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Researchers: High cholesterol does not cause heart disease

Denyse O'Leary
June 14, 2016
Culture, News, Science
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From Henry Bodkin at the UK Telegraph:

holesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly and trying to reduce it with drugs like statins is a waste of time, an international group of experts has claimed.

A review of research involving nearly 70,000 people found there was no link between what has traditionally been considered “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of over 60-year-olds from cardiovascular disease.

Published in the BMJ Open journal, the new study found that 92 percent of people with a high cholesterol level lived longer.More.

Hope no one’s career went south for being a “denialist.”

See also: The skinny on salt, veggie oil,, skim milk, whole foods. Nutrition science is nearly baseless but it rules.

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Comments
Switching to a diet where 70-80% of your calorific intake comes from fats generally improves your cholesterol. It's all about context and the western governments got it all wrong in the mid 20th century and then were fuelled and lobbied by the food giants who had committed to the low fat diet gospel. Like a lot of science sadly.Dr JDD
June 18, 2016
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rhampton7 hmmm. Well you invoke genetic issues. yet the point is about high cholerstral being dangerous or not. Is there a genetic predisposition? How would one know. If its there then no amount of watching ones food would make a difference. How does this work. the study questions something here that was usually said. HighC is not the big deal its made out to be. Possibly not important at all. by the way its old age that is more important then foods and genetics. In fact i say if we did not decay from old age the genetics possibly would be irrelevant.Robert Byers
June 15, 2016
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News, Your headline is a bit misleading. What the study found was that statins did little in the way of preventing heart disease in those elderly who had no signs of heart disease other than a high LDL. However LDL is absolutely a major factor in the build-up of plaque (the actual cause of heart disease) for those who will develop it. There's a genetic component to this. Those elderly given statins as a precaution most likely do not have a genetic predisposition to arterial damage and plaque. But I, like millions of others, do. So for us avoiding the foods that cause plaque (and high LDL levels) is essential to having a healthy life as long for as our bodies will allow. So why is this advice given to everyone? Because there is currently no way to preventively screen the arteries to see if there is any build up (I know of one start-up working on a commercial solution). So the only way to know for certain if you must avoid a high LDL is to have a heart attack and survive. That's a very expensive lesson, both literally and figuratively. In short, not everyone will benefit by changing their diet or taking a statin to avoid high cholesterol, but enough will that you do not want to suggest that avoiding high cholesterol is foolish advice for all of us or even most of us. See: Cholesterol and Artery Plaque Buildup rhampton7
June 14, 2016
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That would be big news. I don't know if its settled. It would show either some science was wrong in the past or this new science is wrong. So science can be wrong or the people doing it.Robert Byers
June 14, 2016
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