The Doctor Speaks

Author: by Philip Incao, M.D.
Issue: LILIPOH #36 - Summer 2004: Biography Emerges as a Tool For Therapy
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Q: I am taking medication for high blood pressure and high cholesterol and am concerned about the overall effects on my well-being. How can I offset any potential negative impact of these strong drugs?

A: It is pretty much common knowledge that heart attacks and other symptoms of heart disease are often related to clogging of the heart’s own arteries with a fatty cholesterol-rich substance that tends to become calcified. But the scientific theory that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat are the cause of hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) and heart attacks, which has held sway since the 1950’s, is now beginning to unravel. And few know about that.

Even though evidence to back the dietary intake/arteriosclerosis theory has always been weak or non-existent, the cholesterol theory of heart disease has been accepted as fact by both the medical establishment and popular opinion for the past fifty years.

A leading researcher, George Mann, MD, formerly of Vanderbilt University author of Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense, stated, “The diet-heart hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of 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.”

This, if true, is shocking news. If the public has been deceived, so also have practicing doctors, who rarely evaluate the research for themselves but who instead put their trust in the guidelines issued by professional and governmental bodies who are supposed to be serving the public. When so much of our trust and our work have been invested in a theory, we physicians tend to cling to it even after the evidence has shown it to be wrong.

The public relations, advertising and commercial investment in support of the cholesterol theory are still very strong, so we will continue to hear a lot in the coming years about cholesterol as a cause of heart disease, and the supposed benefits of reducing that cholesterol with statin drugs. There are huge clinical trials among many thousands of patients showing some degree of heart attack prevention with statins*. While some challenge these benefits altogether, others suggest that the sources of the benefit lies outside cholesterol lowering, perhaps through reductions in inflammation—which in recent years has been identified as an important culprit in causing heart attacks.

As healthcare consumers, the more proactive we are in asking questions and in informing ourselves, the better our health will be. For more insight I highly recommend checking out Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD’s The Cholesterol Myths, (New Trends Publishing, Washington, D.C.), first published in the U.S. in 2000. In addition, emeritus professor of chemistry Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D. has recently written Statin Drugs-A Critical Review of the Risk/Benefit Clinical Research, which is on the internet at http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/cholesterol.htm. He points to clear evidence of a lack of connection between intake of cholesterol