The Cholesterol Myths

The idea that too much animal fat and high cholesterol are dangerous to your heart and vessels is nothing but a myth. Here come some astonishing and frightening facts.

You can find the references to most of the papers that I mention on these sites from my book.The first and most detailed one, The Cholesterol Myths, is for free on the web and you can even get it for free as an e-book from Smashwords or from DropBox.

Here are the facts!

1.Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is in fact beneficial, probably because it partake in our immune system.

2.A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high..

3.Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.

4.There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven’t eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.

5.The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.

6.The modern cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardiovascular disease, but the effect is minuscule and is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.

7.Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.

8.The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.

9.The Benefits Of High Cholesterol

To read more on Cholesterol Myths, written by Uffe Ravnskov: follow this link.

Article Source: Uffe Ravnskov

I am an independent researcher and have paid all my research with my own money. No part of my research, including my websites and my books, were funded or influenced by any governmental, industrial or charitable organization

Source: http://www.ravnskov.nu/