For over half a century we’ve been constantly told that cholesterol is bad. Most people I talk to about their cholesterol numbers are understandably worried about their levels. And this does not surprise me.
The American Heart Association has successfully convinced us that higher cholesterol levels are associated with heart disease. They’ve been pushing this agenda for decades. This means most things your doctors and health practitioners learned about heart attacks, strokes, cholesterol, and nutrition are wrong. In fact, the nutrition advice you get from them is making you sick.
Does High Cholesterol Even Matter?
What people don’t realize is that there have been years of high-quality studies proving that death by cancer, pneumonia and other infections, and dementia are more prevalent amount people with lower cholesterol. In fact, LOW cholesterol is known to be associated with HIGH death rates in older people. Approximately 25% of the total amount of the cholesterol present in humans is located in the brain. And it does this for good reason. Cholesterol is vital for brain synapses to form properly which lets us learn and memorize information. So the connection is clear – low cholesterol increases the risk for brain diseases like dementia, depression, and Parkinson’s.
Cholesterol is crucial to the production of stomach bile which breaks down our food and absorbs its nutrients. The inability to absorb food properly can lead to bloating, diarrhea, compromised immune system function, and bone density issues.
Cholesterol is Not the Cause of Heart Attacks
Cholesterol is not the enemy, in fact, it is essential for life! This horrible myth that saturated fat,and cholesterol cause heart disease, has gradually turned us against the things that really matter for your health.
The push for low fat, low cholesterol dietary recommendations is not founded on solid scientific ground. This widely accepted myth is based on an obsolete idea referred to as the “diet-heart hypothesis.” Its origins can be traced back to a prominent person in the American Heart Association, named Ancel Keys. In 1952, Keys presented the diet-heart hypothesis that connected heart disease to fat consumption. His theory is why we are afraid to eat fat to this day.
Keys also convinced doctors in the American Heart Association to accept funding from companies selling vegetable oil-based shortening (margarine).
Despite the fact that further studies debunked this theory, the media and the American people jumped on the low-fat and low-cholesterol diet band wagon!
Long-term studies could not prove an association between saturated fat intake and cholesterol levels. As Dr. Ramsden writes in his famous article Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). “The number, proportion, and probability of death increased as serum cholesterol decreased.”
SO What really causes heart disease?
It’s all the sugars, heavily processed grains, vegetable oils that cause inflammation in blood vessels that invite the artery clogging plaques to form in the first place.
If you would like to learn more, I highly recommend reading this book
References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20071648/
https://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/1846638/association-dietary-circulating-supplement-fatty-acids-coronary-risk-systematic-review
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9635993/
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/8/10/1571/htm
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