biggest medical stories of the year. one of them has to be about guidelines on taking cholesterol lowering statin drugs. apparently more of us should be doing that. about a quarter of americans are already on these drugs. these guidelines, both put out by the american heart association and the american college of cardiology would apply to about a quarter of you out there. now, i want to explain what a statin drug does. and i know you re going to ask me that, eric. cholesterol is absorbed in the gut. but the liver makes cholesterol and delivers it right into the bloodstream. these drugs block the liver s production of enzyme. it blocks the liver from making cholesterol. and it hopefully will block you from making a lot of bad cholesterol, which is what twe call ldl. now, the problem in the past is that guidelines have only applied to that ldl number. let s get that number down. it s like the holy grail, get that number down. what s good about these new guidelines is they look closely