Cholesterol: Myths and Truths
CategoriesThe following is a excellent summary complied by Chris Masterjohn of some of the fallacies believed and propagated by mainstream medicine. The cash cow statins are game for just about anything, now even the flu since "the virus seems to trigger an overreaction by the immune system that causes inflammation in the lungs and other organs, which is exactly the kind of thing statins are good at taking on." As usual much more safer alternatives to reduce inflammation simply escapes these lunatics....
Just look at Bad News About Statin Drugs and associated links to see the absurd risk to benefit ratio of statins.
Chris Gupta
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Cholesterol: Myths and Truths
Debunking the Myths About Cholesterol
The idea that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease has been repeated so many times over the last half-century that most people assume it to be true without a second thought.
Now that statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, have begun to bring in a bonanza of profits for pharmaceutical companies, any new disease that can be pinned on cholesterol represents a chance to broaden the scope of profits ever more wide.
The result? Alzheimer's disease is now being blamed on cholesterol. Does the scientific evidence back it up? Or is it just another "cholesterol myth?"Dr. Ravnskov and The Cholesterol Myths
Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, coined the term "cholesterol myth" in his 2000 book The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease.
Dr. Ravnksov's website on the cholesterol myths* details his credentials and summarizes his fascinating exposure of how nine myths about saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease came to be established orthodoxy without solid scientific evidence to back them up.
Despite Dr. Ravnskov's credentials, his meticulous research, and iron-clad arguments, his book has been so provocative, that it was literally set on fire on national TV in Finland!
Researchers Question the Cholesterol Myths
Dr. Ravnskov's ninth cholesterol myth is that all scientists support the position that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. As Dr. Ravnskov shows, there have always been dissenters within the scientific community. One can take a principled stand against the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease and be in good scientific standing and in the company of many qualified researchers.
Some of the many medical doctors and researcher who question the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease and the general negative bias against cholesterol can be found at the website of THINCS, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics.
This section of Cholesterol-And-Health.com is dedicated to exposing commonly perpetrated myths about cholesterol, and is fully documented with research from peer-reviewed journals.
Myths About Cholesterol -- Articles
The following articles debunk myths about cholesterol that drug companies would prefer you believe:
Myth: Cholesterol Causes Heart Disease This Review of Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's (MD, PhD) The Cholesterol Myths takes you on a fascinating tour through Dr. Ravnskov's brilliant expose of shoddy science at its worst, from the origin of the "diet-heart idea" to the present.
Myth: Cholesterol Causes Alzheimer's Disease | Part I: Debunking the Myth Websites push "brain-healthy" diets based on low-fat, low-cholesterol foods and researchers celebrate the fact that they are able to lower brain cholesterol levels with pills. But does it make any scientific sense? This article shows how the idea that cholesterol causes Alzheimer's disease is being perpetuated against the scientific evidence, and why research shows that cholesterol is a substance that actually protects your brain.
Myth: Cholesterol Causes Alzheimer's Disease | Part II: The Real Causes of Alzheimer's Disease Cholesterol is not the cause of Alzheimer's disease, and low-fat diets are not the solution. In fact, the hardcore science indicates that deficiency of DHA, a nutrient found in animal fats, and insulin resistance, caused by a diet excessively high in carbohydrates, are major contributors to the development of Alzheimers!
See also: Statin Drugs & Memory Loss
*Here are the facts! Click on the blue arrows if you want the scientific evidence!
1 Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.
2 A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3 Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.
4 There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.
5 The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
6 The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.
7 Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8 The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.
9 The Benefits Of High Cholesterol
Do you want to know more? Read Dr. Ravnskov's book "The Cholesterol Myths". This is an updated and greatly extended version of this site. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, you can read about
...the many unsuccesful cholesterol-lowering experiments,
...the meaningless animal experiments,
...familial hypercholesterolemia and why you shouldn´t bother too much about it,
...the myths about triglycerides,
...the dangers associated with an overconsumption of polyunsaturated oils,
...the illogicalities around the Mediterranean diet,
...the fallacies of Dr. Ornish´s life-style trial,
...and much more
posted by Chris Gupta on Monday July 3 2006
URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2006/07/03/cholesterol_myths_and_truths.htm
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