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[…] Original Article: Higher Cholesterol Is Associated with Longer Life […]
ReplyGreat post and as usual the Mainstream Media has told us the exact opposite. Mind blowing how much misinformation there is.
ReplyThe die-hard defenders of the lipid hypothesis have constructed mathematical genetic models to demonstrate that the inverse link between high LDL and mortality is a matter of reverse causality.
However, this is refuted by a Hawaiian study showing that the increased risk of low LDL was completely reversed if LDL increased in an elderly person
Mean cholesterol fell significantly with increasing age. Age-adjusted mortality rates were 68.3, 48.9, 41.1, and 43.3 for the first to fourth quartiles of cholesterol concentrations, respectively. Relative risks for mortality were 0.72 (95% CI 0.60-0.87), 0.60 (0.49-0.74), and 0.65 (0.53-0.80), in the second, third, and fourth quartiles, respectively, with quartile 1 as reference. A Cox proportional hazard model assessed changes in cholesterol concentrations between examinations three and four. Only the group with low cholesterol concentration at both examinations had a significant association with mortality (risk ratio 1.64, 95% CI 1.13-2.36).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11502313
Further, there’s a Scandinavian study where BOTH statin use and high LDL are independently associated with reduced mortality in the elderly. A good indication that any benefit from statins doesn”t result from LDL lowering. Especially if we remember the reason why most people are prescribed statins in the first place.
ReplyThanks, George. Regarding reverse causality, a number of the studies I looked at found that the results persisted even when death in the first several years was excluded.
ReplyStudies 2-4 are by Uffe Ravnskov – a cholesterol denier who will NEVER admit he might be wrong and who cherry picks studies to prove his point.
Study # 5 used a sample size of 40 and defined low cholesterol as < 180 mg/dL
Reply“Denier” is a word used by ideologists, as in global warming. As for never admitting he might be wrong, why would he if he’s right? Will lipid hypothesis proponents ever admit that they’re wrong? Uffe Ravnskov has been more correct on cholesterol than anyone in the mainstream.
As for sample size, the studies that were used in the graphs used hundreds of thousands of people.
ReplyWow. I wish I had been skeptical of science, or at least medicine/biology, from an earlier age. Taleb said it well when he said Granma’s advice is more rigorous than modern science fads.
You forgot to tell us how to boost our cholesterol!
ReplyAny ideas how to increase cholesterol? I have low cholesterol (which of course my doc says is great…), with a total ~95 and LDL hovering around ~20. When I was on keto, both LDL and total only increased by about 40.
I eat 6 eggs a day, and really can’t down more — as you’ve said, eggs fill you up like nothing else. What diet/supplement changes would help?
ReplyB, that a great question, and your cholesterol certainly is low. Unfortunately, most of the information on this topic seems, well, tainted, by the lipid hypothesis. Searching “how to increase cholesterol” gives results for HDL. An article at WebMD on foods to avoid if you have high cholesterol seems to me to be just the usual saturated fat phobia. An article by that great fraud Ancel Keys himself says that beef tallow and coconut oil do not raise serum cholesterol.
As for eggs, what happens is that when you eat the cholesterol in eggs, your own liver downregulates your internal cholesterol production.
Uffe Ravnskov says that diet has next to nothing to do with cholesterol level.
Last I checked, my total cholesterol was ~240 on a low-carb (but not always ketogenic), paleo diet. I eat eggs, meat, cheese, yogurt, vegetables, a bit of fruit, occasional corn tortillas, and drink coffee, tea, and chocolate with cream, and red wine. Rarely I’ll eat something like a hamburger with a bun. (BTW, my triglycerides were 46, HDL 92, giving me a trig/HDL ratio of 0.5, which indicates very low heart disease risk.)
So, it’s a puzzle. I need to learn more about how to raise cholesterol and why, if diet has little effect, cholesterol levels vary so much between individuals.
ReplyThere’s a selection issue occurring which negates claims of causality and intuitively explains the result. First, let’s acknowledge that people are potentially different or heterogenous in how their body would react to cholesterol (or anything else). Imagine if some people were less prone to cholesterol’s negative health effects. Then, when looking at a population survival study then you would observe only those people living longer and thus a higher average cholesterol level among elderly patients. Alternatively, you could imagine that people who live an active lifestyle are more likely to consume high-cholesterol proteins. The active lifestyle causes them to live longer and have higher cholesterol levels. None of this is to say that cholesterol couldn’t be beneficial but just that this type of epidemiological study is a weak form of evidence and not useful for assessing causality. In general, we know very little about nutrition and higher quality research that allows for control and treatment groups would be valuable.
ReplySome good points there. However, epidemiological studies like these are just like the ones used to establish the damaging effects of high cholesterol. It turns out that if you look at these past associational studies, the case against cholesterol has always been very weak at best. As for your stipulation about active lifestyle and high cholesterol skewing results, in my opinion it’s more likely to be the opposite: intelligent, health-oriented people have been following the advice to keep cholesterol low and therefore would skew the results so it looks like low cholesterol is healthy, when in fact it could be genetic or lifestyle factors. The same problem arises with studies of vegetarians, or fruit and veg intake, or a number of other things.
Reply[…] P.D. Mangan’s “Higher Cholesterol Is Associated With Longer Life” […]
Reply[…] told us that cholesterol and saturated fat was bad for us and caused heart disease — which we now know to be utterly false — they also told us that sugar and carbs were benign — we also now know that to be […]
Reply[…] In a previous article, I discussed why statins might cause atherosclerosis and heart failure. The mechanism may be related to how higher cholesterol is associated with longer life. […]
Reply[…] Higher Cholesterol Is Associated with Longer Life […]
ReplyA very interesting (for layman me, at least) show just ran on the German & French cooperative public TV channel ARTE last night, and looks to be available online for the coming month:
http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/051063-000-A/cholesterol-the-big-bluff (English subtitles with French audio; no subtitles for the German audio though, if that should be your thing)
Very eye-opening for me, going back to the 50’s and covering up to the present with the statin controversy.
Reply[…] older people with higher cholesterol live longer, then it seems unlikely that high cholesterol causes heart […]
Reply[…] Cholesterol itself doesn’t cause heart disease anyway, so the FDA’s reasoning in this case is spurious. […]
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