, he knew that untreated high cholesterol was dangerous. On the other, he saw that standard treatment was failing a significant portion of his patients.
That's when a colleague from a medical conference in Italy mentioned something that would change his practice forever.