Consider the finding of Dr.
Harlan Krumholz of the Department of
Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported
in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical
of Association Between Cholesterol and Coronary Heart
Disease Mortality and Morbidity and all-cause Mortality
in Persons Older than 70 Years) that old
people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a
heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol.
Supporters of cholesterol
campaigns who routinely provide disinformation about LDL
cholesterol consistently ignore this observation, or
consider it as a rare exception, produced by chance
among a number of studies sponsored by
the pharmaceutical industry
which have found the opposite.
But it is not an exception; there are now a large number
of findings that contradict the lipid hypothesis.
To be more specific, most
studies on the elderly have shown that high cholesterol
is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease at
all. On the Medline database many studies
address that question. Specifically how
high cholesterol may protect against infections and
Dozens of studies have found
that high cholesterol does not predict or cause
Now consider that more than 90% of all cardiovascular
disease is seen in people above age 60 also and that
almost all studies have found that high cholesterol is
not a risk factor for women. This means that high
cholesterol is only a risk factor for less than 5% of
those who die from a heart attack.
But there is more comfort for those who have high
cholesterol; six of the studies found that total
mortality was inversely
associated with either total or LDL-cholesterol, or
both. This means that it is actually much better to have
high than to have low cholesterol if you want to live to
be very old.
There may be a link between low levels of “bad”
low-density lipoprotein (LDL)
cholesterol--that is, not enough of it--and increased
cancer risk, according to new research.
Scientists at Tufts University looked at 201 cancer
patients and 402 cancer-free patients.
They found that cancer
patients who never took cholesterol-lowering drugs on
average had lower LDL cholesterol levels for an average
of about 19 years prior to their cancer diagnosis.
In other words, they were
“healthier” according to the LDL demonizers in today’s
Previous studies, which
looked at patients who
did take cholesterol-lowering drugs, also suggested
a strong link between low LDL cholesterol levels and
higher cancer risk.
The “HDL cholesterol is good and LDL is bad” message
being perpetrated by mainstream medicine is at the very
least an oversimplification.
LDL is needed by the body to build new muscle, which
is important as we age. LDL can protect the brain as we
age, and low levels of it can escalate problems such as
dementia and memory loss.
As Dr. Joseph A. Mercola
points out, cholesterol is neither “good” nor “bad,” and
attempts to artificially lower your cholesterol can be
quite dangerous, in part because of serious side
effects such as muscle damage.
Steve Riechman, a
researcher in the Department of Health and Kinesiology,
says the study reveals that LDL is not the evil Darth
Vader of health it has been made out to be in recent
years and that new attitudes need to be adopted in
regards to the substance.
His work, with help from
colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh, Kent State
University, the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center
and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, is
published in the Journal of Gerontology.
Riechman and colleagues examined 52 adults from ages to
60 to 69 who were in generally good health but not
physically active, and none of them were participating
in a training program.
The study showed that after
fairly vigorous workouts, participants who had gained
the most muscle mass also had the highest levels of LDL
"a very unexpected
result and one that surprised us."
"It shows that you do need a certain amount of LDL
to gain more muscle mass. There’s no doubt you need
both - the LDL and the HDL - and the truth is, it
(cholesterol) is all good. You simply can’t remove
all the ‘bad’ cholesterol from your body without
serious problems occurring."
the so-called 'functional food' manufacturers would have
us believe that there is such a thing as 'bad'
cholesterol and 'good' cholesterol.
This is, in fact, totally
The cholesterol itself,
whether being transported by LDL or HDL, is exactly the
same. Cholesterol is simply a necessary ingredient that
is required to be regularly delivered around the body
for the efficient healthy development, maintenance and
functioning of our cells.
The difference is in the
'transporters' (the lipoproteins HDL and LDL) and both
types are essential for the human body's delivery
logistics to work effectively. Problems can occur,
however, when the LDL particles are both small and their
carrying capacity outweighs the transportation potential
of available HDL.
This can lead to more
cholesterol being 'delivered' around the body with lower
resources for returning excess capacity to the liver.
Cholesterol and Chronic Heart Failure
Dr. Donna Vredevoe and her group from the School
of Nursery and the School of Medicine, University of
California at Los Angeles
tested more than 200 patients with severe heart
failure with five different antigens and followed them
for twelve months.
The cause of heart failure
was coronary heart disease in half of them and other
types of heart disease (such as congenital or infectious
valvular heart disease, various cardiomyopathies and
endocarditis) in the rest.
Almost half of all the
patients were anergic, and those who were anergic and
had coronary heart disease had a much higher mortality
than the rest.
Now to the salient point: to their surprise the
researchers found that mortality was higher, not only in
the patients with anergy, but also in the patients with
the lowest lipid values, including total cholesterol,
LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol as well as
The latter finding was
confirmed by Dr. Rauchhaus, this time in co-operation
with researchers at several German and British
They found that the risk of dying
for patients with chronic heart failure was strongly and
inversely associated with total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol
and also triglycerides; those with high lipid values
lived much longer than those with low values. Other researchers have made
The largest study (Low
serum total cholesterol is associated with marked
increase in mortality in advanced heart failure) has been performed by Professor
Gregg C. Fonorow and his team at the UCLA Department
of Medicine and Cardiomyopathy Center in Los Angeles.
The study, led by Dr.
Tamara Horwich, included more than a thousand
patients with severe heart failure. After five years 62
percent of the patients with cholesterol below 129 mg/l
had died, but only half as many of the patients with
cholesterol above 223 mg/l.
When proponents of the
cholesterol hypothesis are confronted with findings
showing a bad outcome associated with low cholesterol -
and there are many such observations - they usually
argue that severely ill patients are often malnourished,
and malnourishment is therefore said to cause low
However, the mortality of
the patients in this study was independent of their
degree of nourishment; low cholesterol predicted early
mortality whether the patients were malnourished or not.
Do Low Levels of LDL Cholesterol Cause
Does cancer cause low levels of LDL cholesterol, or are
lower levels of LDL cholesterol a precursor to the
development of cancer?
New data from the
offspring cohort help shed light on the question, mainly
by eliminating the reverse-causality hypothesis that
cancer is responsible for significantly lower serum
concentrations of LDL cholesterol.
"The question we wanted
to address is whether low cholesterol happens when
the cancer is already there or is it there before
the cancer develops," lead investigator
Dr Paul Michael
Lavigne (Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA)
"Based on these data, it
would suggest that lower cholesterol predated the
development of cancer by quite a long time. Now,
that doesn't necessarily speak to [low cholesterol]
causing the cancer; it could have been related to
something else altogether, but it's not supportive
of the hypothesis that cancer caused the low levels
of LDL cholesterol.
We don't know why it
predates cancer, but it would be premature to
attribute it to the cancer itself."
Presenting at the
American College of Cardiology 2012 Scientific Sessions,
Paul Michael Lavigne said the
association between serum cholesterol levels and cancer
incidence was first documented more than 30 years ago.
a 2007 meta-analysis by Drs Alawi Alsheikh-Ali
and Richard Karas (Tufts University
School of Medicine, Boston, MA) showed there was a
"significant and linear relationship" between LDL levels
achieved and risk of new cancer cases.
Another study published in 2008 (Low
LDL cholesterol, but not statin use, associated with an
increased risk of cancer) by the same
researchers showed a similar relationship between low LDL-cholesterol levels and incident cancer.
Cholesterol Protect Against Cardiovascular Disease?
Apparently, microorganisms play a role in cardiovascular
They may be one of the
factors that start the process by injuring the arterial
endothelium. A secondary role may be inferred from the
association between acute cardiovascular disease and
The infectious agent may
preferably become located in parts of the arterial walls
that have been previously damaged by other agents,
initiating local coagulation and the creation of a
thrombus (clot) and in this way cause obstruction of the
blood flow. But if so, high cholesterol may protect
against cardiovascular disease instead of being the
In any case, the diet-heart
idea, with its demonizing of high cholesterol, is
obviously in conflict with the idea that high
cholesterol protects against infections. Both ideas
cannot be true so lets summarize the many facts that
conflict with the idea that high cholesterol is bad.
If high cholesterol were the
most important cause of atherosclerosis, people with
high cholesterol should be more atherosclerotic than
people with low cholesterol. But as you know by now this
is very far from the truth.
If high cholesterol were the
most important cause of atherosclerosis, lowering of
cholesterol should influence the atherosclerotic process
in proportion to the degree of its lowering.
But as you know by now, this
does not happen.
If high cholesterol were the
most important cause of cardiovascular disease, it
should be a risk factor in all populations, in both
sexes, at all ages, in all disease categories, and for
both heart disease and stroke. But as you know by now,
this is not the case.
If high cholesterol were the
most important cause of cardiovascular disease, the
greatest effect of
statin treatment should
have been seen in patients with the highest cholesterol,
and in patients whose cholesterol was lowered the most.
Lack of dose-response cannot
be attributed to the knowledge that the statins have
other effects on plaque stabilization, as this would not
have masked the effect of cholesterol-lowering
considering the pronounced lowering that was achieved.
On the contrary, if a drug
that effectively lowers the concentration of a molecule
assumed to be harmful to the cardiovascular system and
at the same time exerts several beneficial effects on
the same system, a pronounced dose-response should be
On the other hand, if high
cholesterol has a protective function, as suggested, its
lowering would counterbalance the beneficial effects of
the statins and thus work against a dose-response, which
would be more in accord with the results from the
How is it possible that high
cholesterol is harmful to the artery walls and causes
fatal coronary heart disease, the commonest cause of
death, if those whose cholesterol is the highest, live
longer than those whose cholesterol is low?
Body Cannot Function Without All Forms of Cholesterol
Among cholesterol's most essential functions, is its
presence in all of the trillions of cell membranes of
What is it doing there? It
is one of the primary structural components of the
membrane of a cell. Without adequate cholesterol, cells
will break apart due to a lack of integrity.
In addition to this, all of
steroidal hormones of the body are synthesized from
Cholesterol is the precursor
to all of these hormones.
It is no surprise that some of
the many symptoms associated with taking
cholesterol-lowering medications are: fatigue, muscle
wasting, loss of sex drive and adrenal fatigue.
In addition to this, it is
the circulating LDL particles (the so called "bad"
cholesterol) that are what deliver cholesterol to the
hormone receptor sites of cells.
So Why Does Mainstream Medicine Demonize
Could it be because it benefits the billion-dollar
cholesterol drug industry?
Statin drugs are taken by one in four Americans
over age of 45, and if patients stopped buying
Big Pharma would be in
a serious financial crisis.
In fact, as soon as the
study’s cancer findings were published, a heart “expert”
“statins used for LDL
reduction shouldn’t be stopped if there is an
appropriate use to lower heart disease risk.”
So mainstream medicine’s
advice is to hang onto these “miracle drugs” even though
they have been linked to,
Even a world renowned heart
surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over
5,000 open-heart surgeries has
admitted he was wrong about what really causes heart
disease, and it's not high cholesterol.
Statins artificially lower cholesterol levels by
inhibiting a critical enzyme
HMG-CoA reductase, which plays a central role in the
production of cholesterol in the liver. The consequences
are inflammation and pathological breakdown of
In the long run, statins are
going to be a bonanza, but for the trial lawyers, not
the drug companies. But by then it will be too late for
those taking them now.
We need to reform education
on what really causes heart disease and why cholesterol,
whether high or low, is not an evil process in the body,
but a natural part of our biology.
When we stop listening to
medical doctors, suddenly we start listening to what our
bodies crave... to be the healthiest version of