The Myth of the Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis
Posted on 18. Apr, 2010 by Guy in Nutrition & Lifestyle
“Cut the feet to fit the shoes”
Heart and circulatory disease is the UK’s biggest killer. In 2002, cardiovascular disease (CVD) caused 39% of deaths in the UK.
Eat a low fat diet and you will reduce your risk of heart disease, so convention tells us. Could one of the most popular assumptions about the correct diet to reduce risk of heart disease be a myth?
Dr Edward Pinckney, former co-editor of the highly respected Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), concludes “if you have come to believe that you can ward off death from heart disease by lowering the amount of cholesterol in your blood, you are following a regime that still has no basis in fact.
Rather, you as a consumer have been taken in by certain commercial interests and health groups who are more interested in your money than your life”.
Indeed the evidence is abundant that consumption of total fat is not linked to heart disease. The total amount of fats in our diet today is virtually the same as it was at the beginning of this century.
What has changed is the types of fats eaten.
At the turn of the century we ate mainly animal fats that are largely saturated and monounsaturated. Now we are tending to eat more polyunsaturated fats and trans-fats, with a much increased consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar. Could this change in dietary pattern be the real culprit behind the ever-increasing incidence of heart disease? Take a look at the graphs below.
It is well known that cholesterol in the diet has little effect on cholesterol in the blood in humans. Attempts to prove that saturated fat consumption effects blood cholesterol have also failed, furthermore repeated attempts to establish a link between saturated fat consumption and heart disease with intervention trials have again failed.
Food for thought
? After the age of 50 low cholesterol levels are associated with a lower life expectancy.
? Large scale analysis has found that raised cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease among women.
? Every organ and cell in our bodies makes cholesterol, the more cholesterol we eat the less our bodies will manufacture, the less we eat the more our body will manufacture.
? Cholesterol is used to synthesise acetylcholine, the “memory” neurotransmitter; this is just one of it’s many vital functions in the body.
? Research, which is reported to find the use of statins (prescription drugs to reduce cholesterol) to be protective against heart disease, observed the effect even in individuals with normal cholesterol levels- and does not make clear whether this protection be conferred by a mechanism other than cholesterol reduction?
? The potential side effects of statins include liver and nerve damage, cognitive decline, memory loss and violent behaviour; muscle damage can also result due to depletion of the nutrient Coenzyme Q10, required for normal energy production.
? The massive US MR-FIT trial involved over 350,000 men at risk of heart disease. One group of these men reduced their intake of saturated fat by 28%, cholesterol by 42% and calories by 21%. The authors concluded: “the overall results do not show a beneficial effect on CVD or total mortality from this multifactor intervention”.
? The director of another massive study, the Framingham study, concluded: “the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol”, indeed these individuals “weighed the least and were the most physically active”.
? The theory that saturated fat intake is linked to heart disease has resulted in a huge increase in polyunsaturated fat consumption. These fats are found in plant matter, nuts and seeds; they are highly vulnerable to oxidation both inside and outside of the body; they are easily damaged by heat and light.
Such fats should be consumed as cold pressed oils or as a component of raw avocados, nuts and seeds; the modern diet however is rich in commercial vegetable oils, the consumption of which is linked to numerous chronic diseases.
? Vegetables oils that have been chemically modified, or hydrogenated, to become solid “trans-fats” have become relatively common in the average diet and are strongly associated with poor health and chronic disease. They are commonly used to make margarines and fast foods.
? The native tribes of Sumburu and Masai in Kenya largely subsist on meat, milk and blood; they are free from all modern diseases- until they move to cities and adopt modern eating patterns.
? Oxidised LDL cholesterol is of the primary concern as a risk factor for heart disease- this is far more consistent with the consumption of polyunsaturated than saturated fats.
Is it then time to re-examine the links between diet and heart disease? It would certainly seem so.
Sign Up Here To Claim Your FREE Fatloss eBook