Let’s Put The Cholesterol Myth to Rest

I’ve often stated that statin drugs are a multi billion dollar fraud.

And, they are.

It seems to be the practice today to initiate a theory, find data that support that theory, but ignore any data contrary to that theory, and that’s where we will start, right now, to debunk the theory that artificially lowering your cholesterol levels is cardio protective. Because, it is not.

But first an apology. You see, this site, and all previous sites we’ve managed, are run by just one person. One very dedicated person. We do have volunteers who proofread and edit our work, because your’s truly, is a failure at “attention to detail.” And this goes back to my time in the military. In flight school, my classmates named the field across from our barracks after me because I spent my weekends marching up and down it carrying a rifle. I earned hundreds of demerits for “attention to detail.” I’ve always been a bit ADD. So, as I work on this site, typos and other errors just pass me by because I’m intensely concentrated on “the message.”

And because it is, for the most part, a one person job, I often miss studies of importance because, even though I’m a multitasker, I can’t do everything at the same time. So I’m apologizing for missing this study that was published in 2015.

Continuous decline in mortality from coronary heart disease in Japan despite a continuous and marked rise in total cholesterol: Japanese experience after the Seven Countries Study.

This study alone should have put to rest all theories that as cholesterol goes down, your chances of CVD/CHD (including strokes), go down, because they do not. By the way, CVD stands for Cardiovascular Disease and CHD stands for Coronary Heart Disease.

The Theory: Raised cholesterol is considered a major risk factor for CVD.

That is dead wrong. This study (and there are more, but if you cannot accept this one, what good would listing more studies do?) should put to rest the cholesterol myth.

The study had sixty years of data to work with, and year after year, as cholesterol went up, CVD rates went down. Add to that the fun fact: The Japanese have the greatest longevity rates; and you’ve really got to toss out everything you think you know about cholesterol and CVD.

There was one line, though, that really caught my attention in the abstract.

The lower CHD mortality in Japan compared with the USA is very unlikely to be due to the difference in trends in other CHD risk factors, cohort effects, misclassification of causes of death, competing risk with other diseases or genetics. The observation may suggest some protective factors unique to Japanese which merit further research.

Now this is strange, considering that we’ve been collecting demographic data for decades and nobody in the study took the time to examine it.

Thus we’ll present the data we found at Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s site. (Ref)

Country	Japan	US	UK
% Smoke	35.4%	17.2%	23%
AVG BP (Systolic)	130.5mmHg	123.3mmHg	131.2mmHg
Cholesterol	5.2mmol/l	5.1mmol/l	5.4mmol/l
% with Dabetes	7.2%	12.6%	7.8%
Rate of CVD (per 100,000/year)	45.8	150.7	143.7

The only factor missing here, and this could be a biggie, is diet. We know the Japanese eat more fish than we do, and we know that the Standard America Diet is appropriately named (SAD). I can’t talk about food in the UK since, according to my experience, it’s inedible. (The corn beef and cabbage you get at the finest restaurant is the same as the corn beef and cabbage you get at a local dive.) ;o)

The main point here, considering the Japanese smoke more than we do, and that smoking increases your chances of CVD/CHD some 800%, I’d say that, well, let us just conclude this study with its actual outcome:

A raised cholesterol level is not the cause of CHD/CVD.