A Basement Discovery

undermines decades of crap dietary advice:

Analyzing the reams of old records, Ramsden and his team found, in line with the “diet-heart hypothesis,” that substituting vegetable oils lowered total blood cholesterol levels, by an average of 14 percent.

But that lowered cholesterol did not help people live longer. Instead, the lower cholesterol fell, the higher the risk of dying: 22 percent higher for every 30-point fall. Nor did the corn-oil group have less atherosclerosis or fewer heart attacks.

I’m scheduling a follow up with my cardiologist. I’m guessing that he’ll probably want to put me on statins, despite my clean bill of health from my angio scan, because my total cholesterol is a little over 240. I’ll tell him to take a hike.

13 thoughts on “A Basement Discovery”

      1. Now wait a minute. Do you want to drag through a long life of social shame over an embarrassing high cholesterol level, or die early with a magnificently low cholesterol level that will be proudly mentioned in your eulogy and win praise from all the assembled mourners?

        Yes, it’s better to die like a young Spartan warrior defending a salad than scandalizing your great great grand kids by eating an entire bag of pork rinds in front of them. Why, if you compare the life time planet-destroying CO2 emissions of a tofu-eating vegan who dies young to a…

        [ snips eight pages white liberal guilt ]

        … you can see how it’s up to all of us to eat responsibly and die at a proper age, before we overburden the planet.

  1. Hiking is too good for him. Spend a minute trying to red pill on the new nutrition science. However, “Upton Sinclair Quotes
    It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”

  2. One aspect of this that I find interesting is that studies such as this contradict the vegitables-are-better theorem, which is where vegetarianism got its start, as did the even more extreme veganisim (which really ought to be classified as what it is, an eating disorder).

    So, like much else the Left is selling, vegetarianism and veganisim are utter bunk, and are in fact less healthy, not more healthy.

    There are those who say that the Left does nothing well. I disagree; they are superb at being consistently wrong.

    1. From the linked article: “It’s possible, Bob Frantz said, that his father’s team was discouraged by the failure to find a heart benefit from replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils.”
      It appears that the study did not confirm the hypothesis they wanted and so did not get published.

  3. I’m scheduling a follow up with my cardiologist. I’m guessing that he’ll probably want to put me on statins, despite my clean bill of health from my angio scan, because my total cholesterol is a little over 240. I’ll tell him to take a hike.

    Just out of curiosity, what is the point of seeing a cardiologist, or any other professional as far as that goes, if you’re just going to ignore their advice?

    1. To see what the current state of advice is? I wouldn’t say that I am “ignoring” it, so much as getting input on which to decide what I should do.

      Do you think that you should blindly follow the advice of an MD?

  4. I’d say statins have pretty much proven that the cholesterol hypothesis was nonsense from the start. Massive reduction in cholesterol, but no significant reduction in cardiovascular problems.

  5. Its the liver that generates cholesterol and that function is under the influence of insulin; the higher the insulin, the higher the cholesterol. Hyperinsulinism is probably the root cause of many diseases including cardiovascular ones, and that when referencing cholesterol levels, cholesterol may actually be a surrogate for insulin, the real culprit. Insulin is produced when eating carbohydrates, and the ones with high glycemic indexes are the one to avoid. Those include grains, potatoes, corn, rice, and oranges, among others.

  6. Another important factor is vitamin C intake. The minimum daily requirement was established based on what it took to prevent scurvy. But it has been argued that scurvy is the ultimate breakdown of the body when deprived of vitamin C. There are other, not so obvious, issues that arise from low levels of vitamin C. These include hardening of the arteries. One of the things that vitamin C contributes to is maintaining the flexibility of the arterial walls. When the flexibility is lost, the arteries become hard, and under the strain of blood pressure, they tend to crack. The body responds by patching the cracks with (guess what) cholesterol plaques. It has been recommended that vitamin C should be taken in multiple gram (not milligram) amounts daily (3-6 g).

    This web site promoting Pauling Therapy has a pretty good summary of what I have read from other sources. The information makes sense to me. (However, I cannot vouch for what they may be selling).

  7. My GP tells me that at my age, it is recommended to go on statins even if my cholesterol is good.

    Which it is.

    I refused.

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