Dr. Peter Attia has started a fascinating (at least to me) series of articles on cholesterol. The information is pretty detailed, but for those not interested in what is an immensely complex subject, the abstracts should still be of value.
The second part was released yesterday, here's a link to part 1:
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Jump to repliesThere are no facts in part 1 that would be a surprise to anyone who has read and watched the HEART UK materials, while part 2 goes into the chemistry a bit more, but I'm sure I've seen that liver/cholesterol cycles pic a couple of times before.
There are some worrying signs already though: firstly "We’ll be blowing the doors off this fallacious logic" suggests both a prejudice and a liking for misdescribing other points of view. "War on Insulin" also suggests a liking for flamboyant language over accuracy. Finally, "My own education on this topic only really began about 9 months ago" suggests less experience of it than many HEART UK members.
I felt the "Why I’m Doing This" doesn't really explain why he's doing it. waroninsulin.com/dr-peter-a... suggests it's all about weight loss.
Oh well, wait and see.
I found this interesting as well, especially the bit about cholesterol in food not being absorbed by the body...think I got that right.
I also went to Dr Tara Dell's website as he named her as being an influence and I'm interested in women who make it to the top in medicine. She seems to be quite a "mainstream" lipidologist with a particular interest in sub fractions of lipids. Rather dismayed to hear that one of her patients with a family history of early heart disease was not protected by her high level of HDL.
Yes Aliwally, you're right. Ancell Keys, the father of the lipid hypothesis, said in 1997:
"There's no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we've known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn't matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit."
It's worth noting the date (1997) - 40 odd years after he published his seven countries study, when it looked like he was having some second thoughts!
This is in part why I posted this. The accepted mantra that eating cholesterol is dangerous just isn't borne out by the science.
Also, the idea that heart health is simply the ratio between LDL and HDL just doesn't cover what is a vast and complex subject.
I knew about chylomicron, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, but this article reveals just how many sub-fractions there are - and this is by no means an exhaustive explanation.
The pharmaceutical holy grail of raising HDL has proved a disaster but
if anyone is concerned about HDL levels (I'm not) and raising them, then the only way to do it is by the dietary route. That means lowering carbohydrate.
"The accepted mantra that eating cholesterol is dangerous" Once more, I'd like to remind everyone that this hasn't been the mantra among health professionals for at least 30 years, if indeed it ever was a mantra.
In the 1980s, there was some uncertainty which I think arose because of a few conflicting studies, so FH sufferers were advised to limit the amount of cholesterol eaten, but we were never told it was dangerous... and that advice was removed in the 1990s anyway.
The current undecided question of interest is whether there's a causal link between blood cholesterol and health, not dietary cholesterol.
Ask the average person whether or not eating foods containing cholesterol is dangerous and the answer will almost certainly be yes.
So the message being put out by the professionals over the last thirty years is yet to have an impact.
I agree the message isn't getting accross....I was diagnosed with high cholesterol in 1992....advice given was to cut down on foods high in cholesterol.
19 years later, have heart attack and am given exactly the same diet advice i was given previously.. it really does make me mad that the message isn't getting to Dietry specialists, never mind GP's or consultants!!
Do the rest of their patients a favour and give them a copy of the Common Misconceptions sheet heartuk.org.uk/index.php?/h... or the current NHS Healthy Eating nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pa... which explains the decades-old change in advice on egg yolks.
Of course, there's little point in eating cholesterol-laden foods for their own sake, but I don't think there's any particular advice against them.
The average person voted Conservative or LibDem in 2010. Sadly, they can be wrong.
