Ezetimibe helps lower bad cholesterol by stopping your gut from absorbing it, and even though it works well and doesn't cost much, doctors don't use it as much as they could.

Ezetimibe works best when the liver isn’t making much cholesterol on its own and the gut is absorbing a lot from food.

If you have high cholesterol and can't take statins, taking a drug called ezetimibe by itself might lower your 'bad' cholesterol by about 18.6%—and it’s just as safe and easy to handle as a sugar pill.

In healthy rats that naturally make a lot of cholesterol in their liver, the drug ezetimibe didn’t lower their blood cholesterol at all.

For people at risk of heart disease, adding a drug called ezetimibe to their cholesterol medicine might lower bad cholesterol more than just increasing the dose of their current pill — and more people hit their cholesterol goals — but it doesn’t seem to change the risk of heart attacks or side effects.