Читать книгу Panic Nation - Stanley Feldman - Страница 27

Before looking at the connection between blood cholesterol levels and heart disease, I think it is worth highlighting a critically important – remarkably unheralded – fact: after the age of 50, the lower your cholesterol level, the lower your life expectancy. Perhaps even more important than this is the fact that a falling cholesterol level sharply increases the risk of dying, of anything, including heart disease.

The dangers of a low cholesterol level were highlighted by a major long-term study of men living in Honolulu: ‘Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases the risk of death.’

The danger of a falling cholesterol level was first discovered (somewhat ironically) in the Framingham study: ‘There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years [of the study] and mortality over the following 18 years.’

It seems almost unbelievable that warnings about the dangers of a high cholesterol level rain down every day, when the reality is that a low cholesterol level is much more dangerous than a high level.

Given this, why would anyone want to lower the cholesterol level? On the face of it, it would make more sense to take cholesterol-raising drugs. Especially after the age of 50.