Cassidy Drake
10-17-2005, 09:29 AM
Got this from a crossfit journal, none the less some great information, and truth to the all to common high cholesterol problems of American society.
Everyone knows by now that the consumption of animal fats and cholesterol causes heart disease. There is, though, one simple problem with this knowledge: it is absoultely, positively, dead wrong, and no one can make this point more convincingly than Dr. Uffe Ravnskov in his wonderful book The cholesterol myths.
Dr. Ravnskov armed with a brilliant mind, a PhD in chemistry, an M.D., and a unassailable record of of published medical research is the medical counterpart to scince journalist Gary Taubes in loudly yelling "The emperor has no clothes".
Here thanks to Dr. Ravnskov, are some important cholesterol facts and their scientific support.
CHOLESTEROL 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 only density. Mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but reflect a unhealthy condition. or it may be totally innocent.
2. A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3. Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the "prudent" diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few percent.
4. There is no evidence that to 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 actually shorten your life.
6. The new cholsterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascualr disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents.
7. Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8. The reason why lamen, doctors and most scientists have been mislead is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.
Everyone knows by now that the consumption of animal fats and cholesterol causes heart disease. There is, though, one simple problem with this knowledge: it is absoultely, positively, dead wrong, and no one can make this point more convincingly than Dr. Uffe Ravnskov in his wonderful book The cholesterol myths.
Dr. Ravnskov armed with a brilliant mind, a PhD in chemistry, an M.D., and a unassailable record of of published medical research is the medical counterpart to scince journalist Gary Taubes in loudly yelling "The emperor has no clothes".
Here thanks to Dr. Ravnskov, are some important cholesterol facts and their scientific support.
CHOLESTEROL 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 only density. Mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but reflect a unhealthy condition. or it may be totally innocent.
2. A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3. Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the "prudent" diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few percent.
4. There is no evidence that to 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 actually shorten your life.
6. The new cholsterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascualr disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents.
7. Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8. The reason why lamen, doctors and most scientists have been mislead is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.