I was at a dinner party recently when the subject of cholesterol came up. Every (lay) person around the table turned out to be an expert: \u201cCholesterol is bad\u201d, said one. \u201cWell actually there\u2019s good and bad cholesterol\u201d, clarified another. \u201cOur cholesterol shouldn\u2019t be higher than five\u201d, volunteered one sage. Five what? They had no idea. Why is cholesterol bad? Not a clue. If ever there were a substance vilified with the utmost ignorance \u2013 cholesterol is it.<\/p>\n
This month, October, is national cholesterol month in the UK. September was national cholesterol month in the US. Call me cynical, but staggering the months gives one sixth of the year when the increasingly global on-line world is being manipulated to have cholesterol front of mind. Leading the charge in the UK appears to be Heart UK \u2013 an organisation masquerading as a charity, which more accurately should be seen as a voice piece of the cholesterol lowering industry. Here are Heart UK\u2019s backers<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is what we should be told in national cholesterol month and these are the things that my fellow diners should have been saying about cholesterol:<\/p>\n 1) Cholesterol is utterly life vital<\/p>\n Every human being would die instantly without cholesterol. Every single cell in the human body depends upon it. We would have no digestion or hormone function without cholesterol. Cholesterol is critical for brain and memory functions \u2013 even though the brain is only 2% of the body\u2019s weight, it contains approximately 25% of the body\u2019s cholesterol (Ref 1). Cholesterol is essential for bones and all the roles performed by vitamin D. We could not reproduce without this life vital substance. Hence, not only would humans die without cholesterol, the human race would die out.<\/p>\n 2) Cholesterol is so vital that our body makes it<\/p>\n It cannot be left to chance that we would need to get cholesterol from an external source, such as food. One of the key reasons that we need to spend approximately one third of our lives sleeping is to give the body time to produce cholesterol, repair cells and perform other essential maintenance.<\/p>\n 3) There is no such thing as good and bad cholesterol<\/p>\n The formula for cholesterol is C27<\/sub>H46<\/sub>O. There is no good or bad version. Ignorant people call HDL \u2018good\u2019 cholesterol and LDL \u2018bad\u2019 cholesterol. Neither HDL nor LDL are even cholesterol \u2013 they are lipoproteins. HDL is High Density Lipoprotein and LDL is Low Density Lipoprotein. HDL is smaller than LDL and is therefore higher in density. Lipoproteins carry<\/em> cholesterol, protein, phospholipids and triglyceride around the blood stream to undertake vital roles.<\/p>\n 4) The cholesterol blood test is a guess<\/p>\n The standard blood test can only measure total cholesterol & HDL. So we have one equation, four unknowns, only two of which can be measured:<\/p>\n Total cholesterol = LDL + HDL + Triglycerides (VLDL)\/5<\/p>\n Any GCSE maths student will tell you that this is insolvable.<\/p>\n Your best option is not to get your cholesterol ever tested and then you can never be a victim of the cholesterol lowering machinery that will kick in if your guestimate fails the following test\u2026<\/p>\n 5) There is no science behind the number \u201c5\u201d<\/p>\n Even after years of artificial intervention, the average cholesterol level in the UK is somewhere between 5.6 \u2013 6.3 mmol\/l (Ref 2) (216-244 mg\/dl). The powers-that-be have decided that this should be 5mmol\/l (193 mg\/dl). This is like saying that the average height for a woman is 5\u20194\u201d and we have decreed that it should be 5\u20191\u201d. We could then stop the body from performing a natural function (growth) by administering drugs to stop growth hormones from doing their job. I trust that this analogy disturbs you. It is, however, frighteningly similar to what we are doing with attempts to lower average cholesterol levels.<\/p>\n 6) “There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we’ve known that all along.\u201d Ancel Keys<\/p>\n Dietary cholesterol is only found in animal foods \u2013 meat, fish, eggs and dairy. Ancel Keys spent the 1950s feeding humans high levels of animal foods to see if dietary cholesterol had any impact on blood cholesterol levels. He concluded unequivocally that it did not. He never deviated from this view. While exonerating cholesterol, Keys also exonerated animal foods at the same time \u2013 and any substance contained therein. If large intakes of animal foods have no impact on cholesterol levels, then neither animal foods per se<\/em> or any component of these foods (water, protein, cholesterol, saturated or unsaturated fat) have any impact on cholesterol levels!<\/p>\n Unaware of this irrefutable logic, diet \u2018experts\u2019 will tell you that saturated fat raises LDL and unsaturated fat raises HDL. They won\u2019t tell you how. I have yet to find a biochemist who can explain how this can happen \u2013 let alone that it does. As every food that contains fat contains all three fats (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated) you cannot consume any food that has saturated and not unsaturated fat, or vice versa.<\/p>\n Even if<\/em> the very small 3 grams per 100 grams of unsaturated fat in sirloin steak (Ref 3) could<\/em> raise HDL and even if<\/em> the even smaller 2 grams per 100 grams of saturated fat in sirloin steak could<\/em> raise LDL \u2013 where would this leave our insolvable equation?!<\/p>\n The US dietary guidelines are due to be re-issued this year. The draft report announced in February 2015 that \u201ccholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern\u201d (Ref 4). It never was you Muppets!<\/p>\n 7) Low cholesterol is associated with higher mortality. High cholesterol is associated with lower mortality<\/p>\n I have analysed cholesterol levels and death rates for all 192 countries for which the World Health Organisation has data. You may need to read this carefully. The lower the cholesterol levels, the higher the death rate; the higher the cholesterol levels, the lower the death rate. This holds for men and women and for heart disease deaths and total deaths from any cause \u2013 for all the countries in the world. Knowing how utterly vital cholesterol is to human life, this makes complete sense (Ref 5).<\/p>\n 8) Follow the money<\/p>\n Why would humans put so much effort into stopping the body from doing something that it is designed to do \u2013 make cholesterol?<\/p>\n Statins are drugs that impair the body\u2019s production of cholesterol. One statin alone, Lipitor, has been worth $125 billion to Pfizer since 1997 (Ref 6). This statin is the most lucrative drug in the world. It is not the only statin.<\/p>\n Thankfully statins don\u2019t work perfectly. If they stopped the body producing cholesterol altogether they would have a 100% death rate.<\/p>\n An entire low-fat spread industry, worth billions, has emerged simply by adding plant sterols to margarines because the brainwashed public will buy anything with \u201ccholesterol lowering\u201d properties. These plant sterols compete in the human body with human cholesterol and the overall impact on heart health is serious (Ref 7). I trust my body to make the cholesterol it needs. I\u2019m not going to replace this with a foreign compound.<\/p>\n Back to the dinner party: While my healthy heart sank at the nonsense being asserted by intelligent acquaintances, there was an upside to their naive acceptance of propaganda: When the cheese course arrived, there was plenty to be enjoyed by the enlightened!<\/p>\n References:<\/strong><\/p>\n Ref 1: http:\/\/www.neurology.org\/content\/71\/17\/1368.extract<\/a><\/p>\n Ref 2: https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2014\/06\/diabetes-cholesterol-bp-normal-is-no-longer-normal\/<\/a><\/p>\n Ref 3: http:\/\/nutritiondata.self.com\/facts\/beef-products\/7493\/0<\/a><\/p>\n Ref 4: http:\/\/health.gov\/dietaryguidelines\/2015-scientific-report\/<\/a><\/p>\n Ref 5: https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2010\/11\/cholesterol-heart-disease-%E2%80%93-there-is-a-relationship-but-it%E2%80%99s-not-what-you-think\/<\/a><\/p>\n