Cholesterol Causes Heart Disease

[TheMyth]

Cholesterol Causes Heart Disease

This myth may never go away. The profit motive behind specialty foods, prescription cholesterol lowering drugs, blood testing and doctor visits results in billions of dollars of business each year. The amount of money spent to keep this myth going is astronomical. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding studies to support this myth only to fail in proving any connection between cholesterol and heart disease. Half of the people with heart disease have normal cholesterol levels. The only connection is among people with hypercholesterolemia which is a rare disease of extremely high cholesterol.
Feeding the Irrational Fear of Cholesterol by Owen Richard Fonorow.

There have been some indications that low HDL cholesterol may be related to an increase in heart disease, and this is common in people with low total cholesterol readings, not high cholesterol. Eating a low cholesterol diet does not reduce blood cholesterol because the liver simply produces more. The liver produces cholesterol which is necessary for the transport and storage of body fat.
The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics.
The Cholesterol Myth by Thomas J. Moore ( pdf file ).
The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, Ph.D.

Low cholesterol increases the risk of cerebral hemorrhage (stroke), gallbladder disease and many types of cancers. Two major factors in the cause of heart disease are lipoprotein, Lp(a) and homocysteine, neither of which is normally checked by doctors. A lipoprotein reading of 20 mg/dl is normal and above 30 mg/dl is elevated. Homocysteine readings below 13 micromoles/L are normal.

What Causes Heart Disease by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, Ph.D.

"For almost forty years, the lipid hypothesis or diet-heart idea has dominated medical thinking about heart disease. In broad outlines, this theory proposes that when we eat foods rich in saturated fat and cholesterol, cholesterol is then deposited in our arteries in the form of plaque or atheromas that cause blockages. If the blockages become severe, or if a clot forms that cannot get past the plaque, the heart is starved of blood and a heart attack occurs.

Many distinguished scientists have pointed to serious flaws in this theory, beginning with the fact that heart disease in America has increased during the period when consumption of saturated fat has decreased. “The diet-heart idea,” said the distinguished George Mann, “is the greatest scam in the history of medicine.” And the chorus of dissidents continues to grow, even as this increasingly untenable theory has been applied to the whole population, starting with low-fat diets for growing children and mass medication with cholesterol-lowering drugs for adults."