Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor

Here is a fact that has been known for quite a long time, but it is still news to many people:

People with higher cholesterol levels live longer than people with lower cholesterol levels.

Read that again, slowly, and no, it is not a typo.

The reason why this fact is not well-known in the general public is because it would put a huge dent into a $100 BILLION drug market for statin drugs – drugs that lower your cholesterol. With approximately one out every four Americans over the age of 50 currently prescribed a statin drug, a drug with very serious side effects, this is certainly one issue you should investigate yourself. Please don’t take my word on it, nor anybody else’s.

What the Research Says Concerning Cholesterol Levels and Mortality Rates

This is but a sampling of the research on the fact that low cholesterol is dangerous, while high cholesterol is beneficial.

Study: Low total cholesterol is associated with high total mortality in patients with coronary heart disease, European Heart Journal, January 1997

Quote:

The relative risk of non-cardiac death was 2.27 times higher in the low cholesterol group than in the controls (95% CI: 1.49-3.45), whereas the risk of cardiac death was the same in both groups relative risk 1.09; 95% CI: 0.76-1.56). The most frequent cause of non-cardiac deathassociated with low total cholesterol was cancer. These results in patients with coronary heart disease add weight to previous studies associating low total cholesterol with an increased risk of non-cardiac death.

Is the use of cholesterol in mortality risk algorithms in clinical guidelines valid? Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, February 2012

Quote:

Our study provides an updated epidemiological indication of possible errors in the CVD risk algorithms of many clinical guidelines. If our findings are generalizable, clinical and public health recommendations regarding the ‘dangers’ of cholesterol should be revised. This is especially true for women, for whom moderately elevated cholesterol (by current standards) may prove to be not only harmless but even beneficial.

Study: PLANT STEROLS LOWER CHOLESTEROL, BUT INCREASE RISK FOR CORONARY HEART DISEASE, OnLine Journal of Biological Sciences, 2014

Quote:

It is widely accepted that cholesterol lowering is healthful per se. We challenge this view, with particular reference to plant sterols. Cholesterol lowering should not be an end in itself. The objective must be to reduce health outcomes, such as incidence of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). We hypothesised that plant sterols may lower cholesterol, but not CHD. We found the outcome on CHD in fact to be detrimental.

As noted above, this list is a sampling of the research showing the benefits of high cholesterol, and the problems with low cholesterol, and is certainly not a comprehensive list.

The Myth of “Good” and “Bad” Cholesterol

When a medical belief has been used to support a $100 BILLION drug industry, one can imagine the difficulty of confronting science that shows your basic premise, that high cholesterol is a hazard to your health, is flawed and lacking serious data.

One of the ways in which the medical industry has tried to deal with the data on cholesterol, is to reclassify it as either “good” or “bad.” So the prevailing medical thinking today is now that “high density lipoproteins” cholesterol (HDL) is “good,” while “low density lipoproteins” cholesterol is “bad.”

There’s just one problem with this kind of thinking: there is only one kind of cholesterol.

“Lipoproteins,” which can be measured in terms of their density, are what carry the cholesterol through our blood stream. There are studies showing that cholesterol with lower density lipoproteins have a positive association with clogged arteries leading to heart disease. But is this association a causative factor in heart disease?

First, it is important to know that there is only one kind of cholesterol, and it is essential to life. Remove all the cholesterol in your body, and you die!  25% of your body’s cholesterol is in your brain, and it is in the walls of every cell in your body.

In terms of cholesterol linked to low lipid proteins, Professor Fred Kummerow, who is a 99-year-old emeritus professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois, states:

“LDL is not a marker of heart disease,” Kummerow said. “It’s a marker of ApoB.” And ApoB is a marker of a lack of tryptophan, he said. (Source.)

Professor Kummerow is not the only researcher to question the condemnation of LDL. Scientists at Tufts University looked at 201 cancer patients and 402 cancer-free patients. They found that cancer patients who never took cholesterol-lowering drugs on average had lower LDL cholesterol levels for an average of about 19 years prior to their cancer diagnosis. (Source.) 

Statin Drugs have Serious Side Effects

The serious side effects of statin drugs have been known for quite some time now, but the FDA did not issue any warnings until 2012. Yet statins had already been in the market for over a decade. Why did it take the FDA so long?

Could it be it is because statin drugs are the most successful class of drugs of all time in terms of sales? Lipitor is by far the most profitable drug in the history of mankind among all pharmaceutical products, let alone being the most profitable cholesterol drug before its patent expired at the end of 2011. Sales to date from this one particular cholesterol-lowering statin drug have exceeded $140 billion.

Lipitor benefited from the change in marketing laws in 1997 that allowed pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. to advertise their products directly to consumers. Pfizer convinced an entire generation of Americans that they needed a pill to lower their cholesterol in order to prevent heart disease, in what will go down as one of the most brilliant and unethical marketing schemes of all time.

In late 2011, Pfizer’s patent on Lipitor expired. A couple of months later the FDA issued its first warnings against statin drugs, which include: liver injury, memory loss, diabetes, and muscle damage.

Soon after issuing these warnings, the lawsuits started trickling in. Today, they have become a tidal wave. Since April this year (2014), over 1200 lawsuits have been filed by women against Pfizer claiming Lipitor caused them to become diabetics, and lawyers believe it could well exceed 10,000 cases against Lipitor.

And type 2 diabetes is just one of the many side effects of statin drugs. For years, professional athletes have been warned to stay off statins because it is well known they cause muscle damage.

A recent study shows women taking statin drugs double their risk of breast cancer.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff has linked statin use to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases.

A study just published in the international  journal Drug Safety found a positive association between regular statin drug use and Bell’s palsy, a neurologic disorder.

The Statin Scam: Don’t Let it Ruin Your Health!

The statin scam has been exposed, but there are powerful sources at work in the medical system to keep it going.

One of the best documentaries exposing the statin scam and interviewing doctors in the industry who have exposed it, was published last year on ABC in Australia. Take some time to watch these important documentaries produced by medical doctors on the statin drug scam, and be informed!

HEART OF THE MATTER Part 1: The Cholesterol Myth: Dietary Villains 

HEART OF THE MATTER Part 2: The Cholesterol Drug War

Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You!
What REALLY Causes Heart Disease
by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD

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