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.
When
it comes to heart disease, we have been sold a pup. A rather large pup.
Actually, it's more of a full-grown blue whale. We've all been conned.
If
you've got a raised risk of heart disease, the standard medical advice is to
take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug to cut your chances of having a heart
attack - because, as we all know, cholesterol is a killer.
Indeed,
many of you already believe that you should take statins for the rest of your
natural lifespan.
But
is it all worth it? According to an article being published in the medical
journal The Lancet this week, the answer is probably NO!.
A leading researcher atHarvard
Medical School
A leading researcher at
Nor
is this the first study to suggest that fighting cholesterol with statins is
bunk. 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:
o
A high diet, saturated or otherwise, does not affect blood cholesterol levels.
o
High cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease.
o
Statins do not protect against heart disease by lowering cholesterol - when
they do work, they do so in another way.
o
The protection provided by statins is so small as to be not worth bothering
about for most people (and all women). The reality is that the benefits have
been hyped beyond belief.
o
Statins have many more unpleasant side effects than has been admitted, while
experts in this area should be treated with healthy skepticism because they are
almost universally paid large sums by statin manufacturers to sing loudly from
their hymn sheet.
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.
Recently,
attention has been shifting from the dangers of saturated fat and LDL "bad"
cholesterol to the benefits of HDL "good" cholesterol, and new
drugs that are going to boost it.
But
the idea that more HDLs are going to fight off heart disease is built on
equally shaky foundations.
These
lipoproteins seem to be cholesterol "scavengers", sucking up
the cholesterol that is released when a cell dies and then passing it on to
other lipoproteins, which return it to the liver.
Interestingly,
the "bad" LDL lipoproteins are involved in the relay.
The
idea seems to be that HDLs can also get the cholesterol out of the plaques that
are blocking arteries.
However, there is a huge difference between absorbing
free-floating cholesterol and sucking it out of an atherosclerotic plaque which
is covered by an impermeable cap.....
Oh MY..
Extracted from The
Great Cholesterol Con by Malcolm Kendrick,
published by John Blake - £9.99.
The Daily Mail,23rd January 2007
The Daily Mail,
