A leading health expert has warned that Britain faces a ticking time bomb over the growing number of people developing heart disease due to high cholesterol.
Dr. Andrew Carson, a senior lecturer in general practice at Birmingham University, has warned that high cholesterol could be leaving the UK with an ‘uncontrollable epidemic’ unless a creative solution to the problem is found.
He described how heart problems are already costing the NHS £14 billion a year and said that a more imaginative solution needed to be found to treat them.
He has called for more money to be spent on finding alternatives to statins, the cholesterol lowering drugs that are currently prescribed to large sections of the over-40 s population. He said that as they do not always work for cardiovascular patients, an alternative was needed, suggesting that there needs to be more research into the compound in tomatoes, believed to be responsible for making the Mediteranean diet so healthy.
He wants the NHS to fund research into a compound called Ateronon, based on lycopene, the tomato compound. He has said that this compound could provide a cheaper alternative to statins, on which £500,000 million is spent each year.
The cholesterol problem has been exacerbated by rising obesity levels, poor diet and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle in England. Though money has been channelled into raising awareness of healthy living, the message is proving hard to get though, with experts suggesting that by 2050, 90% of children at the moment could have weight problems.