The Cholesterol Myth that is Harming Your Health

Cholesterol could easily be described as the smoking gun of the last two decades. It's been responsible for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years. Yet when I first opened my medical practice in the mid 80s, cholesterol, and the fear that yours was too high was rarely talked about. Somewhere along the way however, cholesterol became a household word -- something that you must keep as low as possible, or suffer the consequences. You are probably aware that there are many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health. Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease. And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough. But before I delve into this life-changing information, let's get some basics down first.

What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?

That's right, you do need cholesterol. This soft, waxy substance is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function. Your liver makes about 75 percent of your body's cholesterol,[i] and according to conventional medicine, there are two types:
1. High-density lipoprotein, or HDL: This is the "good" cholesterol that helps to keep cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any excess from arterial plaque, which may help to prevent heart disease. 2. Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL: This "bad" cholesterol circulates in your blood and, according to conventional thinking, may build up in your arteries, forming plaque that makes your arteries narrow and less flexible (a condition called atherosclerosis). If a clot forms in one of 1

these narrowed arteries leading to your heart or brain, a heart attack or stroke may result.

Also making up your total cholesterol count are:

Triglycerides: Elevated levels of this dangerous fat have been linked to heart disease and diabetes. Triglyceride levels are known to rise from eating too many grains and sugars, being physically inactive, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively and being overweight or obese. Lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a): Lp(a) is a substance that is made up of an LDL "bad cholesterol" part plus a protein (apoprotein a). Elevated Lp(a) levels are a very strong risk factor for heart disease. This has been well established, yet very few physicians check for it in their patients.

Understand this:

Your Total Cholesterol Level is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk
Health officials in the United States urge everyone over the age of 20 to have their cholesterol tested once every five years. Part of this test is your total cholesterol, or the sum of your blood's cholesterol content, including HDL, LDLs, and VLDLs.. The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330. In addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs. Now, with testing children's cholesterol levels, they're increasing their market even more. I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

HDL/Cholesterol ratio Triglyceride/HDL ratios

HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That ratio should ideally be above 24 percent.
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You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That percentage should be below 2. Keep in mind, however, that these are still simply guidelines, and there's a lot more that goes into your risk of heart disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol were brought into the picture. They give you a closer idea of what's going on, but they still do not show you everything.

Cholesterol is Neither "Good" Nor "Bad"

Now that we've defined good and bad cholesterol, it has to be said that there is actually only one type of cholesterol. Ron Rosedale, MD, who is widely considered to be one of the leading anti-aging doctor in the United States, does an excellent job of explaining this concept:[ii] "Notice please that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -- fats combined with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' cholesterol. Cholesterol is just cholesterol. It combines with other fats and proteins to be carried through the bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not mix very well. Fatty substances therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of proteins and are far from being just cholesterol. In fact we now know there are many types of these fat and protein particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the socalled small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, because they can squeeze through the lining of the arteries and if they oxidize, otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause damage and inflammation. Thus, you might say that there is 'good LDL' and 'bad LDL.' Also, some HDL particles are better than others. Knowing just your total cholesterol tells you very little. Even knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you very much."

Cholesterol is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept. In the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people's minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.
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"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol. That will automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best friends. We would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one's risk of dying. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."

Vitamin D and Your Cholesterol

You probably are aware of the incredible influence of vitamin D on your health. If you aren't, or need a refresher, you can visit my vitamin D page. What most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D. Bottom line? If your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D. Additionally, it provides some intuitive feedback that if cholesterol were so dangerous, why would your body use it as precursor for vitamin D and virtually all of the steroid hormones in your body? Other "evidence" that cholesterol is good for you? Consider the role of "good" HDL cholesterol. Essentially, HDL takes cholesterol from your body's tissues and arteries, and brings it back to your liver, where most of your cholesterol is produced. If the purpose of this was to eliminate cholesterol from your body, it would make sense that the cholesterol would be shuttled back to your kidneys or intestines so your body could remove it. Instead, it goes back to your liver. Why? Because your liver is going to reuse it. "It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale explains. "Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health."
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Cholesterol and Inflammation What's the Connection?

Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for. What am I getting at? Well, first consider the role of inflammation in your body. In many respects, it's a good thing as it's your body's natural response to invaders it perceives as threats. If you get a cut for instance, the process of inflammation is what allows you to heal. Specifically during inflammation:

Your blood vessels constrict to keep you from bleeding to death Your blood becomes thicker so it can clot Your immune system sends cells and chemicals to fight viruses, bacteria and other "bad guys" that could infect the area Cells multiply to repair the damage

Ultimately, the cut is healed and a protective scar may form over the area. If your arteries are damaged, a very similar process occurs inside of your body, except that a "scar" in your artery is known as plaque. This plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks. Notice that cholesterol has yet to even enter the picture. Cholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary. Remember that no cell can form without it. So if you have damaged cells that need to be replaced, your liver will be notified to make more cholesterol and release it into your bloodstream. This is a deliberate process that takes place in order for your body to produce new, healthy cells. It's also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation. The test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries. Generally speaking:
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A CRP level under 1 milligrams per liter of blood means you have a low risk for cardiovascular disease 1 to 3 milligrams means your risk is intermediate More than 3 milligrams is high risk

Even conventional medicine is warming up to the idea that chronic inflammation can trigger heart attacks. But they stop short of seeing the big picture. In the eyes of conventional medicine, when they see increased cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream, they conclude that it -- not the underlying damage to your arteries -- is the cause of heart attacks. Which brings me to my next point.

The Insanity of Lowering Cholesterol

Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone so far as to call high cholesterol "an invented disease, a 'problem' that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."[iii] And this explanation is spot on. If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair. Conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol. As Dr. Rosedale so rightly points out:2 "If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place. It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation." I'll discuss how to do this later in the report, but first let's take a look at the dangers of low cholesterol -- and how it came to be that cholesterol levels needed to be so low in the first place.

If Your Cholesterol is Too Low

All kinds of nasty things can happen to your body. Remember, every single one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive -- including those in your brain. Perhaps this is why low cholesterol wreaks havoc on your psyche. One large study conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms.[iv] This may be because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a substance involved in the regulation of your mood. On a similar note, Canadian researchers found that those in the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration had more than six times the risk of committing suicide as did those in the highest quarter.[v] Dozens of studies also support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violent behavior, through this same pathway: lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression.[vi] And one meta-analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer,[vii] while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson's disease. What cholesterol level is too low? Brace yourself. Probably any level much under 150 -- an optimum would be more like 200. Now I know what you are thinking: "But my doctor tells me my cholesterol needs to be under 200 to be healthy." Well let me enlighten you about how these cholesterol recommendations came to be. And I warn you, it is not a pretty story. This is a significant issue. I have seen large numbers of people who have their cholesterol lowered below 150, and there is little question in my mind that it is causing far more harm than any benefit they are receiving by lowering their cholesterol this low.

Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?

In 2004, the U.S. government's National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels. Before 2004, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
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Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve. Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine[viii] found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws. Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong. So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about? Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterollowering drugs.[ix] The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States. Coincidence? I think not. Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends? Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.[x] And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The Dangers of Cholesterol-Lowering Medications

If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I'm saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don't need drugs to lower your cholesterol. To put it another way, among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these drugs, as they had genetic challenges of familial hypercholesterolemia that required it.. Contrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users
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taking them (high blood pressure medications -- another vastly over-prescribed category -- were first).[xi] Disturbingly, as written in BusinessWeek early in 2008, "Some researchers have even suggested -- half-jokingly -- that the medications should be put in the water supply."[xii] Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills. Statin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that's needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about this is that when you go tinkering around with the delicate workings of the human body, you risk throwing everything off kilter. Case in point, "statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right," say Enig and Fallon. For starters, statin drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure. Muscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.[xiii] By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage. Statin drugs have also been linked to:

An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking) Dizziness Cognitive impairment, including memory loss[xiv] A potential increased risk of cancer[xv] Decreased function of the immune system[xvi] Depression Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)

And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig's disease.[xvii] Other cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.
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IMPORTANT NOTE If, for whatever reason, you or someone you know or love does not believe the information in this report and chooses to stay on statin drugs, then please make sure they at least take one to two Ubiquinols per day. This will help prevent all the side effects mentioned above. Ubiquinol is the reduced version of Coenzyme Q-10 and is far more effective if you are over 35-40 years old. It is the form of the supplement that actually works, and if you take CoQ-10 and your body can't reduce it to uniquinol you are just fooling yourself and wasting your money. You can visit our ubiquinol information page for more details.

Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?

With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it. Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease? Have you ever heard of the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to treat? I didn't think so. In fact, most doctors haven't either. And herein lies the problem. NNT answers the question: How many people have to take a particular drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack)? For example, if a drug had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack. Easy enough, right? Well, drug companies would rather that you not focus on NNT, because when you do, you get an entirely different picture of their "miracle" drugs. Take, for instance, Pfizer's Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans.[xviii] According to Lipitor's own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right? Well, BusinessWeek actually did an excellent story on this very topic earlier this year,[xix] and they found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer's own newspaper ad for Lipitor.

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Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type: "That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor." What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people. The NNT, in this case, is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they've just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing. So you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen. Or in some cases, not hidden at all.

Zetia and Vytorin: No Medical Benefits

Early in 2008, it came out that Zetia, which works by inhibiting absorption of cholesterol from your intestines, and Vytorin, which is a combination of Zetia and Zocor (a statin drug), do not work. This was discovered AFTER the drugs acquired close to 20 percent of the U.S. market for cholesterol-lowering drugs. And also after close to 1 million prescriptions for the drugs were being written each week in the United States, bringing in close to $4 billion in 2007.[xx] It was only after the results of a trial by the drugs' makers, Merck and Schering-Plough, were released that this was found out. Never mind that the trial was completed in April 2006, and results were not released until January 2008. And it's no wonder the drug companies wanted to hide these results. While Zetia does lower cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent, trials did not show that it reduces heart attacks or strokes, or that it reduces plaques in arteries that can lead to heart problems. The trial by the drugs' makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone.[xxi]

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Of course, the answer is not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have you believe. You see, statins are thought to have a beneficial effect on inflammation in your body, thereby lowering your risk of heart attack and stroke. But you can lower inflammation in your body naturally, without risking any of the numerous side effects of statin drugs. This should also explain why my guidelines for lowering cholesterol are identical to those to lower inflammation. For more in-depth information about cholesterol-lowering drugs, please see my recently updated statin drug index page.

How to Lower Inflammation, and Thereby Your Risk of Heart Disease, Naturally
There is a major misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. While it's true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, I've explained earlier in this article why this should not scare you -- but I'll explain even further here. This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease. The nutrition community of that time completely accepted the hypothesis, and encouraged the public to cut out butter, red meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy and other "artery clogging" fats from their diets -- a radical change at that time. What you may not know is that when Keys published his analysis that claimed to prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart disease, he selectively analyzed information from only six countries to prove his correlation, rather than comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22 countries. As a result of this "cherry-picked" data, government health organizations began bombarding the public with advice that has contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going on today: eat a low-fat diet. Not surprisingly, numerous studies have actually shown that Keys' theory was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including these studies from Fallon and Enig's classic article The Skinny on Fats:[xxii]

A survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese.[xxiii]

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A Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.[xxiv]

Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they were left hungry. So they began eating more processed grains, more vegetable oils, and more highfructose corn syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters. It is this latter type of diet that will eventually lead to increased inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body. So don't let anyone scare you away from saturated fat anymore. Chronic inflammation is actually caused by a laundry list of items such as:

Oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs) Eating lots of sugar and grains Eating foods cooked at high temperatures Eating trans fats A sedentary lifestyle Smoking Emotional stress

So to sum it all up, in order to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally, you must address the items on this list.

How to Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

1. Make sure you're getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega3fats. I prefer those from krill oil. New research suggests that as little as 500 mg may lower your total cholesterol and triglycerides and will likely increase your HDL cholesterol. 2. Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your daily diet. It is especially important to eliminate dangerous sugars such as fructose. If your HDL/Cholesterol ratio is abnormal and needs to be improved it would also serve you well to virtually eliminate fruits from your diet, as that it also a source of fructose. Once your cholesterol improves you can gradually reintroduce it to levels that don't raise your cholesterol. 3. Eat the right foods for your nutritional type. You can learn your nutritional type by taking our FREE test. 4. Eat a good portion of your food raw. 5. Eat healthy, preferably raw, fats that correspond to your nutritional type. This includes: o Olive oil o Coconut and coconut oil o Organic raw dairy products (including butter, cream, sour cream, cheese, etc.) o Avocados 13

Raw nuts Seeds Eggs (lightly cooked with yolks intact or raw) Organic, grass-fed meats 6. Get the right amount of exercise, especially Peak Fitness type of exercise. When you exercise you increase your circulation and the blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of fighting an illness before it has the opportunity to spread. 7. Avoid smoking and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. 8. Address your emotional challenges. I particularly love the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for stress management.
o o o o

So there you have it; the reasons why high cholesterol is a worry that many of you simply do not need to have, along with a simple plan to optimize yours. If someone you love is currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you to share this information with them as well, and take advantage of the thousands of free pages of information on www.Mercola.com. For the majority of you reading this right now, there's no reason to risk your health with cholesterol-lowering drugs. With the plan I've just outlined, you'll achieve the cholesterol levels you were meant to have, along with the very welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and mental clarity. Too good to be true? Hardly. For the vast majority of people, making a few lifestyle changes causes healthy cholesterol levels to naturally occur. As always, your health really is in your hands. Now it's up to you to take control -- and shape it into something great.

References
[i] American Heart Association January 23, 2008

[ii] Mercola.com, Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease, Ron Rosedale May 28, 2005

[iii] Fallon, S. and Mary Enig. "Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines," The Weston A. Price Foundation

[iv] Psychosomatic Medicine 2000;62.

[v] Epidemiology 2001 Mar;12:168-72

[vi] Annals of Internal Medicine (1998;128(6):478-487) The Journal of the American Medical Association (1997;278:313-321)

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[vii] Journal of the American College of Cardiology July 31, 2007; 50:409-418

[viii] Annals of Internal Medicine October 3, 2006; 145(7): 520-530

[ix] USAToday.com October 16, 2004

[x] American Heart Association, "What Your Cholesterol Level Means," accessed May 22, 2008

[xi] MSNBC.com More than half of Americans on chronic meds May 14, 2008(accessed June 9, 2008)

[xii] BusinessWeek Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good? January 17, 2008 (accessed June 9, 2008)

[xiii] The Journal of Clinical Investigation December 2007; 117(12):3940-51

[xiv] Mercola.com Sudden Memory Loss Linked to Cholesterol Drugs

[xv] Nature Medicine September, 2000;6:965-966, 1004-1010.

[xvi] Nature Medicine , December, 2000; 6: 1311-1312, 1399-1402

[xvii] Edwards, I. Ralph; Star, Kristina; Kiuru, Anne, "Statins, Neuromuscular Degenerative Disease and an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Like Syndrome," Drug Safety, Volume 30, Number 6, 2007 , pp. 515525(11)

[xviii] IMS Heallth. IMS National Prescription Audit Plus July 2007.

[xix] BusinessWeek.com, "Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?" January 17, 2008 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xx] New York Times, "Cardiologists Question Delay of Data on 2 Drugs," November 21, 2007 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xxi] New York Times, "Drug Has No Benefit in Trial, Makers Say," January 14, 2008 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xxii] Enig, M and Sally Fallon, "The Skinny on Fats", The Weston A. Price Foundation,

[xxiii] Lackland, D T, et al, J Nutr, Nov 1990, 120:11S:1433-1436

[xxiv] Nutr Week, Mar 22, 1991, 21:12:2-3

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Do YOU Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Cholesterol Drugs?

Tens of millions of Americans are taking cholesterol-lowering drugsmostly statins and some "experts" claim that many millions more should be taking them. I couldn't disagree more. Statins are HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, that is, they act by blocking the enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol (HMG-CoA reductase). The fact that statin drugs cause side effects is well establishedthere are now 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to increased cancer risk. For starters, reported side effects include:
Muscle problems, Anemia polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet), and rhabdomyolysis (a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition) Acidosis Immune depression Sexual dysfunction

Cataracts

Pancreas or liver Memory loss dysfunction, including a potential increase in liver enzymes

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Muscle problems are the best known of statin drugs' adverse side effects, but cognitive problems and memory loss are also widely reported. A spectrum of other problems, ranging from blood glucose elevations to tendon problems, can also occur. There is evidence that taking statins may even increase your risk for Lou Gehrig's disease, diabetes and even cancer. Statins currently available on the U.S. market include
Advicor (lovastatin with niacin) Abbott
i:

Crestor Mevacor (lovastatin) Simcor (rosuvastatin Merck (niacin/imvastatin )) Abbott AstraZeneca

Altoprev Lescol Pravachol Zocor (lovastatin (fluvastatin) (pravastatin) -(simvastatin) ) Novartis Bristol-Myers Squibb Merck Shionogi Pharma Caduet Lipitor [atorvastat (atorvastatin in with ) - Pfizer amlodipine (Norvasc)] Pfizer Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastati n) Merck/ScheringPlough

Statin Drugs: A Surprising Cause of Diabetes

Statins have been shown to increase your risk of diabetes through a few different mechanisms. The most important one is that they increase insulin resistance, which can be extremely harmful to your health. Increased insulin resistance contributes to chronic inflammation in your body, and inflammation is the hallmark of most diseases. In fact, increased insulin resistance can lead to heart disease, which, ironically, is the primary reason for taking a cholesterol-reducing drug in the first place! It can also promote belly fat, high blood pressure, heart attacks, chronic fatigue, thyroid disruption, and diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and cancer. Secondly, statins increase your diabetes risk by actually raising your blood sugar. When you eat a meal that contains starches and sugar, some of the excess sugar goes to your liver, which then stores it away as cholesterol and triglycerides. Statins work by preventing your liver from making cholesterol. As a result, your liver returns the sugar to your bloodstream, which raises your blood sugar levels.
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Now, it's important to realize that drug-induced diabetes and genuine type 2 diabetes are not necessarily identical. If you're on a statin drug and find that your blood glucose is elevated, it's possible that what you have is just hyperglycemiaa side effect, and the result of your medication. Unfortunately, many doctors will at that point mistakenly diagnose you with "type 2 diabetes," and possibly prescribe another drug, when all you may need to do is simply discontinue the statin in order for your blood glucose levels to revert back to normal. So if friends or loved ones you know are on a statin (and one in four Americans over 45 are) and they are told they have diabetes, please do them a favor and tell them about the information in this article.

Major Statin Drug Study Found to Be Flawed

A study known as the JUPITER trial initially suggested cholesterol-lowering statin drugs might prevent heart-related death in many more people than just those with high cholesterol. But two years after its publication in 2008, researchers came out saying the JUPITER results are flawed -- and that they do not support the benefits initially reported. Not only is there no "striking decrease in coronary heart disease complications", but a more recent report has also called into question drug companies' involvement in such trials. According to a report by ABC News
ii :

"... major discrepancies exists between the significant reductions in nonfatal stroke and heart attacks reported in the JUPITER trial and what has been found in other research ... 'The JUPITER data set appears biased,' [the researchers] wrote in conclusion."

If You Take Statins, You MUST Take CoQ10

Statins deplete your body of CoQ10, which can have devastating results. If you take statin drugs without taking CoQ10, your health is at serious risk. Unfortunately, this describes the majority of people who take them in the United States. CoQ10 is a cofactor (co-enzyme) that is essential for the creation of ATP molecules, which you need for cellular energy production. Organs such as your heart have higher energy requirements, and therefore require more CoQ10 to function properly. Produced mainly in your liver, it also plays a role in maintaining blood glucose. Physicians rarely inform people of this risk and only occasionally advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement. As your body gets more and more depleted of CoQ10, you may suffer from fatigue, muscle weakness and soreness, and eventually heart failure. Coenzyme Q10 is also very important in the process of neutralizing free radicals. So when your CoQ10 is depleted, you enter a vicious cycle of increased free radicals, loss of cellular energy, and damaged mitochondrial DNA. If you decide to take a CoQ10 supplement and are over the age of 40, it is important to choose the reduced version,
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called ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is a FAR more effective formI personally take it daily for its many far ranging benefits. As for dosage, Dr. Graveline, a family doctor and former astronaut, made the following recommendation in a previous interview on statins and CoQ10:

If you have symptoms of statin damage such as muscle pain, take anywhere from 200 to 500 mg If you just want to use it preventively, 200 mg or less should be sufficient

Statins Impair Numerous Biological Functions

Statin drugs also interfere with other biological functions, including an early step in the mevalonate pathway, which is the central pathway for the steroid management in your body. Products of this pathway that are negatively affected by statins include:

All your sex hormones Cortisone The dolichols, which are involved in keeping the membranes inside your cells healthy All sterols, including cholesterol and vitamin D (which is similar to cholesterol and is produced from cholesterol in your skin)

It's still uncertain whether statins actually deplete your body of vitamin D, but they do reduce your body's natural ability to create active vitamin D (1,25dihydroxycholecalciferol). This is the natural outcome of the drug's cholesterol-reducing ability, because you need cholesterol to make vitamin D! It's the raw material your body uses for vitamin D conversion after you've exposed your skin to sunlight. It's also welldocumented that vitamin D improves insulin resistance, so needless to say, when you take a statin drug, you forfeit this 'built-in' health-promoting mechanism, which is yet another clue as to how statins can cause diabetes.

Ninety-Nine Out of 100 People do Not Need Statin Drugs

That these drugs have proliferated the market the way they have is a testimony to the power of marketing, corruption and corporate greed, because the odds are very high greater than 100 to 1that if you're taking a statin, you don't really need it. The ONLY subgroup that might benefit are those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol. And, even more importantly, cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease. If your physician is urging you to check your total cholesterol, then you should know that this test will tell you virtually nothing about your risk of heart disease, unless it is 330 or

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higher. HDL percentage is a far more potent indicator for heart disease risk. Here are the two ratios you should pay attention to:
1. HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio: Should ideally be above 24 percent. If below 10 percent, you have a significantly elevated risk for heart disease. 2. Triglyceride/HDL Ratio: Should be below 2.

I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who were actually at low risk for heart disease due to their elevated HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen many people with cholesterol levels under 200 who had a very high risk of heart disease, based on their low HDL. Your body NEEDS cholesterolit is important in the production of cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps your brain form memories and is vital to your neurological function. There is also strong evidence that having too little cholesterol INCREASES your risk for cancer, memory loss, Parkinson's disease, hormonal imbalances, stroke, depression, suicide, and violent behavior.

Statins Should NEVER Be Used By Pregnant Women

One in four Americans over the age of 45 is now taking these drugs, and few are properly warned about the related health risks. Part of the problem is that many doctors are not even aware of all the risks. A study published last spring highlighted this dilemma. Most disturbingly, the researchers found that physicians were lacking in awareness of the teratogenic risks (ability to cause fetal malformations) of statins and other cardiovascular drugs they prescribed for their pregnant patients. The study followed an earlier report, which had concluded statins should be avoided in early pregnancy due to their teratogenic capability . An even earlier 2003 study had already established that cholesterol plays an essential role in embryonic development, and that statins could play a part in embryonic mutations or even death...
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Indeed, it's difficult to look at these facts and not reach the conclusion that the pharmaceutical industry is quite willing to sacrifice human lives for profit. Statins are in fact classified as a "pregnancy Category X medication" meaning, it causes serious birth defects, and should NEVER be used by a woman who is pregnant or planning a pregnancy.

Parents Beware: Outrageous Push to Put Kids on Statin Drugs!

In a bold attempt to increase profits before the patent runs out, Pfizer has introduced a chewable kid-friendly version of Lipitor. Its US patent for Lipitor expired in November 2011, and seeking to boost sales of the drug, children have become the new target market, and the conventional medical establishment is more than happy to oblige.
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Researchers and many doctors are now calling for universal school screening of children to check for high cholesterol, to find those "in need of treatment." In addition, older siblings, parents and other family members might be prompted to get screened as well, the researchers say, which would uncover additional, previously undiagnosed adults in need of the drug. This is clearly NOT the way to improve public health. On the contrary, it could produce a new, massive wave of extremely dire health consequences in just a few years time. So rather than improving school lunches, which would cost about a dollar a day per child, they'd rather "invest" ten times that for tests and drugs that in no way, shape, or form address the root cause, which is an improper, unhealthy diet! All they're doing is allowing all the industries to maintain or increase their profits: Big Pharma; Big Sugar; Big Corn and the processed food industry. Who pays? You, and your children! And in far more ways than one!

Optimizing Your Cholesterol Levels, Naturally

There's really no reason to take statins and suffer the damaging health effects from these dangerous drugs. The fact is that 75 percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol. It follows, then, that my primary recommendations for safely regulating your cholesterol have to do with modifying your diet and lifestyle:

Optimize your vitamin D levels. Research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff has shed additional light on the extreme importance of appropriate sun exposure for normalizing your cholesterol levels and preventing heart disease. For more information, please see this previous interview. Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your diet. Ideally, you'll also want to consume a good portion of your food raw. Make sure you are getting plenty of high quality, animal-based omega 3 fats, such as krill oil. Other heart-healthy foods include olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products and eggs, avocados, raw nuts and seeds, and organic grass-fed meats as appropriate for your nutritional type. Exercise daily. Make sure you incorporate peak fitness exercises, which also optimizes your human growth hormone (HGH) production. Address your emotional challenges. My favorite technique for stress management is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively. Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep.

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Unlike statin drugs, which lower your cholesterol at the expense of your health, these lifestyle strategies represent a holistic approach that will benefit your overall health which includes a healthy cardiovascular system.

The Baycol Statin Recall and Safety Issue:

In August 2001, Bayer AG, the maker of Baycol (cerivastatin), a popular cholesterollowering drug used by about 700,000 Americans, pulled the medicine off the market after 31 people died from severe muscle breakdown, a well-recognized side effect of cholesterol-lowering drugs. Related articles follow: Statins: Is the Danger in the Dose? Here is the hard data on Baycol-associated adverse reactions. If you or someone you know is taking one of the statin cholesterol-lowering drugs, this is a "must-read" article by Jay Cohen, MD to help you understand the potential dangers that this exposes you to. Baycol Pulled From Market as Numerous Deaths Linked to It Baycol, a cholestrol-lowering drug (statin), has been voluntarily pulled off the market because of numerous deaths associated with its use. The Baycol Recall: How Safe is Your Statin? With the recall of Baycol, patients are now searching out a new drug to take its place, but are other statins really safe? Here are some precautions necessary for anyone taking Baycol or any statin. Baycol: Another Fluoride Drug Bites the Dust Baycol is just one of many fluoride drugs to be pulled from the market due to health hazards posed. Read about this and some of the others in this informative article written by Andreas Schuld and Wendy Small. BMJ: Bayer faces potential fine over cholesterol lowering drug Bayer might have to pay a fine to the German government of about $23,400 for withholding from the German authorities information on the drug's potentially fatal interaction with another drug. Lipitor Tied to Liver, Kidney Injury, as Well as Muscle Damage It seems that Baycol is not alone among cholesterol lowering drugs in posing serious dangers to the public. A number of legal actions are also being pursued against Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of the Lipitor.

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Excerpts from Public Citizen's Health Research Group's Petition to Require a Box Warning on All HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors ("Statins"): " ... Public Citizen, representing 135,000 consumers nationwide, hereby petitions the FDA pursuant to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act 21, U.S.C. Section 355(e)(3), and C.F.R. 10.30, to add a black box warning and additional consistent bolded warnings about this serious problem to the label of all statins marketed in the United States." "Doctors and the public must be warned to immediately discontinue use of statin drugs at the onset of muscle pain, muscle tenderness, muscle weakness or tiredness." "Prompt cessation of the use of statins at the first sign of muscle pain, muscle tenderness, muscle weakness or tiredness and prompt evaluation by a physician including a blood test for creatine phosphokinase (a measure of muscle destruction) may avoid the progression to more extensive muscle damage, rhabdomyolysis and death." "Rhabdomyolysis has been reported with all statins currently marketed in the United States."

About the Experts

Joseph Mercola, DO

Medical Director of the Natural Health Center and Mercola.com. Read about my complete background information. Uffe Ravnskov, MD Born 1934 in Copenhagen, Denmark Graduated 1961 from the University of Copenhagen with an M.D. 1961-1967: Various appointments at surgical, roentgenological, neurological, pediatric and medical departments in Denmark and Sweden. 1968-1979: Various appointments at the Department of Nephrology, and the Department of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. 1975-79: As an assistant professor at the Department of Nephrology. 1973: PhD at the University of Lund. 1979-2000: A private practitioner. Since 1979 an independent researcher. A specialist in internal medicine and nephrology. Honored by the Skrabanek Award 1998. For more information about him, see Dr. Ravnskov's Web site. Jay Cohen, M.D Jay Cohen, M.D., is an associate professor of Family and Preventative Medicine and of Psychiatry at the University of California in San Diego. He is the author of two books and has numerous papers published in peer-reviewed journals. His book, Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies, is an outstanding read. References:
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Spacedoc.com Statin Drugs List ABC News June 29, 2010 Teratogen Use in Women of Childbearing Potential: An Intervention Study, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, May to June 2011: 24(3); 262-71, K. A. Morrical-Kline, et al. Defects in Cholesterol Synthesis Genes in Mouse and in Humans: Lessons for Drug Development and Safer Treatments, Drug Metabolism Reviews, February 2011: 43(1); 69-90, S. Horvat, et al. Early Embryonic Lethality Caused by Targeted Disruption of the 3Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Gene, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, October 31, 2003: 278; 42936-42941, Ken Ohashi, et al.
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Does High Cholesterol REALLY Cause Heart Disease?

An Interview with Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD When did you begin to suspect that the cholesterol theory of atherosclerosis might be wrong? What led you to this conclusion? Before then, had you believed in the cholesterol theory? Was this part of your training? I have never thought that it was true. I heard about it for the first time in 1962 shortly after getting my MD. My biochemical knowledge was still intact at that time and I knew that cholesterol was one of the most important molecules in your body, indispensable for the building of your cells and for producing stress and sex hormones as well as vitamin D. The idea that cholesterol in the blood should kill us if its concentration is a little higher than normal, as they wrote in the Framingham paper, seemed to me just as silly as to claim that yellow fingers cause lung cancer. Would you tell my readers about your training, publications, university appointments, other professional activities? The first seven years as a doctor I worked in different medical departments in Denmark and Sweden. In 1968 I started my academic career at the Department of Nephrology, University Hospital in Lund, where I got my PhD. After a few years I organized a research team to investigate the association between hydrocarbon exposure and glomerulonephritis Unfortunately I caught one of my coworkers in producing a fraudulent paper. It was unfortunate, because it is risky to be a whistleblower in the academic world. Instead of excluding the fraudulent researcher it was my research that was questioned. The resistance against my research from my superiors became intolerable, and I therefore decided to go into private practice.
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Nevertheless I succeeded in publishing the main part of my research in major medical journals after having left the department. I have summarized my findings and conclusions on the web as well. In the late eighties the cholesterol campaign was started in Sweden. I was very surprised because I couldnt recall anything in the scientific literature in support of it. I started reading it systematically, and I soon realized that I was right. Since then I have published about eighty papers and letter, and also books, translated into five languages, where I present my arguments and criticism. How has your work been received by your colleagues; by healthcare professionals and consumers around the world? In the beginning nobody took notice. To ignore criticism is the most effective way to maintain a false idea. My first book was published in Sweden in 1991 with a Finnish edition shortly afterwards. The Swedish one made no impact whatsoever, and the Finnish one was put on fire in a television show. Ridicule and slander have been used as well, as a means to muffle me After I had aired my warnings against statin treatment in Dutch television, for instance, Dutch researchers described me in a following show as a crackpot who had been kicked from the universities of Copenhagen and Lund. The directors of the show offered my critics a possibility to discuss the issue with me on television, but all of them declined. On his blog, Michael Eades has described how one of them later on belittled me in a scientific paper. But I have also realized that I am not alone. Seven years ago I started THINCS, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (www.thincs.org ), which by now includes about eighty doctors, professors and other researchers from all over the world, who share my skepticism, and I have received two international awards for my contributions. Also encouraging is the hundreds of emails that I receive every year from patients, who have regained their health after having stopped their cholesterol-lowering treatment. Your work seems to validate what many integrative health care professionals have been saying for decades. How does the alternative community respond to you? There is a much more open attitude from these people. If the cholesterol hypothesis is an error, does this mean that all of its therapies low cholesterol diet, cholesterol lowering natural therapies and medications -- are wrong? Absolutely. This kind of treatment is meaningless, costly, and has transformed millions of healthy people into patients.

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Specifically, what are your views on statins? Their benefit is trivial, and has been seen only in male patients who already have heart disease. Worse is that their many adverse effects are ignored or cleverly belittled by the trial directors. Independent researchers have found many more and in much higher numbers. If they are true it means that today millions of previously healthy people probably consider their weak and painful muscles, their bad memory, their sexual failure, and their cancer to be a consequence of increasing age, and so do their doctors. The risk of cancer is most alarming. Both animal experiments, epidemiological studies and several of the statin trials have shown that low cholesterol predisposes to cancer. The widespread use of statin treatment probably explains why the decrease of the smoking habit that has been going on in many countries hasnt been followed by a decrease of cancer mortality. We should have seen a decrease because smoking predispose not only to bronchial cancer, but to all kinds of cancer. Drug companies market vigorously the highest, strongest doses of statins. Lipitor is pushed at the highest dosage, 80 mg. This dosage is the most powerful for lowering cholesterol and LDL, but it also causes more adverse effects and costs more than lower doses. What are your thoughts about this? The outcome from these trials is a further demonstration that the small benefit from statin treatment has nothing to do with cholesterol. For instance, although cholesterol plummeted and remained at about 50 percent below the initial value during the whole SEAS trial, it did not change mortality, but it increased the number of cancer with statistical significance. Even worse was the result of the ENHANCE trial, where atherosclerosis in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia progressed the most among those whose cholesterol was lowered the most. If statins can be helpful in reducing the incidence of heart attacks, who should take them? In my view, nobody. When I was practicing, I used to describe the benefit in this way: Considering your age and your previous heart attack, your chance to be alive in five years is about 90 percent. You can increase that chance to 92 percent if you take a statin pill every day, but then you may also expose yourself to its many adverse effects. From the data I have seen, statins have not produced a reduction in overall cardiac deaths. Do you have any idea of why this is? You are right. Heart mortality in Sweden is going downwards, but the reduction started already in the 1960s. The cause is most probably that treatment of acute myocardial
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infarction has improved, because the mortality curve has not changed after the introduction of the statins. The reason may be that their small benefit is counteracted by an increasing frequency of heart failure. As you know, the statins block not only the synthesis of cholesterol, but also of other vital molecules, for instance coenzyme Q10, and muscle cells, including those of the heart, cant function properly without Q10. Do you think mainstream medicine will ever relinquish its view that elevated cholesterol causes heart disease, and that statins are the magic bullet? I hope so. The failures of the most recent statin trials have been commented on by several journalists in the major U.S. newspapers. In Sweden a revolution is going on. Here, a general practitioner treated her own obesity successfully by eating a low-carbohydrate diet with a high content of animal fat. When she advised her obese and diabetic patients to do the same, she was reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare for malpractice. After a two-year-long investigation she was acquitted, as her treatment was considered to be in accord with scientific evidence. At the same time, the Board dismissed two experts, who had been appointed for updating the dietary recommendations for diabetics, because it came up that they were sponsored by the food industry. Instead the Board has asked independent researchers to review the scientific literature. The subject has gained general attention due to a number of radio and television shows, where critical experts including myself have discussed the issue with representatives of the official view. Most important, thousands of patients have experienced themselves that by doing the opposite as recommended by the current guidelines they have regained their health! The effect has been that the sales of butter, cream, and full-fat milk are increasing in Sweden after many years of decline, and a recent poll showed that a majority of Swedish people today think that the best way of losing weight is by a low-carbohydrate, fat-rich diet. Further progress was achieved this spring. Several times, colleagues of mine and also I, have asked the Swedish Food Administration for the scientific basis of their warnings against saturated fat. We have been met with the argument that there are thousands of such studies, or by referrals to the WHO guidelines or the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations. As the main argument in the latter two -- that saturated fat raises cholesterol -- we were not satisfied with their answer, and finally the Food Administration published a list with

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72 studies that they claimed were in support of their view on saturated fat, and twelve that were not. We scrutinized the lists and found that only two of the 72 studies supported their standpoint; eleven studies did not concern saturated fat at all, and the unsupportive list was incomplete, to put it mildly. We published a short report with our comments to these lists in the Swedish medical journal Dagens Medicin. A response from the Food Administration appeared seven weeks later in which they pointed out that their recommendations were directed to healthy people, not to patients. They maintained that they were based on solid scientific evidence, without mentioning anything about saturated fat, and without answering our critical comments. But this is not all. Earlier this year Sachdeva et al reported that the mean cholesterol in 137,000 patients with acute myocardial infarction was lower than normal. As usual, the authors didnt understand their own findings, but concluded that cholesterol should be lowered even more. A few months later Al-Mallah et al. came up with the same result and conclusion, although they also reported that three years later, mortality was twice as high among those who had been admitted with the lowest cholesterol. These results created a fierce debate in one of the major Swedish newspapers. It was opened by ninety-one-year old Lars Werk, the Grand Old Man in Swedish medical science, retired professor in internal medicine and former head of The Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care, together with Tore Scherstn, retired professor in surgery and former secretary of the Swedish Medical Research Council. Now it is time to sack the cholesterol hypothesis and to investigate the reason of this scientific breakdown they wrote. They also criticized American researchers in AHA and NHLBI and their followers for sloppy and fraudulent science. They were of course attacked by two professors and representatives of the current view, but none of them came up with any substantial evidence, only with personalities. Are there other risk factors that should be followed? Such as: C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, homocysteine, lipoprotein A... Any other factors? Such analyses may be helpful for doctors to put the right diagnosis in patients with a disease of unknown origin. But to check healthy peoples blood to find deviations from normal is the freeway to unnecessary medication. Are there other alternative therapies besides statins that people might consider? There is no reason for healthy people to take drugs, or anything else to prevent heart disease, as long as we do not know the very cause.
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Dont forget that people who die from a myocardial infarction have on average lived just as long as other people. In my talks I used to ask people, who put the same question to me, if they know a better way of dying? What diet do you recommend people follow? I do not give medical advice to people I havent seen and examined myself, and as I am retired, it means that I give no advice at all except to my family and nearest friends. I inform people by writing and lecturing. Then they have to decide themselves what to do. In 20 years, do you expect changes in how we view heart disease, its causes and treatments? I am confident that we will see a change in the next few years. There is a growing skepticism among medical scientists. What is happening in Sweden these days may hopefully inspire researchers in other countries to air their skepticism openly. Recently, experts selected by WHO and FAO published a new report . Here the authors concluded that there was no satisfactory or reliable evidence to support the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease, or diabetes or obesity. A revolutionary change of direction, you may say. However, they did not change their recommendations! Together with Kilmer McCully, the discoverer of the association between homocysteine and atherosclerosis, I have presented another hypothesis (You can read that paper in its entirety at this link.) We think this hypothesis is much more likely because we are able to explain the many observations that do not fit with the present one.

Finally, I assume that much of what I have mentioned here may seem incredible, but all the facts, including references to the scientific literature, are available in my new book Fat And Cholesterol Are GOOD For You! About Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD: Dr. Ravnskov graduated from the University of Copenhagen with an M.D in 1961. 1961-1967: Various appointments at surgical, roentgenological, neurological, pediatric and medical departments in Denmark and Sweden. 1968-1979: Various appointments at the Department of Nephrology, and the Department of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.

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1979-2000: A private practitioner and independent researcher, specializing in internal medicine and nephrology. Honored with the Skrabanek Award 1998, and author of: The Cholesterol Myths. For more information, see Dr. Ravnskov's Web site.

7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Work Week has posted an exclusive excerpt from Drs. Michael and Mary Eades newest book, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle. The two doctors note that no matter how the story spins from the denizens of the anti-fat camp, one piece of their advice remains staunchly constant: You should sharply limit your intake of saturated fats. But will saturated fats really increase your risk of heart disease and raise your cholesterol? In a word, no. In fact, humans need them, and here are just a few reasons why: 1) Improved cardiovascular risk factors Saturated fat plays a key role in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (a) that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat, lose the most weight. 2) Stronger bones Saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone. According to one of the foremost research experts in dietary fats and human health, Dr. Mary Enig, Ph.D., theres a case to be made for having as much as 50 percent of the fats in your diet as saturated fats for this reason. 3) Improved liver health Saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis. 4) Healthy lungs For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties. 5) Healthy brain

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Your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. The lions share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally. 6) Proper nerve signaling Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil, function directly as signaling messengers that influence metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin. 7) Strong immune system Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil (myristic acid and lauric acid) play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

A misguided fallacy that persists to this day is the belief that saturated fat will increase your risk of heart disease and heart attacks. This is simply another myth that has been harming your health for the last 30 or 40 years. The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet, and they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances. When you eat saturated fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fatsoluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes. Saturated fats are also: The preferred fuel for your heart, and also used as a source of fuel during energy expenditure Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid) Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti-fungal agent (lauric acid) Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)

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Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)

If the fact that saturated fats are actually good for you sounds conflicting, at least in terms of what is repeated by public health agencies, I urge you to read Mary Enig and Sally Fallons classic article The Truth About Saturated Fats. It is one of the best and most thorough introductions to this topic, and you can read through it in just a few minutes. Have You Heard of the Lipid Hypothesis? If not by name, youve certainly heard of the concept behind the lipid hypothesis, and that is that dietary fat causes heart disease. This flawed theory was largely spread by Ancel Keys, a diet researcher for whom military K-rations are named, and it was because of the lipid hypothesis that Americans were soon encouraged to substitute vegetable-based fats for animal fats, and to avoid red meat completely. However, when Keys published his analysis that claimed to prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart disease, he selectively analyzed information from only six countries to prove his correlation, rather than comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22 countries. As a result of this "cherry-picked" data, government health organizations began bombarding the public with advice that has contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going on today: eat a low-fat diet. Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they were left hungry. So they began eating more processed grains, more vegetable oils, and more highfructose corn syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters. What about the Studies That DO Show a Link between Fat and Heart Disease? Keys believed that dietary fat was causing heart disease in Americans back in the 1950s, and he soon got others to jump on the bandwagon. Even the American Heart Association, which concluded in 1957 that the evidence that dietary fat correlates with heart disease does not stand up to critical examination, changed its position in 1960. Why? Because Keys was on the committee issuing a new report that a low-fat diet was advised for people at risk of heart disease. Sadly, the theory continued to be accepted as nutritional wisdom, even though clinical trials found no connection.

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There are, however, some studies that have found a link between fat and heart disease, and they are often used by saturated fat opponents to prove their case. The problem lies in the fact that most of these studies make no effort to differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat. I believe this is the missing link. If researchers were to more carefully evaluate the risks of heart disease by measuring the levels of trans and saturated fat, I believe they would find a completely different story. Trans fat is known to increase your LDL levels, or "bad" cholesterol, while lowering your levels of HDL, known as "good" cholesterol, which is the complete opposite of what you need in order to maintain good heart health. It can also cause major clogging of arteries, type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems. On the other hand, your body needs some amount of saturated fat to stay healthy. It is virtually impossible to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet that has no saturated fat. What you dont need, however, are trans fats. Further, there are some people who do well with a low-saturated-fat diet -- the one-third who are carb nutritional types. Even then, however, some animal fats are necessary and healthy, and two-thirds of people actually require moderate- to high-saturated-fat diets to thrive. Healthy Sources of Saturated Fats to Add to Your Diet Saturated fat is not the root of all evil and it is NOT to blame for the modern disease epidemics facing Americans. Saturated fat is actually an incredibly healthy, nourishing and all natural fat that humans have been thriving on for generations. Again, as Fallon and Enig point out: Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50 percent of your cell membranes. They are what gives your cells necessary stiffness and integrity. They play a vital role in the health of your bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into your skeletal structure, at least 50 percent of your dietary fats should be saturated. They lower Lp(a), a substance in your blood that indicates proneness to heart disease. They protect your liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol and other drugs. They enhance your immune system. They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids. Elongated omega-3 fats are better retained in your tissues when your diet is rich in saturated fats. Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for your heart, which is why the fat around your heart

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muscle is highly saturated. Your heart draws on this reserve of fat in times of stress. Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect you against harmful microorganisms in your digestive tract. So please do not shun saturated fats from your diet. If youd like to get the most tailored information about which fats, and how much of them, to include in your optimal diet, first find out your nutritional type. Then, make sure your meals include some of these delicious and healthy sources of saturated fat:

Grass-fed organic beef and beef fat Naturally raised lamb Organic raw dairy products (butter, cheese, milk, cream) Coconut oil

Why Low Cholesterol is NOT Good For You

Too little of one type of cholesterol has been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer's disease. Scientists studied more than 3,500 civil servants to investigate how levels of HDL or "good" cholesterol were associated with memory. HDL cholesterol can influence the formation of the beta-amyloid "plaques" that are a distinctive feature in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Higher levels of HDL are also believed to protect against damage to blood supply caused by the narrowing of the arteries. After the five-year study period, the researchers found that people with low levels of HDL were 53 percent more likely to suffer memory loss than people with the highest levels of HDL. Those with impaired memory are at an increased risk of developing dementia later in life. Dr. Mercola's Comments: Theres plenty of confusion on the issue of cholesterol. I was also caught up in the nonsense. When I finished med school 25 years ago I was convinced your cholesterol could not be low enough. So with a low-fat diet and plenty of exercise and oat bran (no drugs) I was able to get my
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cholesterol to a ridiculous level of 75. Yes you read that correctly -- my TOTAL cholesterol was a measly and pathetic 75 points. Fortunately, I later realized that it should be nearly three times as high as that to stay healthy, certainly no lower than 150. However, due to misinformation in the media and drug pushing by multinational corporations, the majority of people worry about their cholesterol being too high and are clueless about the dangers of low cholesterol, especially when done artificially with drugs. What you need to know first and foremost is that cholesterol is good for you. Its present in every single cell in your body where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids to help you digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function, which is why the above finding that low cholesterol is linked to memory loss is not at all surprising. In fact, when your cholesterol levels go too low, a host of negative things happen in your body. The Risks of Low Cholesterol Impaired memory and dementia are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to low cholesterols impact on your brain. Having too little of this beneficial compound also:

Increases your risk of depression Can cause you to commit suicide May lead to violent behavior and aggression Increase your risk of cancer and Parkinsons disease

Unfortunately, in the United States lowering cholesterol levels has become so common that nearly everyone reading this either knows someone struggling to do so, or has struggled to do so themselves. Your Cholesterol Will Normalize When You Address its Cause Contrary to popular belief, high cholesterol is not a disease in and of itself. It is actually a response to something gone awry in your body. You see, cholesterol is produced whenever your cells become damaged, as its a necessary component in making new, healthy cells. So if you have a lot of damaged cells, youre also going to have a lot of cholesterol in your bloodstream. This is a good thing, in a sense, because it means your cells are being repaired. Now, while most conventional doctors would see all that cholesterol and put you on toxic cholesterol-lowering drugs, a more knowledgeable doctor would search for whats causing the damage in the first place.
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And often its inflammation brought on by:

A diet too high in sugar and grains Too many processed, overcooked foods Not enough exercise Emotional stress Smoking

The remedy involves, of course, addressing the items Ive mentioned above by making simple lifestyle changes that are outlined in Take Control of Your Health. Whatever you do, dont fall for the mistaken belief that the lower your cholesterol goes, the better. If you lower your cholesterol through artificial means (statin drugs) without addressing the underlying causes, your body will continue to degenerate. Leave the decision of how much cholesterol your body needs up to your body, and make the right lifestyle choices to keep your cells in their top condition. This way you get the best of both worlds: the right amount of cholesterol and a body in tip-top shape.

Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease

By Ron Rosedale, MD Cholesterol is not the major culprit in heart disease or any disease. If it becomes oxidized it can irritate/inflame tissues in which it is lodged in, such as the endothelium (lining of the arteries). This would be one of numerous causes of chronic inflammation that can injure the lining of arteries. However, many good fats are easily oxidized such as omega3 fatty acids, but it does not mean that you should avoid it at all costs. Common sense would indicate that we should avoid the oxidation (rancidity) of cholesterol and fatty acids and not get rid of important life-giving molecules. Using the same conventional medical thinking that is being used for cholesterol would lead one to believe that doctors should reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease by taking out everybody's brain. In fact, cholesterol is being transported to tissues as part of an inflammatory response that is there to repair damage. The fixation on cholesterol as a major cause of heart disease defies the last 15 years of science and deflects from real causes such as the damage (via glycation) that sugars such as glucose and fructose inflict on tissues, including the lining of arteries, causing chronic inflammation and resultant plaque.
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Insulin & Leptin Resistance Hundreds of excellent scientific articles have linked insulin resistance and more recently leptin resistance to cardiovascular disease much more strongly than cholesterol, and they are in fact at least partially responsible for cholesterol abnormalities. For instance, insulin and leptin resistance result in "small dense" LDL particles and a greater number of particles. This is much more important than the total cholesterol number. Because of particle size shift to small and dense, the total LDL cholesterol could still be low even though the number of particles and the density of the particles is greater. Small, dense LDL particles can squeeze between the cells lining the inside of the arteries, the "gap junction" of the endothelium, where they can get stuck and potentially oxidize, turn rancid, and cause inflammation of the lining of the arteries and plaque formation. Importantly, many solid scientific studies have shown a mechanistic, causal effect of elevated insulin and leptin on heart and vascular disease, whereas almost all studies with cholesterol misleadingly only show an association. Association does not imply cause. For instance, something else may be causing lipid abnormalities such as elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, and also causing heart disease. This "something else" is improper insulin and leptin signaling. Similarly, sugar does not cause diabetes; sugar is just listening to orders. Improper insulin and leptin signaling is the cause of diabetes. Likewise, cholesterol does not cause heart disease, but improper metabolic signals including improper signals to cholesterol (causing it to oxidize) and perhaps to the liver that manufactures the cholesterol, will cause heart and vascular disease and hypertension. Removing cholesterol will do nothing to improve the underlying problems, the real roots of chronic disease, which will always have to do with improper communication, and the generals of metabolic communication are insulin and leptin. They are really what must be treated to reverse heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, and to some extent aging itself. Cholesterol; Wrongly Accused? Before we can begin to talk about the real cause and effective treatment for heart and blood vessel disease, we must first look at what is known, or I should say what we think we know. The first thing that comes to mind when one hears about heart disease is almost always cholesterol. Cholesterol and heart disease has been almost synonymous for the last half-century. Cholesterol has been portrayed as the Darth Vader to our arteries and our heart. The latest recommendation given by a so-called panel of "experts" recommends that a person's cholesterol be as low as possible, in fact to a level so low they say it cannot be achieved by diet, exercise, or any known lifestyle modification. Therefore, they say
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cholesterol-lowering drugs; particularly the so-called "statins" need to be given to anyone at high risk of heart disease. Since heart disease is the number one killer in this country that would include most adults and even many children. The fact that this might add to the $26 billion in sales of statin drugs last year I'm sure played no role in their recommendations. Or did it? Expert Conflict of Interests Major consumer groups think so. They found out that eight of the nine "experts" that made the recommendations were on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies that manufacture those drugs. Major scientific organizations have chastised medical journals for allowing the pharmaceutical industry to publish misleading results and half-truths. There is a major push under way to force the pharmaceutical industry (and others) to publish results of all of their studies, and not just the ones that appear positive. The studies that showed negative results would be forced to be published also. It could be that lowering cholesterol might not be as healthy as we are being told. More and more studies are coming out showing just how unhealthy lowering cholesterol might be, particularly by the use of statin drugs. In particular, statin drugs have been shown to be harmful to muscles causing considerable damage. A common symptom of this damage is muscular aches and pains that many patients experience on cholesterol-lowering drugs, however most do not realize that these drugs are to blame. Hmm...isn't the heart a muscle? Statin Drugs Actually Increase Heart Disease Indeed, low cholesterol levels have been shown to worsen patients with congestive heart failure, a life-threatening condition where the heart becomes too weak to effectively pump blood. Statin drugs have been shown to also cause nerve damage and to greatly impair memory. One reason that statin drugs have these various serious side effects is that they work by inhibiting a vital enzyme that manufactures cholesterol in the liver. However, the same enzyme is used to manufacture coenzyme Q10, which is a biochemical needed to transfer energy from food to our cells to be used for the work of staying alive and healthy. Statin drugs are known to inhibit our very important production of coenzyme Q10. Importantly, while many cardiologists insist that lowering cholesterol is correlated with a reduction in the risk of heart attacks; few can say that there is a reduction in the risk of mortality (death). That has been much harder to show. In other words it has never been conclusively shown that lowering cholesterol saves lives. In fact, several large studies have shown that lowering cholesterol into the range currently recommended is correlated with an increased risk of dying, especially of cancer.

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No Such Thing as Good and Bad Cholesterol Because the correlation of total cholesterol with heart disease is so weak, many years ago a stronger correlation was sought. It was found that there is so-called "good cholesterol" called HDL, and that the so-called "bad cholesterol" was LDL. HDL stands for highdensity lipoprotein, and LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein. Notice please that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -- fats combined with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There is no such thing as a good or a bad cholesterol. Cholesterol is just cholesterol. It combines with other fats and proteins to be carried through the bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not mix very well. Fatty substances therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of proteins and are far from being just cholesterol. In fact we now know there are many types of these fat and protein particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the so-called small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, because they can squeeze through the lining of the arteries and if they oxidize, otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause damage and inflammation. Thus, you might say that there is "good LDL" and "bad LDL." Also, some HDL particles are better than others. Knowing just your total cholesterol tells you very little. Even knowing your LDL and HDL levels do not tell you very much. A mistake that is rarely made in the hard-core sciences such as physics seems to be frequently made in medicine. This is confusing correlation with cause. There may be a weak correlation of elevated cholesterol with heart attacks, however this does not mean it is the cholesterol that caused the heart attack. Certainly gray hair is correlated with getting older; however one could hardly say that the gray hair caused one to get old. Using hair dye to reduce the gray hair would not really make you any younger. Neither it appears would just lowering your cholesterol. Perhaps something else is causing both the gray hair and aging. Even if elevated cholesterol were significant and heart disease (which I question) perhaps something else is causing the elevated cholesterol and also causing the heart disease. Let's look little more at cholesterol or, as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, "the rest of the story." First and foremost, cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth they can live without cholesterol. They will automatically tell you that, in of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact it is one of our best friends. We would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one's risk of dying. Cholesterol also is a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol. Cholesterol Is The Hero, Not The Villain.

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It was determined many years ago that the majority of cholesterol in your bloodstream comes from what your liver is manufacturing and distributing. The amount of cholesterol that one eats plays little role in determining your cholesterol levels. It is also known that HDL shuttles cholesterol away from tissues, and away from your arteries, back to your liver. That is why HDL is called the "good cholesterol;" because it is supposedly taking cholesterol away from your arteries. But let's think about that.

Why does your liver make sure that you have plenty of cholesterol? Why is HDL taking cholesterol back to your liver? Why not take it right to your kidneys, or your intestines to get rid of it?

It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it. Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health. One function of cholesterol is to keep your cell membranes from falling apart. As such, you might consider cholesterol your cells "superglue." It is a necessary ingredient in any sort of cellular repair. The coronary disease associated with heart attacks is now known to be caused from damage to the lining of those arteries. That damage causes inflammation. The coronary disease that causes heart attacks is now considered to be caused mostly from chronic inflammation. What Is Inflammation? Think of what happens if you were to cut your hand. Within a fraction of a second, chemicals are released by the damaged tissue to initiate the process known as inflammation. Inflammation will allow that little cut to heal, and indeed to keep you from dying. The cut blood vessels constrict to keep you from bleeding too much. Blood becomes "thicker" so that it can clot. Cells and chemicals from the immune system are alerted to come to the area to keep intruders such as viruses and bacteria from invading the cut. Other cells are told to multiply to repair the damage so that you can heal. When the repair is completed, you have lived to be careless another day, though you may have a small scar to show for your troubles. We now know that similar events take place within the lining of our arteries. When damage occurs to the lining of our arteries (or even elsewhere) chemicals are released to initiate the process of inflammation. Arteries constrict, blood becomes more prone to clot, white blood cells are called to the area to gobble up damaged debris, and cells adjacent to those damaged are told to multiply. Ultimately, scars form, however inside our arteries we call it plaque. And the constriction of our arteries and the "thickening" of our blood further predisposes us to high blood pressure and heart attacks. So Where Might Cholesterol Fit Into All Of This?

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When damage is occurring and inflammation is being initiated, chemicals are being released so that that damage can be repaired. One could speculate that to replace damaged, old and worn-out cells the liver needs to be notified to either recycle or manufacture cholesterol since no cell, human or otherwise, can be made without it. In this case, cholesterol is being manufactured and distributed in your bloodstream to help you repair damaged tissue and in fact to keep you alive. If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place. It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation. So Why Take Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs? The pharmaceutical companies thought that you might think that. They went back to the drawing board. They did more "research" and found (coincidentally) that statin drugs had anti-inflammatory effects. Therefore we're currently being told to stay on our cholesterollowering drugs because now they work by reducing inflammation and perhaps not even by reducing cholesterol, and in fact perhaps in spite of it. Aspirin reduces inflammation for a lot less money. So does vitamin E, and fish oil, and dietary changes without the dangers of drugs and having many other benefits instead. What About Triglycerides? Triglycerides are just medical terminology for fat. A person with high triglycerides has a lot of fat in the bloodstream. Triglycerides are generally measured when a person has fasted overnight. High fasting triglycerides are either from manufacturing too much, or using (burning) too little. In other words, what high triglycerides are telling you is that you are making too much fat and you are unable to burn it. This indeed is a major problem. The inability to burn fat underlies virtually all of the chronic diseases of aging, and in fact may contribute to the rate of aging itself. As such, one might think that the control of fat burning and storage might be very important in heart disease, and the other diseases of aging such as diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and even cancer. Indeed, this appears to very much be the case. The two hormones that to a major extent control our ability to burn and store fat, insulin and leptin, appear to play a major role in all of the chronic diseases of aging. I would call them the most important hormones, indeed chemicals in the entire body. But that is a story for next time.

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Even if You Eat Organic Food, This Cooking Mistake Can Ruin Your Health
By Dr. Mercola The idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease is based on the premise that cholesterol is found in the plaque of people with coronary artery disease. But does that automatically mean that cholesterol itself is the root cause, and must be kept at a minimum to prevent plaque formation? The answer is no. Missing from this hypothesis is the holistic understanding of how cholesterol operates inside your body, and why arterial plaques form in the first place. Cholesterol is actually a critical part of your bodys foundational building materials and is absolutely essential for optimal health. As Dr. Robert Rowen points out in this interview, its so important that your body produces it both in your liver and in your brain. Cholesterol is also the raw material for all of your steroid hormones and vitamin D. Theres no doubt that you need it. Think about this for a second. Your neurons are making it for a reason, Dr. Rowen says. Just logically speaking, if you take a statin drug, which poisons the enzyme HMGCoA reductase... Hello? Your brain is not going to make the cholesterol that it needs, so you can expect you can predict that theres going to be a problems, years down the line, and were seeing it now with statin drugs affecting the brain. So whats the connection between cholesterol and heart disease? If your body needs so much of it, what causes it to clog your arteries? The devil is in the details, as they say, and this is definitely true when it comes to cholesterol, because as Dr. Rowen explains, the cholesterol found in arterial plaque is not just any cholesterol, but oxidized, damaged cholesterol. There is an excellent research on animals where they fed animals plenty of cholesterol in their diet and they did just fine. But when they gave them even small amounts of tainted cholesterol, meaning oxidized cholesterol, within weeks it showed up in fatty streaks in their arteries, Dr. Rowen says. We know why now. There are receptors in the endothelial cells that are the lining of your arteries. There are receptors there for oxidized cholesterol. It picks it up, and it
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goes into the endothelial cells. The problem is that oxidized cholesterol does not look native to your macrophages, your immune system. It actually looks like bacteria. The macrophages move in to try and clean up what it thinks is bacteria, which is nothing more than oxidized cholesterol, and it creates a whole bunch of inflammation inside your arterial wall. The real culprit is oxidized cholesterol.

Where Does Oxidized Cholesterol Come From?

Oxidized cholesterol is introduced into your system every time you eat something cooked in vegetable oil. As soon as the oil is heated and mixes with oxygen, it goes rancid. Rancid oil is oxidized oil, and should not be consumed. This is why I constantly recommend avoiding all vegetable cooking oils, such as canola-, corn-, or soy oil, and replacing them with organic coconut oil, which remains stable and does not oxidize at higher temperatures. I am a proponent of eating far more uncooked food and certainly, zero foods cooked in oil, Dr. Rowen says. I strongly urge [my patients] to eat more raw uncooked foods, because heat is damaging the oils, which in turn is going to damage the cholesterol and lead to vascular disease problem. Another reason for avoiding vegetable cooking oils is that the majority of them (at least in the US) are made from genetically engineered crops; plus theyre heavily processed on top of that. So not only do you have the issue of the polyunsaturated fats being oxidized, you also have these other toxic variables, such as glyphosate and Bt toxin found in genetically engineered corn and soy. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the broadspectrum herbicide Roundup, which is used in very large amounts on all of these crops. So there are a number of reasons for avoiding vegetable oils, but the fact that theyre oxidized is clearly a high-priority one.

Why Statins Do NOT Promote Good Health

According to conventional medicine, there are two types of cholesterol:
1. High-density lipoprotein, or HDL: This is the "good" cholesterol that helps to keep cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any excess from arterial plaque, which may help to prevent heart disease. 2. Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL: This "bad" cholesterol circulates in your blood and is more prone to oxidation. According to conventional thinking, it can build up in your arteries and form plaque that makes your arteries narrow and less flexible (a condition called atherosclerosis). If a clot forms in one of these narrowed arteries leading to your heart or brain, a heart attack or stroke may result.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends keeping your total cholesterol below 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless for determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330. Additionally,
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the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. To achieve these outrageously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. Statin drugs are very effective for lowering your cholesterol across the board. However, as mentioned earlier, they shut down your bodys innate capability to create the cholesterol it needs for proper cellular- and brain function. Statins also prevent your body from generating sufficient levels of vitamin D from exposure to the sun, because the UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol in your skin and convert it to vitamin D. As Dr. Rowen explains, while statin drugs effectively reduce cholesterol values, they typically do not have an overall beneficial impact on health and longevity. Lets look at some of the statin studies, he says. The relative risk is reduced. Heres the problem with medical studies, and statin is a really good example: Lets say, you have 100,000 people, and four people are going to get heart disease. Then you give a statin, and now only two do. Theyre going to say, Oh my God! We have a 50 percent reduction in your risk for heart disease. I took that a little bit out of proportion by using 100,000, but its still a 50 percent relative riskbut your overall risk to begin with was negligible! Its stupid science. Its literally foolish, idiotic science... The absolute risk is not changed much at all, but relative risk is changed. ... What they also dont tell you is that while you might actually save somebody from a heart attack out of those thousands of people you have to treat, theres someone on the other end who gets toxicity, or maybe Alzheimers disease, or maybe some other condition, from taking the drug. The overall morbidity and mortality is unchanged. All that drug companies and the FDA are looking for is what symptom or lab level you are suppressing. Theyre not looking at it for long-term outcomes. Thats absolute failing of the American medical system, where all that youre doing is measuring to suppress a symptom or a lab value like cholesterol, and you are not looking at what happens to these people 10 or 15 years later, which is identical to the vaccine problem.

When Might a Statin Drug Be Advisable?

Contrary to conventional advice, very few people actually need a statin drug. Familial hypercholesterolemia is a genetic defect that can result in cholesterol levels above 330, and these people may indeed benefit from a statin drug. Yes, I do think that controlling the total cholesterol would be a benefit for those people, Dr. Rowen says. Theyre few and far between, but they exist. But I would go with red yeast rice first, before I would [prescribe a] statin... because it has naturally44

occurring Lovastatin in it Mevacor. I would rather use that because its a whole food. There are pretty good studies out there showing that whole red yeast rice not only helps protect you from that [high cholesterol], but animals also live longer when theyre on it. Being a whole food, there may be a big advantage to it. Always whether youre using red yeast rice or a statin drug be sure to take Coenzyme Q10 or ubiquinol, because the same enzyme that makes the cholesterol also participates with CoQ10 production. ... If their total cholesterol is over 300 or 330, I would consider the use of red yeast rice or a statin. Thats the only time I would consider it. Other than that, I would look for ways to reduce the potential impact of toxic cholesterol metabolism... What I try to do first with my patients is to get them to clean up their lifestyle, so that what theyre doing in their life will not have toxic effects on their apparently elevated cholesterol. Im saying apparently elevated because I dont believe that God makes mistakes. If you walk into me with a cholesterol of 240, I think that your body has that level for a reason. Maybe, just maybe, your body is crying for more vitamin D. Its asking your liver to make more cholesterol so that it can convert [vitamin D], or maybe your body wants more testosterone or another steroid hormone, so its calling for more raw material. I dont know how much I want to interrupt those processes with sledgehammers like statins. I would prefer to get your body not to oxidize the cholesterol by eliminating processed, refined foods. My mantra is No fast, fried, refined, or processed foods. Thats first on the list. Keep your diet 70 to 80 percent raw living food, and what you do with the rest I dont care if you want to eat meat, chicken, fish, and eggs... just dont fry it. Eat all the meat you want within that 30 percent. The rest of it, try to keep it organic, not genetically engineered, unprocessed, and raw, so youre not destroying the fatty acids. I personally believe that I have found the underlying cause of heart disease or the principal cause of heart disease in this country. Thats the fact that we are heating these essential fatty acids, these unsaturated fatty acids. Were oxidizing them, and were taking them right into our body already rancid. I think that is one of the primary causes.

Markers for Heart Disease

Dr. Rowen does not treat total cholesterol levels, and neither do I. Rather, we look at the ratios between so-called good and bad cholesterolthe HDL and LDLas well as your triglycerides. These are far more potent markers for heart disease. I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

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HDL/Cholesterol ratio: Divide your HDL level by your total cholesterol. This percentage should ideally be above 24 percent Triglyceride/HDL ratio: Divide your triglycerides by your HDL level. This percentage should be below 2

In my experience, high triglycerides specifically, and elevated cholesterol in general, is typically related to excessive consumption of grains and sugars. A high-fructose, high grain-carb diet contributes to insulin resistance, which will cause your liver to produce more cholesterol and more inflammatory LDL particles, raise your triglycerides, and increase your risk of metabolic syndrome. Other heart disease markers Dr. Rowen recommends paying close attention to include:

Ferritin levels, because iron participates in the oxidation of cholesterol Homocysteine levels, which can show potential deficiencies in crucial B vitamins Lipoprotein A (LPA), as it affects your blood coagulation 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, and Blood viscosity

On Blood Viscosity and Heart Disease

Blood viscosity refers to the thickness of your blood. The thicker your blood is, the more pressure is needed to move it throughout your bodyhence your blood pressure increases. That pressure and that thickness is going to cause sheer on the endothelial cells where blood vessels bifurcate, where your artery splits into two arteries, he explains. A blood viscosity test will tell you how thick your blood is. Its not commonly used, but there are a few labs that perform it, such as Meridian Valley Lab in Washington. If your blood viscosity is high, its recommended that you donate blood, as this will reduce it. Donating your blood will also reduce your ferritin (iron) levels. Certain nutritional supplements may also be helpful, such as vitamin E. You can use the already high-quality tocopherol supplements, Dr. Rowen says. I would get mixed tocopherols with alpha and gamma, and not the delta I also like tocotrienols, which might be a more active form. As for whole foods, nuts and seeds are great sources of vitamin E, as well as essential fats, combined with natural antioxidants that protect their oils from rancidity. I personally eat about four ounces of raw organic almonds every day. Another strategy that can help reduce blood viscosity is Earthing or groundingthe act of walking barefoot on the earth. The theory is that when you walk barefoot on the earth, it allows for the transfer of free electrons from the earth into your body, via the soles of
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your feet. It mediates inflammation in your body by improving the zeta potentialthe pulse capacity of your red blood cellswhich also helps reduce blood viscosity.

If You're on a Statin Drug, You MUST Take CoQ10

One in four Americans over the age of 45 are currently taking a statin drug. Unfortunately, few are aware of the need to take coenzyme Q10, or the reduced form, ubiquinol, along with it, to buffer against some of the most devastating side effects of the drug. Dr. Rowen also recommends taking it if youre using red yeast rice. The reason CoQ10 supplementation is so important is because statins blocks the CoQ10 pathway, causing it to be depleted. CoQ10 is vital for cellular energy production without it your cells simply cannot function. As your body gets more and more depleted of CoQ10, you may suffer from fatigue, muscle weakness and soreness, and eventually heart failure. Coenzyme Q10 is also very important in the process of neutralizing free radicals. As a general guideline, if you're on a statin drug, you need to take at least 100-200 mg of ubiquinol or CoQ10 per day. If you already have symptoms of statin damage, such as muscle pain, take anywhere from 200 to 500 mg a day. There are no reported side effects of CoQ10 supplementation.

Tips for Optimizing Your Cholesterol Without Drugs

Your body NEEDS cholesterolits important in the production of cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps your brain form memories and is vital to your neurological function. Please dont live in fear of your raw cholesterol number, Dr. Rowen says. Unless its around 300 or higher, I dont believe that its going to be indicative [of heart disease risk]. The goal of the guidelines below is not to loweryour cholesterol as low as it can go, but rather to optimize your levels so they're working in the proper balance with your body. Seventy-five percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol. This is why my primary recommendations for safely regulating your cholesterol have to do with modifying your diet and lifestyle as follows:

Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your diet. It is especially important to eliminate dangerous sugars such as fructose. Consume a good portion of your food raw. Make sure you are getting plenty of high quality, animal-based omega 3 fats, such as krill oil. New research suggests that as little as 500 mg 47

of krill per day may lower your total cholesterol and triglycerides and will likely increase your HDL cholesterol. Replace harmful vegetable oils and trans fats with healthful fats, such as olive oil and coconut oil (remember olive oil should be used cold only. Use coconut oil for cooking and baking) Include fermented foods in your daily diet. This will not only optimize your intestinal microflora, which will boost your overall immunity, it will also introduce beneficial bacteria into your mouth. Poor oral health is another indicator of increased heart disease risk. Optimize your vitamin D levels, ideally through appropriate sun exposure as this will allow your body to also create vitamin D sulfate another factor that may play a crucial role in preventing the formation of arterial plaque. Exercise regularly. Make sure you incorporate high intensity interval exercises, which also optimize your human growth hormone (HGH) production. Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively. Be sure to get plenty of high-quality, restorative sleep.

Final Thoughts
The simplest thing you can do, and the most powerful, is to clean up your diet first, Dr. Rowen says. Eat more raw, uncooked, living foods organic, grown around you, ripe when in season ancient Chinese wisdom... Get exercise. Exercise can overcome Im not going to say anything but a lot. We know that people have eaten toxic diets for years, including a lot of cooked foods. When they get exercise, it can overcome a lot of that. These are things that cost absolutely nothing for you to do. I like your concept of eating fermented foods, keeping your mouth clean. The so-called antioxidants, particularly vitamin E or the natural vitamin Es, are good. Especially if you can get it in your food, these dont cost anything. I assure you that in most cases, if you start doing these things, youll see that your cholesterol drops. Mine is 175. My triglycerides are 100 or less. I use triglycerides as a marker, because the higher that is, it tells me the more refined carbohydrates youre eating. The more refined carbohydrates youre eating, the more insulin youre going to have. The more insulin you have, the bigger your belly... [I]nsulin drives all those carbohydrates into fat, which generates inflammation (which is the same inflammation that might come out of your mouth). These are the things that you can do that dont cost a penny, and can alter your health dramatically.

About Dr. Robert Rowen

Dr. Robert Rowen is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. He also attended the University of California in San Francisco. He was
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originally board certified in both family practice and emergency medicine, as well as the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology. (After being recertified, he later allowed those certifications to lapse, as he doesn't believe they're pertinent to his current work.) Dr. Rowen has been involved in complementary or integrative medicine since 1983, and was instrumental in creating the first statutory protection for natural medicine in the United States in the state of Alaska, in 1990. He's presently the editor-in-chief of Second Opinion, which is a printed national newsletter, and he's also still seeing patients in Santa Rosa, California.

Cholesterol Has Benefits, Too

Cholesterol may not be all bad, and may in fact have some benefits, according to a new study from researchers at Texas A&M University. The study involved 55 men and women between the ages of 60 and 69 who exercised three days a week for 12 weeks. A significant association was found between dietary cholesterol and change in strength. It was found that lower cholesterol levels reduced muscle gain that occurred with exercise, while those with higher cholesterol intake also had the highest gains in muscle strength. Our findings show that the restricting of cholesterol -- while in the process of exercising -- appears to affect building muscle mass in a negative manner, the researchers said. They suggested that the effect may be due to cholesterols role in the inflammation process. More cholesterol in your blood may lead to a greater inflammatory response that is useful for building muscles. Dr. Mercola's Comments: I have significant personal experience with low cholesterol. I bought into the low-fat myth in the 70s and 80s, and with my diet and long-distance running actually got my cholesterol level down to 75 without taking any drugs. At the time it seemed to be a good thing -- but now I know it was a prescription for disaster and was likely one of the major reasons I lost my hair. The fact that your body naturally makes some cholesterol, and uses it for producing cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D, and the bile acids that help you digest fats, among many other things, it is a major clue that cholesterol is necessary and beneficial for your health. Your body requires cholesterol to survive, which is why it produces it. So please dont let anyone tell you that cholesterol is completely bad for you.
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And while many people worry that their cholesterol is too high, few give a thought to the damage that can result if your cholesterol is too low. When it comes to cholesterol, lower is not always better. If your cholesterol dips too low, you will increase your risk of:

Depression Stroke Violent behavior Suicide

Where do Sugars and Grains Fit In? About 75 percent of your blood cholesterol is made by your body. The other 25 percent comes from the foods you eat. Certain foods that contain cholesterol will throw your body off balance, while others will actually push it toward homeostasis. One of the most important things I advise people looking to lower their cholesterol to do is to reduce, or eliminate, sugars and grains from their diet. What do sugar and grain have to do with cholesterol and your heart? Eating too much sugar and refined grains is the primary cause of high triglycerides, and restricting sugar and grains seems to normalize triglyceride levels in most everyone who tries it. Triglycerides, like cholesterol, belong to the lipid family. Theyre a major source of energy for your body, and are either obtained from your diet or produced in your liver. When your body has more triglycerides than it can use, the excess triglycerides end up being transported to fat cells (rather than being used by your body for energy). If your triglyceride levels remain elevated it can lead to atherosclerosis and heart damage. In other words, high triglycerides are an incredibly potent risk factor for heart disease. In combination, high triglycerides and low HDL levels are an even bigger risk; this ratio is even more important to your heart health than the standard good vs. bad cholesterol ratio. In fact, one study found that people with the highest ratio of triglycerides to HDL had 16 times the risk of heart attack as those with the lowest ratio of triglycerides to HDL. So while you strive to keep your HDL cholesterol levels up, youll want to decrease your triglycerides. How? You can increase your HDL levels by exercising and getting plenty of omega-3 fats like those from krill oil. Triglycerides are easily decreased by exercising
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and avoiding grains and sugars in your diet. The Healthy Cholesterol Guidelines Have Never Been Proven It is also worth mentioning, while were on the subject of cholesterol, that the cholesterol levels the experts tout as those you must reach to be healthy have never been proven to be healthy. So rather than focusing on how to get your cholesterol levels lower, focus on eating the right foods for your nutritional type while avoiding sugar and grains. (And by all means do not get caught up in the hype that you need to take dangerous statin cholesterollowering drugs!) Add to your new healthy diet some regular exercise, and your body should be able to keep its cholesterol levels where they should be, naturally.

Ginger May Prevent Heart Disease

Israeli researchers have found that ginger extract can have dramatic effects of cardiovascular health, including preventing atherosclerosis, lowering cholesterol levels, and preventing the oxidation of low density lipoprotein (LDL). Researchers studied the effects of a standardized ginger extract on the development of atherosclerosis in mice genetically predisposed to develop the condition prematurely. In addition plasma cholesterol levels and the resistance of their LDL to oxidation and aggregation were evaluated. Researchers divided mice into 3 groups:

One received 25 micrograms of ginger extract daily Another received 250 micrograms of ginger extract daily A third group received only a placebo

Mice who received the 250 micrograms daily showed the greatest benefits over those given a placebo:

Aortic atherosclerotic lesion areas were reduced 44% Reductions in plasma triglycerides and cholesterol (by 27% and 29%, respectively) Reductions in VLDL cholesterol by 53%
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Reductions in LDL cholesterol by 33% Reduced LDL oxidation and aggregation

The researchers note that oxidative damage of LDL is thought to play a key role in the development of atherosclerosis and that consumption of nutrients rich in phenolic antioxidants has been shown to be associated with slowing down the development of atherosclerosis. The authors conclude that "dietary consumption of ginger extract ... significantly attenuates the development of atherosclerotic lesions. This antiatherogenic effect is associated with a significant reduction in plasma and LDL cholesterol levels and a significant reduction in the LDL basal oxidative state, as well as their susceptibility to oxidation and aggregation."

Journal of Nutrition May 2000;130:1124-31

Folic Acid May Reduce Cholesterol Heart Risk

Folic acid supplements may help reduce cardiovascular risk in patients with a family history of high cholesterol. Folic acid therapy may provide a safe and inexpensive tool to reduce cardiovascular risk. Experts believe that folic acid -- a B vitamin found in green, leafy vegetables, beans and -- reduces risk for heart disease by lowering blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine. The Dutch researchers sought to determine the effects of folate supplementation on a group of patients known to be at increased risk for heart disease due to a family history of high cholesterol. Twenty patients were asked to take either (an inactive) placebo or 5 milligrams of folic acid daily for 4 weeks, then switch over to the other regimen for a second 4-week period. Examination of the subject's cardiovascular function revealed that folic acid supplementation improved the ability of blood vessels to dilate. When blood vessels are flexible -- contracting or expanding in volume as needed -- risks for high blood pressure and clots may be reduced. This restoration of vessel responsiveness is especially important in patients with high cholesterol, who are at increased risk for narrowed arteries and dangerous clots.

Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association July 27,1999;100:335-338.

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Dr. Mercola's Comment:

This is an important study published in a very traditional and prestigious medical journal. It would seem reasonable for all individuals with heart disease to be put on this supplement, especially if one has elevated homocysteine levels. I will start including this regimen for all my heart disease patients who are receiving chelation therapy. It is relatively inexpensive and, as far as we know, virtually without side effects. However, one important principle to remember with all supplement therapy is that it is possible to develop an allergic reaction to any item that is consumed regularly. That is why it is important to have some means to determine an allergic reaction to your supplements. Skilled muscle testing is probably the most ideal means of making this assessment. In our office, Jody and Lynn, our therapists, and Sharon, our diet coach, perform these assessments. The muscle testing is part of a broader nervous system recalibration that can actually remove the allergy to the supplement if it exists.

Cholesterol Lowering Drugs May Increase Cancer Risk

Drugs Stimulate Growth of New Blood Vessels By Mimicking Growth Factor New research indicates that besides lowering levels of harmful cholesterol, the drugs may also promote the growth of new blood vessels, which may not necessarily be such a great thing. Although this effect may help to prevent heart attacks and other forms of heart disease, it may have the potential to promote cancer as well.

Tests in human cell samples and in rabbits, show that the cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin (Zocor) seems to activate a pathway through which cells communicate and act very similar to a naturally-occurring growth factor, according to Dr. Kenneth Walsh, of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Researchers suspect that the drug interacts with a molecule called protein kinase Akt/PKB, which helps regulate blood vessel development properly. Simvastatin produced similar effects on the growth of new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis, as does vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a

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substance essential for healthy blood vessels, according to Dr. Walsh. "The same pathway is being activated by statins as VEGF," he said. But if statins do promote angiogenesis, the effects may not always be helpful, Dr. Michael Simons, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston points out in an editorial that accompanies the study. For example, statins might increase the growth of blood vessels in cancerous tumors, Simons notes. However, even though statins are some of the most widely used prescription drugs, these and other potential harmful effects have not been reported, which calls into question their vessel-promoting abilities, Dr. Simons adds.
Nature Medicine September, 2000;6:965-966, 1004-1010.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Well, with half the population anticipated to take these drugs in the future, it is time that we seriously re-evaluated what we are doing with them. Just like our weight, there is an optimum with cholesterol as well. Some people believe that the lower your cholesterol, the healthier you are. Nothing could be further from the truth. If your cholesterol is too low you will have an increased risk of mood disorders, depression, stroke, violence. This best predictor of heart disease with respect to cholesterol is the HDL/total cholesterol ratio. Now, to add insult to injury, it appears that these drugs also contribute to increased cancer risks. Some patients (about one in 500) with impaired LDL receptors (familial hypercholesterolemia) do require these drugs and they should be on Coenzyme Q10, as this important nutrient is blocked by many cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, one in 500 people is sure a bit different than the one in 2 which is being predicted to take these drugs. This is not the first time that the cancer-causing potential of cholesterol-lowering medications have been discussed. A review published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996 (JAMA 1996 Jan 3;275:55-60) provides some excellent information on this. The authors of the study state (emphasis mine): All members of the two most popular classes of lipid-lowering drugs (the fibrates and the statins) cause cancer in rodents, in some cases at levels of animal exposure close to those prescribed to humans. ... Longer-term clinical trials and careful postmarketing surveillance during the next several decades are needed to determine whether
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cholesterol-lowering drugs cause cancer in humans. In the meantime, the results of experiments in animals and humans suggest that lipid-lowering drug treatment, especially with the fibrates and statins, should be avoided except in patients at high short-term risk of coronary heart disease. Additionally, if statins act on the same pathway as VEGF, as the study's authors state, it further explains the cancer connection. A just-published study shows that VEGF plays an important role in the spread of colorectal cancer and found that survival time was diminished in patients whose cancerous tumors tested positive for VEGF (Br J Cancer 2000 Oct;83:887-891). Another just-published study shows that VEGF plays a role in diabetic retinopathy (Horm Res 2000;53:53-67). Therefore, if statins act along the same pathway, this is another potential adverse effect of the drugs. Considering the fact that a high percentage of diabetics have heart disease and are likely on these drugs, this is significant.
Related Articles:

Low Cholesterol Linked to Depression Lowering Cholesterol Could Cause Violent Behavior Low Cholesterol Linked to Stroke Risk Low Cholesterol and Albumin Bad Signs in Elderly Statins May Impair Brain Function Half of Population Will be Taking Statins Low Cholesterol May Affect Mood

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