This is a really short post, but I feel it is quite important. Today, I went to see my doctor. I knew he was going to comment on my Cholesterol, so I was ready. The conversation was actually almost funny.
He pulled out my lab work and said: Hmmm, your cholesterol is pretty high.
Me: What is my vLDL number?
Him: 18
Me: So I’m good then, since it’s less then 20.
Him: Yes, that’s a good number. But your LDL is really high and is right at the edge of being dangerous.
Me: well, actually, new studies are showing that it’s ok to have higher LDL.
Him: Oh?
Me: (reached down to grab the envelope I brought in) Here are 4 medical articles that talk about it.
Him: (Looks at it for a bit) I’ll have to read these, I don’t want to tell my patients wrong information.
The articles
You may be asking what the articles were. These are the ones I gave him:
LDL-C does not cause cardiovascular disease: a comprehensive review of the current literature
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Lack of an association or an inverse association between low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in the elderly: a systematic review
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401
Managing dyslipidaemia for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease
https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k946/rr-5
Total cholesterol and all-cause mortality by sex and age: a prospective cohort study among 12.8 million adults
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38461-y
You can get a general idea of what they are talking about from their titles, so I won’t go into great detail. The basic concept is that research is saying that you cholesterol level does not reflect cause for cardiovascular disease which:
are based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and by ignoring numerous contradictory observations.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Another website that is not medical, but they are doing a lot of research, is https://cholesterolcode.com/a-simple-guide-to-cholesterol-on-low-carb/
Dave Feldman has spent years working with doctors and scientist to discover what cholesterol is all about and it’s importance. He created the site cholesterolcode to log his findings and educate others. He breaks it all down quite nicely.
Science is always changing, which is why it is important to question it, read up on it, review it.
I’ll be working on more fallacies to debunked in the coming weeks.