Cholesterol: Why the Medical Mainstream Have the Wrong End of the Stick

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In yesterday’s alert, Cholesterol – Your Doctor’s Advice Could be Damaging Your Health... , I explained how cholesterol is an essential building block for every living cell in your body and how it plays an essential part in the healing processes that take place in your body... especially those resulting from chronic inflammation.

Why then is the medical mainstream still so obsessed with testing total cholesterol levels, as an indicator of heart disease, when inflammation is the main culprit?

While there’s no denying that reducing high cholesterol is an important step towards maintaining a healthy heart it’s not quite as simple as that… and cholesterol isn’t the all-out bad guy it’s made out to be.

Insanity abound

It is insane that government agencies and medical authorities continue to recommend dangerously low cholesterol levels as a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks.

In addition to lowering inflammation, the real key to heart health is not just your overall cholesterol, it’s getting the right balance between your levels of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol and the ‘bad’ LDL, as well as paying attention to their ratio levels with your blood triglycerides and lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a).

Knowing your total cholesterol tells you very little, and knowing your LDL and HDL levels (while a step in the right direction) does not tell you the whole story either.

Let me explain:

High-density lipoprotein, or HDL: This is the "good" type of cholesterol that possesses vital antioxidant activity and helps balance your body’s natural anti-inflammatory response – both of which are important for repairing damage to the lining of your arteries, which may help to prevent heart disease.

Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL: This "bad" form of 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 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 in numerous studies, yet very few doctors test for it.

In reality, your cholesterol levels are merely symptoms of other problems such as chronic inflammation, so changing them will not help your heart problems. Only addressing the underlying causes will do that.

Statin-therapy only caters for one tiny element of the bigger picture... and it is infuriating to think that millions of people are taking statins to lower their cholesterol and in doing so they deliberately stop their body from functioning in the way it is designed to do.

If you understand the vital role cholesterol plays in the human body, it makes perfect sense why statins cause the harmful side-effects they do. These include muscle pain, muscle loss, dizziness, cognitive impairment - including memory loss, potential increased risk of cancer, decreased immunity, depression and liver problems.

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Don’t blame the drugs, blame the science!

Whilst most cholesterol lowering statins lower your cholesterol numbers, they don’t necessarily make you any healthier. Probably because they reduce a vital component necessary for the proper functioning of the body! Neither do they help prevent heart disease...

Lipitor (the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world) is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39 - 60 per cent, depending on the dose... In actual fact, the large clinical trial that’s ‘proven’ that percentage showed that 3 per cent of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2 per cent 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.

Not only that, too low levels of cholesterol can wreak havoc on your health. Remember, every single one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive!

A Dutch study found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms. Why? Because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a hormone that regulates your mood.

Dozens of studies show a connection between lowered cholesterol levels and violent behaviour, through this same pathway: lowered cholesterol levels leading to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression...

Worst of all, statin drugs deplete your body’s levels of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is vital for maintaining heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and fail to advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement when they’re prescribed a statin, this depletion can lead to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure (the very condition the drug is designed to prevent!). To read more about CoQ10 and why you need to take it when you use statins, click here:

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.

If cholesterol is necessary to sustain life and statins are designed to prevent it from fulfilling this function, why would anyone in their right mind take a drug that is designed to slowly destroy life?

If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking statins should be your absolute last resort.

Instead, adopt an active lifestyle with plenty of exercise. Avoid smoking and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and eat a balanced diet rich in animal-based omega-3 fats. Take steps to lower your risk of chronic inflammation naturally.

Heart Disease - Related Reading:

Cholesterol – Your Doctor’s Advice Could be Damaging Your Health...

Crestor Statin Controversy: Results of Major Statin Trial are Biased and Flawed

Studies Show Meditation Can Benefit Your Heart

HOT TOPICS:

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A Simple Way to Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease

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Sources:

American Heart Association January 23, 2008

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

Psychosomatic Medicine 2000;62.

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

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

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

IMS Heallth. IMS National Prescription Audit Plus July 2007

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