Cholesterol and the Pharmaceutical Industry's Biggest Secret

Cholesterol and the Pharmaceutical Industry's Biggest Secret
Shane Ellison, M.Sc.

A commonly held myth is that high cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol, is a major risk factor for heart disease (known as atherosclerosis).

Thus, in a panicked attempt to prevent this pandemic killer millions of people are using cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, when we consider the scientific evidence it appears that the aforementioned myth is the antithesis.

1. With respect to women, researchers at the University San Diego School of Medicine show that no study has shown that cholesterol-lowering drugs lower overall mortality in women.
   Researchers at the University San Diego School of Medicine UCSD also point out that high cholesterol in those over 75 years of age is protective, rather than harmful and that low cholesterol is a risk factor for heart arrhythmias (leading cause of death if heart attack occurs).
2. The European Heart Journal has published the results of a 3-year study involving 11,500 patients.
3. Researcher Behar and associates found that in the low cholesterol group (total cholesterol below 160mg/dl) the relative risk of death was 2.27 times higher relative to those with high cholesterol.
4. The most common cause of death in the low cholesterol group was cancer while the risk of cardiac death was the same in both groups.
5. In support of their findings these researchers point out that previous studies found a higher increase in lung cancer when total cholesterol levels were maintained below 170 mg/dl.
6. The most widely respected medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study entitled: Cholesterol and Mortality. 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham study.
7. Shocking to most, this in-depth study showed that after the age of 50 there is no increased overall death associated with high cholesterol! There was however a direct association between low levels (or dropping levels) of cholesterol and increased death.
8. Specifically, medical researchers reported that CVD death rates increased by 14% for every 1mg/dl drop in total cholesterol levels per year.
9. The Journal of Cardiac Failure published the findings of Tamara and colleagues in a paper entitled Low Serum Total Cholesterol is Associated with Marked Increase in Mortality in Advanced Heart Failure.
10. In their analysis of 1,134 patients with heart disease they found that low cholesterol was associated with worse outcomes in heart failure patients and impaired survival while high cholesterol improved survival rates.
11. Additionally, their findings showed that elevated cholesterol among patients was not associated with hypertension, diabetes, or coronary heart disease.
12. And finally, despite the successful attempts to lower cholesterol with pharmaceutical drugs, the death rate from heart disease has not changed over the last 75 years and mortality from heart failure is more than double what it was in 1996.

Hence, those who think they are safe from heart disease due to lowering total cholesterol levels may want to seriously rethink their preventative efforts.

Sadly though, some of the most well-respected health practitioners, medical doctors, and herbalists in the world have fallen victim to pharmaceutical propaganda.

This can be seen by their often regurgitated, ill-thought out hypothesis that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease.

Meanwhile, people continue to die (2700 people die every day from heart disease) while pharmaceutical companies enrich themselves with the sales of cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The CEO of Pfizer, makers of the popular cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, was compensated 33.9 million dollars last year (does not include the ten's of millions in stock options). This equates to 2.8 million per month, which is about $94,000 per day.

So, how does one successfully convince the entire U.S that each and every person should have the same cholesterol levels?

Easy, pharmaceutical companies work tirelessly to promulgate the cholesterol-lowering myth by conveniently citing supportive studies while burying the unsupportive.

As reported in the British Medical Journal, Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD shows his results of a meta-analysis of 22 published controlled cholesterol-lowering trials.

He found that studies which showed to be supportive of low cholesterol were cited six times more often than those that were unsupportive and that unsupportive trials had not been reported since 1970!

Further, his research showed that those studies that were supportive of low cholesterol were due to bias on part of the researchers.

With 12 billion dollars worth of cholesterol-lowering drugs sold annually, the average American has become a cholesterol-lowering drug addict. Few users have given any thought to the potential negative side effects fo the drugs.

For instance, evidence from the cholesterol-lowering trial known as PROSPER showed that while Pravachol may have prevented 22 deaths from cardiovascular disease the benefit was negated by 24 deaths caused by cancer among those taking Pravachol.

Numerous medical journals have shown that cholesterol-lowering drugs significantly increase ones risk of suffering from not only cancer but also CoQ10 deficiency (paradoxically leads to heart disease), rhabdomyolysis, erectile dysfunction and loss of memory and mental focus.

Combined, these facts render America's best selling drug useless and in some cases deadly (make you wonder about the other less popular drugs). As such, they are among the pharmaceutical industries biggest secrets. You won't hear about them from your doctor, the media, or a pharmaceutical sales rep.

To circumvent blind addiction to cholesterol-lowering drugs, their deadly side-effects, wasted money, and finally, heart disease itself, Americans must understand the importance of cholesterol in the human body.

Moreover, they must learn about natural medicine which rivals synthetic drugs and lifestyle habits that have been proven to prevent and treat heart disease.

References

• 
  Patrick, Lyn. Et al. Cardiovascular Disease: C-Reactive Protein and the Inflammatory Disease Paradigm: HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors, alpha-Tocopherol, Red Yeast Rice, and Olive Oil Polyphenols. A review of the Literature. Alternative Medicine Review. Volume 6, Number 3. 2001.
• Uri Goldbourt. Et al. Choleserol and Coronary Heart Disease in Mortality. A 23 year follow-up Study of 9902 Men in Israel. Arteriosclerosis. Vol 10, No. 4, July/August 1990
  Behar, S. Et al. Low total cholesterol is associated with high total mortality in patients with coronary heart disease. European Heart Journal (1997) 18, 52-59.
• Horwich TB. Et al. Low Serum Total Cholesterol is Associated with Marked Increase in Mortality in Advanced Heart Failure. J Card Fail. 2002 Aug;8(4):216-214.
• Ravnskov. U. Cholesterol-Lowering Trials in Coronary Heart Disease: "Frequency and Citation of Outcome". BMJ. 305; 6852. July 4, 1992. PP 15-9
• Anderson KM. Cholesterol and Mortality. 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham Study. JAMA 1987 Apr 24;257(16):2176-80
• Uffe Ravnskov, et al. Letter to Archives of Internal Medicine, submitted on July 20,2002
  

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