Picture this: Researchers discover that a popular supplement raises your diabetes risk by 9%. What do you think the headlines would look like?

They'd be pretty brutal, right? I bet all the major news outlets would have their websites plastered with stories about the latest "killer supplement."

People might even call for the supplement to be banned -- they'd say it's just not worth it -- especially if the supplement had a history of other problems.

Now...what if it weren't a supplement at all? What if it were that mainstream darling that we all love to hate -- cholesterol-lowering statins?

We don't have to speculate -- because these are the exact results researchers found in a recent study at the University of Glasgow's Cardiovascular Research Center. And the mainstream is reacting pretty much exactly as you'd expect.

"Small Increase in Diabetes Risk Noted in Statin Patients," reads the headline of a recent article on the U.S. National Library of Medicine's website MedlinePlus. Not even close to the scathing words we all imagined at the beginning of this letter.

In fact, those words are followed by a reassurance that, for many, the benefits of statins outweigh the "downsides." They say nobody should change anything when it comes to moderate- to high-risk patients -- doctors should keep prescribing statins, the patients should keep taking them, and Big Pharma should keep raking in the dough.

The best part? The researchers say it could be a "chance finding." How does this even happen? The risk is there -- 9% isn't an absolutely shocking number, but it's no joke (and the risk was higher in older patients).

But, of course, nobody in the mainstream wants to hear anything bad about their precious statins. They've already brushed off weakness, liver damage, and muscle pain...why not diabetes? I mean, it's only one of the biggest health problems of our time. No big deal.

You know, if you keep stacking up the harms (and we will, just you watch), eventually it's going to topple the benefits column -- no matter how hard they work at spinning the story.

Only trouble is, we don't know how long that's going to take -- and how many more unsuspecting people will start taking statins -- and putting themselves in danger -- in the meantime.

There are alternatives. Just this past fall, I wrote about one in an e-Tip. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

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