The following is a compilation of articles on cholesterols.

Youll find the complete articles and much more further in this file.

1)

Journal of the American Medical Association

The most widely respected medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study entitled: Cholesterol and Mortality. 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham study. Shocking to most, this in-depth study showed that after the age of 50, there is no increased overall death associated with high cholesterol! There was, however, a direct association between low levels (or dropping levels) of cholesterol and increased death. Specifically, medical researchers reported that death rates increased by 14% for every 1mg/dl drop in total cholesterol levels per year. These results, and many others, have not stopped medical doctors from making blanket prescriptions for cholesterol lowering drugs to anyone with a heart beat. [2006] Interview of Shane Ellison author of Health Myths Exposed ; http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/framingham/

2)

"At Framingham, we found that the people who ate the most saturated fat, the most cholesterol and the most calories weighed the least, were more physically active and had the lowest serum cholesterol levels."

- William Castelli, M.D., Director of the Framingham Study. The Archives of Internal Medicine, July 1992, Vol. 152, pages 1371-72

3)

The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs

...studies have consistently linked high cholesterol to lower mortality. For example: The European Heart Journal published a 3-year study of 11,500 patients finding those with low cholesterol to have a risk of all-cause death 2.27 times higher than those with high cholesterol. The Journal of Cardiac Failure published an analysis of 1134 patients with heart disease and found low cholesterol to be associated with the worst outcomes in heart failure patients and impaired survival, while high cholesterol improved survival rates. The American Geriatrics Society reported in 2003 that, in patients over the age of 65, even cholesterol levels up to 417 mg/dL were associated with lower mortality compared to levels under 189 mg/dL. THE

TRUTH ABOUT CHOLESTEROL

By Dr. James Howenstine, MD. by

4)

Cholesterol, Lipitor, and Big Government: The Terror Campaign Against Us All Karen De Coster

Dr. Paul J. Rosch, MD, President of The American Institute of Stress and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at New York Medical College (referenced in "Whos Who in the World), has researched the effects of high stress on heart disease, and is one of the heroic doctors who is brave enough to go against the grain regarding the cholesterol hoax. He has often made the point that approximately half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels. At a 2003 conference in Arlington, Virginia, "Heart Disease in the 21st Century: Beyond the Lipid Hypothesis," Dr. Rosch noted that "anyone who questions cholesterol usually finds his funding cut off."

The pharmaceutical corporatocracy makes out just as well. For instance, Pfizers Lipitor has a 40% market share in the whole cholesterol-lowering scam-a-rama. It has become the best selling drug in the world. For 2005, Pfizer, Inc. reported that US sales of Lipitor topped $8 billion. Hardly small change.

5)

Much of what we are told by our most trusted authorities turns out to be the exact OPPOSITE of what is true and what should be heeded. "Avoid foods that are high in cholesterol." This is yet another example of thoroughly misguided advice from our so-called health authorities. -- Thomas Edward Levy, MD, JD, is

a physician, former professor of cardiology, and attorney who has written well-documented books about alternatives in medicine.

6)

Daily Mail Have we been conned about cholesterol?

by MALCOLM KENDRICK - 24th January 2007 Conventional medical wisdom about cholesterol and the role of statins is now being challenged by a small, but growing number of health professionals. Among them is Dr Malcolm Kendrick. A GP for 25 years, he has also worked with the European Society of Cardiology, and writes for leading medical magazines: Indeed, there are hundreds of doctors and researchers who agree that the cholesterol hypothesis itself is nonsense. What their work shows, and what your doctor should be saying, is the following: A high diet, saturated or otherwise, does not affect blood cholesterol levels. High cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease. So how can I say saturated fat doesn't matter when everyone knows it is a killer? Could all those millions who have been putting skinless chicken and one per cent fat yoghurts into their trolleys really have been wasting their time? The experts are so busy urging you to consume less fat and more statins that you are never warned about the contradictions and lack of evidence behind the cholesterol con. In fact, what many major studies show is that as far as protecting your heart goes, cutting back on saturated fats makes no difference and, in fact, is more likely to do harm. Countries with the highest saturated fat consumption ? Austria, France, Finland and Belgium ? had the lowest rate of deaths from heart disease, while those with the lowest consumption ? Georgia, Ukraine and Croatia ? had the highest mortality rate from heart disease. Added to this, the biggest ever trial on dietary modification put 50 million people on a low saturated fat diet for 14 years. Sausages, eggs, cheese, bacon and milk were restricted. Fruit and fish, however, were freely available. I?m talking about rationing in Britain during and after World War Two. In that time, deaths from heart disease more than doubled. Set up in 1948, the study screened the whole population of Framingham near Boston for factors that might be involved in heart disease and then followed them to see what happened to them. It is still going today, making it the longest running and most often quoted study in heart-disease research. A massive long-term study that looked specifically at cholesterol levels and mortality in older people in Honolulu, published in The Lancet, found that having low cholesterol concentration for a long time increases the risk of death. To begin with, saturated fat and cholesterol are talked of as if they are strongly connected. A low-fat diet lowers cholesterol; a high-fat diet raises it. What is never explained is how this works. This isn't surprising because saturated fat doesn't raise cholesterol. There is no biochemical connection between the two substances, which may explain all those negative findings.

It's true that foods containing cholesterol also tend to contain saturated fats because both usually come from animals. It's also true that neither dissolve in water, so in order to travel along the bloodstream they have to be transported in a type of molecule known as a lipoprotein - such as LDLs (low-density lipoproteins) and HDLs (high-density lipoproteins). But being travelling companions is as close as fats and cholesterol get. Once in the body, most fat from our diet is transported to the fat cells in a lipoprotein called a chylomicron. Meanwhile, cholesterol is produced in the liver by way of an incredibly complicated 13-step process; the one that statins interfere with. No biochemist has been able to explain to me why eating saturated fat should have any impact on this cholesterol production line in the liver. On the other hand, the liver does make fat - lots of it. All the excess carbohydrate that we eat is turned first into glucose and then into fat in the liver. And what sort of fat does the liver make? Saturated fat; obviously the body doesn't regard it as harmful at all.

7)

Kilmer S. McCully, Ph.D., M.D., in technical papers (McCully, 2001) and in his book (McCully, 2000) wrote, But no study anywhere has ever proven that lowering the amount of cholesterol in the diet reduces the risk of heart disease.

8)

February 20, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

In England during the 1800s persons ate lots of saturated fats like butter, lard, meat, milk and eggs and there were almost no heart attacks discovered by reviewing London hospital records . In the 1960s persons living in Udaipur, India ate large quantities of ghee (butter) but had very few deaths from heart attacks. Sharp increases in deaths from heart attacks were noted in Udaipur in the 1980s when inexpensive margarine had replaced ghee as the primary fat eaten. Obviously type and character of the food we eat has major influences on heart disease. An important study by Dr. Harlan Krumholz revealed that persons with low cholesterol levels over the age of 70 died twice as often from heart attacks[3] as older persons with high cholesterol values. Most studies in old persons have shown that cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary artery disease. Approximately 90 % of cardiovascular disease is seen in persons over 60 years of age. Almost all studies have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women.[4] This leaves cholesterol as a risk factor for less than 5 % of those persons dying of a heart attack. High cholesterol values protect against infection . In a review of 19 studies involving 68,000 persons low cholesterol values revealed an increased risk for dying from lung and gastrointestinal diseases. Both lung and g.i. diseases are often related to infections. This information was confirmed by a 15 year study of 100,000 healthy persons in the San Francisco area. Persons entering this study with low cholesterol values were more often admitted to hospitals because of infectious diseases.[5] Patients with a history of a sexually transmitted disease or liver disease were twice as likely to develop HIV infection[6] over 7 to 8 year follow up if they had a low cholesterol value when entering the study. There appears to be a conflict between the concept that high cholesterol causes arterial disease and the observation that high levels of cholesterol have an ability to protect against infection. The high cholesterol causing arteriosclerosis theory is damaged by the observations that:

Persons with high cholesterol do not have any more arteriosclerosis than persons with low cholesterol values

Lowering cholesterol values by drugs does not cause a decrease in the amount of arterial disease High cholesterol is associated with longevity in older persons. High cholesterol occurs in elderly persons with the lowest mortality rates and appears to protect against infectious illnesses. Less than 50 % of persons having heart attacks have abnormal cholesterol values

The substances Americans think they use in cooking (corn, saffola, canola, sunflower, and soy oils) are actually chemicals compounds manufactured at high temperatures using harsh chemicals that completely remove all nutrient value from food. These chemical oils will not spoil, have no nutritional value and are very hard for the body to process and eliminate. Prolonged usage of these synthetic chemical oils leads to arteriosclerosis, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. These synthetic oils are a major factor in the deteriorating health of the American people. (Editors note: I have a lot of sciencetific data to back up this statement if interested.) Reference: 3 Krumholz HM et al Lack of association between cholesterol and coronary artery mortality and morbidity and all-cause mortality in persons older than 70 years. Journal of the Americam Medical Association 272, 1335-40, 1990 4 Ravnskov U. Quarterly Journal of Medicine 96, 927-934, 2003 5 Iribarren C et al Serum total cholesterol and risk of hospitalization, and death from respiratory disease. International Journal of Epidemiology 26, 1191-1202, 1992 6 Claxton AJ et al Association between serum total cholesterol and HIV infection in a high risk cohort of young men Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology 17, 51-57, 1998

9)

"Michael DeBakey, world renowned heart surgeon from Houston, who has devoted extensive research into the cholesterol coronary disease theory, states that out of every ten people in the United States who have atherosclerotic heart disease, only three or four of these ten have high cholesterol levels; this is approximately the identical rate of elevated cholesterol found in the general population. (10) His comment: If you say cholesterol is the cause, how do you explain the other 60 percent to 70 percent with heart disease who dont have a high cholesterol? In 1964 DeBakey made an analysis of cholesterol levels from usual hospital laboratory testing of 1,700 patients with atherosclerotic disease and found there was no positive or definitive relationship or correlation between serum cholesterol levels and the extent or nature of atherosclerotic disease."

10)

Statin Insanity

by Randall Neustaedter OMD

Lowering cholesterol is the new Holy Grail, and the statin religion is sweeping the country. This hoax perpetrated on the peoples of the western world by multi-national pharmaceutical giants now steps into a new phase of missionary zeal. The National Cholesterol Education Program released its ambitious re- commendations in the journal Circulation of the American Heart Association (2004;110:227-239), urging even more people to lower their LDLlevels even further. Forget that this crusade flies in the face of science and perpetuates a disproved hypothesis. Despite the fact that lowering cholesterol does not reduce mortality, medical pundits have brainwashed consumers and convinced them that lowering cholesterol is a good thing. In fact lowering cholesterol creates imbalances because cholesterol is the building block of hormones. Lowering cholesterol prevents proper cellular function and puts individuals at risk of disease. Nonetheless, an estimated 11 million Americans take statin drugs to lower cholesterol, and medical gurus now advise that 50 million Americans should take statins (Lipitor, Pravachol, Crestor, and more new models to come). The cost of the drugs for this colossal treatment program? At least $40 Billion. As if the levels of cholesterol were not low enough already, the new guidelines call for more aggressive treatment of "people at high risk" (translate: more drugs), and even "people at moderate risk" should lower their LDL level below 100. Do not allow anyone you know to take these dangerous and wrong-headed drugs that have the potential to undermine health and create a hornet's nest oftrouble. If you still struggle under the mistaken belief that cholesterol levels are associated with heart disease, I recommend you to the following articles. Malcolm Kendrick, MD, Why the cholesterol-heart disease theory is wrong http://www.becomehealthynow.com/ebookprint.php?id=1112

Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, The dangers of statin drugs http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/statin.html And the following book: Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Cholesterol and Saturated Fat Cause Heart Disease, NewTrends Publishing, Washington, DC, 2000. Oops, we forgot to tell you. Six of the nine panelists on the government Cholesterol Education panel have received grants or consulting or speakers' fees from companies that produce statin drugs. These companies stand to profit considerably from the panel's recommendations. When the consumer watchdog organization Public Citizen's Health Research Group blew the whistle on this conflict of interest, the coordinator of the panel called the omission of financial disclosures an "oversight."

11)

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS) is a steadily growing group of scientists, physicians, other academicians and science writers from various countries. Members of this group represent different views about the causation of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, some of them are in conflict with others, but this is a normal part of science. What we all oppose is that animal fat and high cholesterol play a role. The aim with this website is to inform our colleagues and the public that this idea is not supported by scientific evidence; in fact, for many years a huge number of scientific studies have directly contradicted it. As the scientific evidence in support of the cholesterol campaign is non-existent, we consider it important to stop it as soon as possible.

http://www.thincs.org (Please visit this site where 78 academicians have declared cholesterol as a killer is bogus. You can find lots of scientific data that supports this claim at the mentioned website.)

12)

Dr. Uffe Ravnskov says that the accumulated evidence from nine dietary trials, presented by a group of British researchers in the 31 March, 2001 issue of British Medical Journal showed that not a single life has been saved by dietary changes to reduce fat intake that went far beyond the official recommendations.

13)

Dr. Walter Willet, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, is the spokesman for the ongoing longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health study ever performed that involves nearly 300,000 subjects. As he recently noted, data from this study clearly contradict the low-fat-isgood-health message, and "the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.''

14)

Charles T. McGee, M.D., wrote, The cholesterol theory is a fraud on the American public the theory will be exposed as a scam, in his book Heart Frauds :Uncovering the Biggest Health Scam in History Title: Low Cholesterol Levels May Be Linked To Depression, Anxiety URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/FFF8A.htm Doctor's Guide May 25, 1999 In a study of 121 healthy young women, Duke psychologist Edward Suarez found that those with low cholesterol levels -- below 160 mg/dl -- were more likely to score high on measures of depression and anxiety than women with normal or high cholesterol levels. Normal cholesterol levels are considered to fall within the range of 180 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl. "If we assume that amounts of cholesterol circulating in the blood reflect levels in the brain, then brain cells are not functioning properly in individuals with low cholesterol," he said.

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16)

The OILING of AMERICA

Your body makes saturated fats, and your body makes cholesterol - about 2,000 mg per day. In general, cholesterol that the average American absorbs from food amounts to about 100 mg per day. So, in theory, even reducing animal foods to zero will result in only a five per cent decrease in the total amount of cholesterol available to the blood and tissues. In practice, such a diet is likely to deprive the body of the substrates it needs to manufacture enough of this vital substance. Recent research shows that cholesterol acts as an antioxidant.60 This is the likely explanation for the fact that cholesterol levels go up with age. As an antioxidant, cholesterol protects us against free-radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer. Cholesterol is the body's repair substance, manufactured in large amounts when the arteries are irritated or weak. Blaming heart disease on high serum cholesterol levels is like blaming firemen, who have come to put out a fire, for starting the blaze. Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain.61 Serotonin is the body's natural 'feel-good' chemical. This explains why low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behaviour, depression and suicidal tendencies. Mother's milk is particularly rich in cholesterol and contains a special enzyme that helps the baby utilise this nutrient. Babies and children need cholesterol-rich foods (eggs and throughout their growing years to ensure proper development of the brain and nervous system . Dietary cholesterol plays an important role in maintaining the health of the intestinal wall,62 which is why lowcholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.

"Whatever is the cause of heart disease," said the eminent biochemist Michael Gurr in a recent article, "it is not primarily the consumption of saturated fats."63 Reference: 60. Cranton, E. M. and J. P. Frackelton, "Free Radical Pathology in Age-Associated Diseases: Treatment with EDTA Chelation, Nutrition and Antioxidants", Journal of Holistic Medicine, Spring/Summer 1984, pp. 6-37 61. Engelberg, H., "Low Serum Cholesterol and Suicide", Lancet 339:727-728, March 21, 1992 62. Alfin-Slater, R. B. and L. Aftergood, "Lipids", Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease (R. S. Goodhart and M. E. Shils, eds), Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia, USA, 1980, 6th ed., p. 134 63. Gurr, M., "A Fresh Look at Dietary Recommendations", Inform 7(4):432-435, April 1996

17)

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 omega-3 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. 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 high-density 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. 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

18) The Benefits of High Cholesterol & The Cholesterol Myths

Ravnskov, MD,PhD

By Uffe

People with high cholesterol live the longest. This statement seems so incredible that it takes a long time to clear ones brainwashed mind to fully understand its importance. Yet the fact that people with high cholesterol live the longest emerges clearly from many scientific papers. Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol.1 Supporters of the

cholesterol campaign consistently ignore his observation, or consider it as a rare exception, produced by chance among a huge number of studies finding the opposite. But it is not an exception; there are now a large number of findings that contradict the lipid hypothesis. To be more specific, most studies of old people have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease. This was the result of my search in the Medline database for studies addressing that question.2 Eleven studies of old people came up with that result, and a further seven studies found that high cholesterol did not predict all-cause mortality either.
A reduction of animal fat and an increase of vegetable fat in the diet is said to lower the blood cholesterol. This is correct, but the effect of such dietary changes is very small. Ramsay and Jackson (37) reviewed 16 trials using diet as intervention. They concluded that the so-called step-I diet, which is similar to the dietary advices that are given nationwise by the health authorities in many countries, lower the serum cholesterol by 0 to 4% only. There are more effective diets, but they are unpalatable to most People. Studies of African tribes have shown that intakes of enormous amounts of animal fat not necessarily raises blood cholesterol; on the contrary it may be very low. Samburu people, for instance, eat about a pound of meat and drink almost two gallons of raw milk each day during most of the year. Milk from the African Zebu cattle is much fatter than cow's milk, which means that the Samburus consume more than twice the amount of animal fat than the average American, and yet their cholesterol is much lower, about 170 mg/dl (38).

Reference: 1. Krumholz HM and others. Lack of association between cholesterol and coronary heart disease mortality and morbidity and all-cause mortality in persons older than 70 years. Journal of the American Medical Association 272, 1335-1340, 1990. 2. Ravnskov U. High cholesterol may protect against infections and atherosclerosis. Quarterly Journal of Medicine 96, 927-934, 2003.

37. Ramsay LE, Yeo WW, Jackson PR. Dietary reduction of serum cholesterol concentration: time to think again. British Medical Journal 1991;303:953-957. 38. Shaper AG. Cardiovascular studies in the Samburu tribe of northern Kenya. American Heart Journal 1962;63:437-442.

19)

The Soft Science of Dietary Fat Gary Taubes

Since the early 1970s, for instance, Americans' average fat intake has dropped from over 40% of total calories to 34%; average serum cholesterol levels have dropped as well. But no compelling evidence suggests that these decreases have improved health. Although heart disease death rates have dropped--and public health officials insist low-fat diets are partly responsible--the incidence of heart disease does not seem to be declining, as would be expected if lower fat diets made a difference. This was the conclusion, for instance, of a 10-year study of heart disease mortality published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1998, which suggested that death rates are declining largely because doctors are treating the disease more successfully. AHA statistics agree: Between 1979 and 1996, the number of medical procedures for heart disease increased from 1.2 million to 5.4 million a year. "I don't consider that this disease category has disappeared or anything close to it," says one AHA statistician
A study of Georgian people found the people who ate the most meat and fat lived the longest. They ate lots of meat, saturated fats, butter and lard. The remaining food was a small amount of bread made from whole grain and a few seasonal vegetables. The amazing characteristic of these people is their longevity, where members living 100 years of age are common. The Long-Living of Soviet Georgia by G.Z. Pitskhelauri.

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21)

French women have the lowest rate of heart disease in the Western world . They eat high levels of butter, cheese and animal fats. France is reported to have 265 brands of cheese typically containing 45% to 50% saturated fats. They are more healthy because of their high level of saturated fat and low level of sugar and refined carbohydrates in the diet. This high level of saturated fat with a low heart disease rate has become known as the "French paradox" by the confused low-fat dietitians. Unfortunately, the French are turning away from their natural foods to manufactured high-carbohydrate foods.

22) 23)

The peoples of Thailand are another paradox. They have a very low level of heart disease and diabetes but consume exceedingly high levels of saturated fat in coconut oil and pork lard. The Grecian "Mediterranean Diet" has been touted as healthy because of the consumption of olive oil and fish. Indeed, olive oil and fish are healthy foods, but the people of Greece have a high consumption of saturated fat in feta cheese, butter, lard and poultry fats. Those who claim the "Mediterranean Diet" is low in saturated fats are liars.

24) 25)

The "Okinawa Diet" has been falsely presented in books claiming the seafood, fruits and vegetables gave the people their extra longevity as the "longest-lived people." The fact that the Okinawians consume a lot of pork, lard and saturated fat from coconut oil is hidden and distorted. The people of Sweden have a high level of heart disease which is erroneously blamed on dairy products, especially butter. The real reason for their heart disease rate is obvious - sugar. They consume a very high level of sugar in the form of sugar laden desserts.

26)

Weston A. Price, DDS, traveled worldwide in the 1930's to investigate the health of primitive peoples who could not obtain foods of the western world. He and his wife found that all of these primitive groups ate a diet very high in fat. They were all extremely healthy, strong, robust and had almost no dental cavities. They all had a broad dental arch (jaw shapes) and the women had very easy childbirths because of the broad pelvic structure. Children of these people who moved to a modern society area developed crowded teeth with many cavities, and the women suffered difficulties in childbirth similar to our present western society.

27)

Dietary cholesterol has little impact on total blood cholesterol .(1) Dietary cholesterol does not increase risk for heart disease or stroke.(2) Two-thirds of the population show no change in serum cholesterol levels from intake of cholesterol.(3) Dietary cholesterol accounts for a minimum amount of cholesterol produced by the body. The liver produces most cholesterol in the body. Eating cholesterol down-regulates your body's production of cholesterol.(4) Reference: (1) Boucher P, de Lorgeril M, Salen P, Crozier P, Delaye J, Vallon JJ, Geyssant A, Dante R. Effect of dietary cholesterol on low density lipoprotein-receptor, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase, and low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein mRNA expression in healthy humans. Lipids 1998 Dec;33(12):1177-86. (2) Hu FB, Stampfer MJ, Rimm EB, Manson JE, Ascherio A, Colditz GA, Rosner BA, Spiegelman D, Speizer FE, Sacks FM, Hennekens CH, Willett WC. A prospective study of egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease in men and women. JAMA 1999 Apr 21;281(15):1387-94. (3) McNamara DJ. Dietary cholesterol and the optimal diet for reducing risk of atherosclerosis. Can J Cardiol 1995 Oct;11 Suppl G:123G-126G. (4) Jones PJ, Pappu AS, Hatcher L, Li ZC, Illingworth DR, Connor WE, Dietary cholesterol feeding suppresses human cholesterol synthesis measured by deuterium incorporation and urinary mevalonic acid levels. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 1996 Oct;16(10):1222-

32)

No cultures or people in the world have ever been 100% vegetarians; however, a number, such as the Masai of Africa Plains Indians the Eskimo and the Lapps, in their traditional culture, subsist almost entirely on meat and have been very healthy. When they adapted to our modern diet which is high in refined carbohydrates, their health deteriorated rapidly; they developed a high incidence of degenerative diseases characteristic of our modern civilization, especially heart disease.

REFERENCES: * Mann, GV, EM Scott, LM Hursch, CA Heller, JB Youmans, CF Consolazio, EB Bridgforth, AL Russell and M Silverman. The Health and Nutritional Status of Alaskan Eskimos, Amer J Clin Nutr., 11:31, 1962; *Mann, GV, Diet and Disease Among the Milk and Meat Eating Masai Warrior of Tanganykia, Food and Nutrition, 34:104, 1963; *Cohen, Mark Nathan, The Food Crisis in Pre-History, New Haven, Yale University Press, p. 15, (1977) ; *Martin, Paul S., Pleistocene Overkill, Natural History, 76:32-38, 1967; Schaeffeor, Otto, When the Eskimo Comes to Town, Nutr Today, 6:8-16, 1971; *Stefansson, Vilhjamur, Food of the Ancient and Modern Stone Age Man, J Amer Diet Assoc, 13:2, 1937; *Stefansson, Vilhjamur, The Fat of the Land, New York, Macmillan, 1957; *Stefansson, Vilhjamur, Cancer: Disease of Civilization? New York, Hill and Wang, 1960; *Pelto, Gretel H. And Pertti Pelto, The Cultural Dimension of the Human Adventure, New York, Macmillan, pp. 292-301, 1979; *Abrams, H. Leon, Jr., Vegetarianism: AnAnthropological/Nutritional Evaluation, J. Applied Nutr. 32:53-87. (1980).

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NO POSTIVE OR DIRECT PROOF THAT.

1. There is no positive or direct scientific proof that eating foods high in cholesterol raises serum cholesterol levels. 2. There is no positive or direct proof that high cholesterol levels results in heart disease. 3. There is no positive or direct proof that lowering cholesterol levels will reduce ones susceptibility to heart disease. 4. However, consuming great quantities of polyunsaturated fats or oils may be detrimental to health. REFERENCE: Lyon, Nancy, Cholesterol . . . Is Just One Heart Threat, Science Digest, 81:28-31, 1977.

34)

UNSATURATED VEGETABLE OILS: TOXIC

Q Why are the unsaturated oils so popular if they are dangerous? It's a whole system of promotion, advertising, and profitability. 50 years ago, paints and varnishes were made of soy oil, safflower oil, and linseed (flax seed) oil. Then chemists learned how to make paint from petroleum, which was much cheaper. As a result, the huge seed oil industry found its crop increasingly hard to sell. Around the same time, farmers were experimenting with poisons to make their pigs get fatter with less food, and they discovered that corn and soy beans served the purpose, in a legal way. The crops that had been grown for the paint industry came to be used for animal food. Then these foods that made animals get fat cheaply came to be promoted as foods for humans, but they had to direct attention away from the fact that they are very fattening. The "cholesterol" focus was just one of the marketing tools used by the oil industry. Unfortunately it is the one that has lasted the longest, even after the unsaturated oils were proven to cause heart disease as well as cancer. [Study at L.A. Veterans Hospital, 1971.]

35)

BOOK REVIEWS: The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D
With courage and care Dr. Ravnskov exposes the lack of experimental evidence for the diet-heart theory (DHT), which claims that eating less fat and cholesterol will prevent atherosclerosis. He shows how the abstract or conclusions of a number of papers are at odds with the actual data in the papers. He demonstrates how the use of one statistical method in preference to another can give a false impression that there is an effect of drug or diet in lowering total death rates, where there is, in fact, no significant effect. In another example: While the death rate from coronary disease increased in most countries after World War II, it decreased in Switzerland. If this decrease had been preceded by a decline in the intake of animal fat, Switzerland would have been a model for health care in other countries. But the diet-heart proponents never mention Switzerland because during the decline in heart mortality, the Swiss intake of animal fat increased by 20% (p. 31).

Numerous studies have shown that in people who eat a normal Western diet, the effect on blood cholesterol of eating 2 or 3 extra eggs per day over a long period of time can hardly be measured (p. 108). Ravnskov dealt with the smear campaign against eggs as follows: To find out how egg consumption influenced my own blood cholesterol, I once used myself as a human guinea pig without asking the ethics committee at my university. Before and during the experiment I analyzed my [total serum] cholesterol. My usual egg consumption is one or two eggs per day, and my cholesterol value at the start of the experiment was 278 mg/dL, very close to a determination of [my] blood cholesterol made 10 years earlier. On day 0, Dr. Ravnskov ate 1 egg; on day 1, 4 eggs; on day 2, 6 eggs; and on days 38, 8 eggs per day! The data from my daring experiment showed that instead of going up, my cholesterol went down a little [to 246 mg/dL] (p. 109).

36)

Interview with Matthias Rath, M.D.

April 2003

Q: You graduated from medical school and worked as a doctor and researcher, what made you switch to research in natural therapies? A: I started off in conventional research into the causes of cardiovascular disease. At that time it was thought that high cholesterol levels were the main factor for causing heart attacks and strokes. Under the influence of the manufacturers of cholesterol lowering drugs, the medical doctors were told that high cholesterol levels damage the blood vessel walls, thereby leading to their thickening and eventually to their blockage leading to heart attacks and strokes. Today we know this was just another marketing story of the pharmaceutical industry. If high cholesterol would damage the blood vessel walls it would do so everywhere along the long pipeline of our blood vessel system. This system would clog everywhere and not just in the heart or in the brain. In other words, we would also get infarctions of the nose, the ear, the knees, elbows, fingers and any other organ of the body. This is clearly not the case.

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Relation of aggressiveness of lipid-lowering treatment to changes in calcified plaque burden by electron beam tomography. Am J Cardiol. 2003 Aug 1;92(3):334-6.
Hecht HS, Harman SM. Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, New York 10003, USA. hhecht@aol.com The comparative effects of more versus less aggressive low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol lowering (to </=80 vs >80 mg/dl) on calcified coronary plaque progression by electron beam tomography were evaluated in 182 consecutive asymptomatic patients after 1.2 years of treatment with statins alone or in combination with niacin. Despite the greater improvement in lipids in the </=80 versus >80 mg/dl groups, there were no differences in calcified plaque progression (9.3%/year vs 9.1%/year). We conclude that, with respect to LDL cholesterol lowering, "lower is better" is not supported by changes in calcified plaque progression. PMID: 12888149 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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The Effect of Foods on Cholesterol Levels

In seventy percent of the population, foods rich in cholesterol such as eggs cause only a subtle increase in cholesterol levels or none at all. In the other thirty percent, these foods do cause a rise in blood cholesterol levels. Despite this, research has never established any clear relationship between the consumption of dietary cholesterol and the risk for heart disease.1 (1. Fernandez ML. Dietary cholesterol provided by eggs and plasma lipoproteins in healthy populations. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2006; 9(1): 8-12.} Organized medicine is finally beginning to awaken to this reality and in the past year have published some amazing truths. On 23 Sept. 2004 thirty-five of our prominent physicians,

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epidemiologist and other scientists wrote to the heads of our National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) to urge an independent review of the scientific studies on which the new cholesterol guidelines were based. They charged complete lack of objectivity of the originators of these new guidelines because eight of the nine authors had direct financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Signatories of this letter of objection included such medical dignitaries as John Abramson MD of Harvard, Jerome Hoffman MD of UCLA and David Brown MD of Albert Einstein and Beth Israel. Their letter charged four major objections to the NCEP guidelines. 1) The evidence does not support extending the guidelines to women of moderate risk. 2) The evidence does not support extending the guidelines to older persons without heart disease 3) They claimed that extending the guidelines to diabetics without heart disease was unjustified by the evidence and: 4) They observed that tripling the number of people on statins in accordance with the new NCEP directives provided no benefit to any patient, with or without heart disease. Dr. Barbara Alving, acting Director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute responded, the Institute does not believe re-review of the data is warranted at this time, and defended the integrity of the guidelines. George Mann MD, principal investigator of the Framingham Study, called this the greatest diet-heart scam and the greatest scientific deception of our times.

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Russell Smith was an American experimental psychologist with a strong background in physiology, mathematics and engineering. No review written by the proponents of the dietheart idea are remotely comparable with Smith's books and papers (102) when it comes to scientific depth and completeness. Smith's summation is devastating for the diet-heart proponents: Although the public generally perceives medical research as the highest order of precision, much of the epidemiologic research is, in fact, rather imprecise and understandably so because it has been conducted principally by individuals with no formal education and little on-the-job training in the scientific method. Consequently, studies are often poorly designed and data are often imappropriately analyzed and interpreted. Moreover, biases are so commonplace, they appear to be the rule, rather than the exception. It is virtually impossible not to recognize that many researchers routinely manipulate and/or interpret their data to fit preconceived hypotheses, rather than manipulate hypotheses to fit their data. Much of the literature, therefore, is nothing less than an affront to the discipline of science.
Dr. Smith concludes: The current campaign to convince every American to change his or her diet and, in many cases, to initiate drug "therapy" for life is based on fabrications, erroneous interpretations and/or gross exaggerations of findings and, very importantly, the ignoring of massive amounts of unsupportive data...It does not seem possible that objective scientists without vested interests could ever interpret the literature as supportive. Dr. Smith is aware that he is up against some extremely powerful institutions: The political and financial power of the NHLBI and AHA team...is enormous and without equal. And because the alliance has substantial credibility in the eyes of the public and most practicing physicians, it has become a juggernaut, able to use its power and prestige to suppress a great body of unsupportive evidence and even defy the most fundamental tool of scientists, logic. The scientists who have produced the misleading papers and reviews are, of course, the first whom Smith faults. But he adds: Equally culpable are the editors of the many journals who

publish articles without regard to their quality or scientific import. It is depressing to know that billions of dollars and a highly sophisticated medical research system are being wasted chasing windmills.