Ask anyone about cholesterol and heart disease and they are likely to say that cholesterol in the blood causes fatty deposits to accumulate in the artery, causing the artery to block. A bit like silt accumulating in a pipe. But where did this theory come from?
Back in the 1950's, a doctor called Ancel Keys carried out a research study which looked at the relationship between dietary fat intake and heart disease deaths. His work resulted in him making the front cover of Time magazine, and the government adopted his theory to push a low fat diet solution to the nation.
But the interesting thing is that Keys's study was a fix! It was known as The Seven Nations study, yet his research covered twenty two countries, the data from which showed no correlation between fat consumed and heart deaths. Keys chose to pick only seven countries whose data could be presented as meeting his hypothesis and he ditched the rest. It was scientific fraud! However, the theory had taken hold, gained a life of its own and no one wanted to put the brakes on.
So this wisdom that is pushed by governments, pharmaceutical companies, food companies, agricultural companies and whoever else, is that you will be at a much reduced risk of heart disease if you lower your cholesterol.
This still continues to be the norm, even though much respected research studies have shown that it isn't so. For instance, in 1948, The Framingham Heart Study began, in accordance with the then National Heart Institute. It is still running today and has so far researched over fifteen thousand people over three generations. After twenty two years, it announced that they had found no relation between diet and heart disease. Another twenty seven years of research is done, and in 1997 the Framingham Study announced that they had found no association of dietary fat and heart disease when responding to suggestion that deaths from coronary heart disease had affected data in research on strokes.
One doctor who had involvement in the Framingham Study research(so not just some naysayer!) was Dr George V Mann, a biochemist and physician, maybe this quote from him illustrates why low fat/low cholesterol is still pushed as the answer to heart disease. "The diet-heart hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons or pride, profit and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund-raising enterprises, food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century."
Considering the above, what hypothesis should we be looking at? Maybe it should be this...excessive insulin in the bloodstream kick starts a chain reaction of oxidation and inflammation that causes heart disease.
Let's delve into what that really means. Our modern intake of moderate to high amounts of processed carbohydrates, sugars, starches and grains brings forth too much glucose into the bloodstream which needs to be removed by continual surges of insulin which the pancreas sends out.
There's two things to focus on from this. Excessive insulin results in the production of more small, dense LDL particles in the bloodstream. By the way, LDL means "low density lipoprotein," it is what transports cholesterol around the body to fulfil its many functions. The second issue is that LDL is chemically altered by insulin.
The body doesn't like that alteration, it's recognised as unnatural, foreign, so the body sets off an oxidation process to get rid of it. However, the oxidation action causes the walls of arteries to change from smooth to sticky. Oxidised deposits of that LDL stick to the wall of the artery forming plaque and the whole process causes the area around the artery to inflame.
The plaque that accumulates in the wall of the artery has a lipid core which spills into the artery when it ruptures. The resulting blood clot leads to a heart attack.
It's the oxidation of LDL cholesterol(that is produced by the liver, not from food we eat) happening at an excessive level and the arterial inflammation that it produces that is the main cause of coronary heart disease.
If excessive insulin is not present in our bloodstream, then the amount of LDL cholesterol that we have has no relevance to heart disease risk. The impact of diet on heart disease risk is significant, but not in the way that was first presented sixty years ago, the misinformed way that still dominates the health advice that we receive.
The author has an interest in alternatives to medication for treating heart disease. For more information visit Statins Side Effects.
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