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If cholesterol is not a problem, why do we make it a problem?
That’s a very good question. The best book that explains how this happened is called Heart Failure written by well-known American medical journalist Thomas J Moore and published by Random House Inc (1989). The book is out-of-print, but you may still be able to get a copy from Amazon. Thomas J Moore has a website which is www.thomasjmoore.com
However let me give you a quick overview of the history of cholesterol:
In the 40’s and 50’s there was an epidemic of heart attacks in the USA, and the US health sector was at a complete loss as to why it was happening, and it was becoming an embarrassment to the US Health Department.
The story actually begins in 1953 when US Army and Marine doctors published a discovery that shocked the world. It occurred during the Korean War, when autopsies were performed on young American soldiers who had died in battle. The doctors were shocked that many of these young soldiers had streaks of fatty plaque in their arteries, which were signs of coronary heart disease normally found in only older men. These streaks were made mostly from a mixture of calcium, white blood cells, blood platelets, collagen, cholesterol, and fatty acids.
The US government was under considerable pressure to find answers, as doctors everywhere grappled helplessly with the epidemic. Doctors themselves were dying at a young age from heart disease and the population was scared
Common sense would suggest that any person diagnosed to be on a lifetime of statin medications, be under the care of a Cardiologist or Cardiovascular Specialist who understands heart disease. That's why it's essential to find out whether your arteries are in good condition by using one of the newer heart scanning technologies.
Consequently the book covers scanning and imaging technologies including the latest EBT technology, which are technologies that puts the reader in a better position for determining what's going on inside their arteries.
The best book that explains how this happened is called Heart Failure written by well-known American medical journalist Thomas J Moore and published by Random House Inc (1989). One was an experiment done with rabbits that were fed cholesterol, and their arteries clogged up after a month, which was widely reported in the press with great fanfare. Later it was realised that rabbits are total vegetarians and have no digestive capability for handling cholesterol which is only found in meat. In addition, the rabbits had been fed cholesterol that was oxidised. (Feeding oxidised cholesterol to vegetarian rabbits, is like putting diesel fuel into a petrol engine, and a good way to clog your engine). So this rabbit proof was later dumped..
A committee within the US Institute of Health had been formed to investigate the causes of heart disease, and decided to support the saturated fat/cholesterol idea.
And one morning in October 1987 the US Health authorities announced an unprecedented initiative for combating heart disease.
That is, 25% of the adult population had a dangerous condition called elevated cholesterol which would require treatment for the specific purposes of reducing heart disease.
These people needed to go on a strict diet under medical supervisions, and if within 3 months the dieting had not achieved its results, then the final step would be powerful medications provided by leading pharmaceutical companies.
What this meant, was that anyone who refused to change their dietary regime, or take their cholesterol medications, were now violating doctors' orders.
The most amazing aspect of this initiative was its low-key introduction.
It was sponsored by a unit within the US National Institute of Health and called the National Cholesterol Education Program, and was brought into existence as quietly as a stealth bomber.
Considering that this was to become the biggest medical intervention in the history of the USA -- its low-key introduction was interesting. "Before a government program of such importance moved into high gear one would expect it to have first survived extensive scrutiny. One would suppose that such a far-reaching intervention into the lives of millions of people would have been approved by the White House and scrutinized by the Congress.
In fact, the Institute launched this project on its own authority, consulting mainly with special panels of hand-picked physicians. The food and drug companies came in behind with a range of products and powerful marketing campaigns, and that really set the 'anti-cholesterol' wheels in motion.
The American Heart Association became a convenient benefactor to all this cholesterol fear, by developing its 'healthy heart' logo, which it licences to food corporations for a royalty fee, and generates many millions of dollars.
The food corporations, drug corporations, medical associations, pharmacies, doctors, laboratories etc derive huge revenues from the anti-cholesterol campaign.
It is also unfortunate that the media including TV and newspapers are so beholden to the big food advertising customers, that they are not interested in publishing anything that might upset them.
"They led influential medical groups, starred at prestigious meetings, published in top journals and were undisputed giants in their field. But when these famous doctors advised the government recently on new cholesterol guidelines for the public, something else they had in common wasn't revealed.
There are available many papers and books written by highly-qualified medical doctors and medical writers, which highlight the inaccuracies that occur with studies and trials, and some are mentioned in the book.
So this subgroup is not representative of the broader range of people who will take these drugs.
The next challenge you have, is how do you manage this group of volunteers, because what happens in reality is that many volunteers lose interest or find it difficult to keep reporting, whilst others move away or cannot be tracked etc, so records are incomplete.
For example, if someone who is receiving cancer treatment dies of a heart attack whilst being treated in hospital, do they die of cancer or heart attack? These sorts of complications are the norm in medicine and skew the data.
Also these trials are largely conducted in the USA, and the dietary and lifestyle habits for Americans are very different from Australians, and this has another skewing effect on the relevance to Australians.
And then you have the blood tests that are used to measure cholesterol levels, which are inaccurate by around 10-20%.
I mean, what does that really mean?
And so the complexities for conducting these trials/studies are considerable, with each complexity adding a few more percentage points of inaccuracy to the equation, so that the final results are rarely conclusive.
And you also have the issue that the Final Conclusions are usually expressed in terms of Relative Risk instead of Absolute Risk causing further confusion with doctors and patients alike.
So in summary, when you realise how unreliable drug trials can be, you can understand why I chose to investigate the French Paradox to gain a more accurate insight into the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease.
Epidemiology studies (i.e. studies of populations) provide a much more reliable framework for deriving conclusions.
As the French enjoy greater longevity and less heart attacks, they represent an excellent group to use as a benchmark for understanding why cholesterol is not linked with heart disease.
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