CHOLESTEROL: TRUTHS AND MYTHS

Content

1. The TRUTH About CHOLESTEROL

2. The TRUTH: About CHOLESTEROL in food.

3. The TRUTH. About the blood of some people with increased CHOLESTEROL.

7. The MYTH. CHOLESTEROL results in formation of CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES

In the second half of the 20th century, doctors all over the world have been fighting high cholesterol levels in the body, believing that it was responsible for heart disease as well as other maladies. Much research ostensibly proved a connection between elevated cholesterol levels and cardiovascular diseases.

The "anticholesterol" theory was propagated to near hysteria levels by slogans and other advertising techniques alarming the average person that cholesterol was public enemy number one. Anticholesterol advocates referred to authoritative sources, asserting that the high level of cholesterol in blood was the most important risk factor behind atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases including heart attacks. A billion dollar industry was created with ongoing "research" on the role of cholesterol in cardiovascular diseases.

After all these years of attributing to heart diseases to elevated cholesterol, more and more doctors had doubts because more than twenty years of cholesterol restriction in the food of the populations of entire countries did not lower the amount of atherosclerosis or change the death rate from cardiovascular diseases. On the contrary, anticholesteric therapy has resulted in both new diseases and a sharp increase in a few other diseases, such as sterility, obesity, and Alzheimer's dementia. This is a paradox; decreasing cholesterol intake results in more disease.

This resulted in a change in the money making paradigm, instead of harmful cholesterol alone, there is now "bad" and "good" cholesterol, which from a biochemical perspective makes no sense. An analogy would be speaking about "bad" and "good" glucose, amino acids, etc.

Therefore, we will focus on the role of cholesterol in a normal healthy person and reexamine the cholesterol theory of heart disease.