Читать книгу Panic Nation - Stanley Feldman - Страница 28

The reason why everyone is so keen to lower cholesterol levels is that supporters of the hypothesis have decreed the following:

A high level of cholesterol causes premature heart disease.

A low level of cholesterol is caused by an underlying disease. It is the underlying disease that kills you, not the low cholesterol.

Therefore, if you lower the blood cholesterol level you will reduce the risk of heart disease, and you will not increase the risk of dying of any other disease.

FIGURE 3

This could be true, but it is worth reviewing some of the evidence that linked raised cholesterol levels to heart disease in the first place. Let’s begin with women.

Perhaps the largest single analysis of cholesterol levels, and death from cardiovascular disease (and other diseases), was published in 1992. This review included more than 100,000 women, aggregated from a number of different studies and countries.

To quote from the study, ‘The pooled estimated risk for total cardio-vascular death in women showed no trend across TC [total cholesterol] levels.’ In short, for more than 50 per cent of the world’s population – women – raised cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease.

Moving to men, it is true that under the age of 50 there does seem to be an association between raised cholesterol levels and heart disease. But, after that age, when more than 90 per cent of heart attacks happen, the association disappears.

In addition, those populations in the world with the highest rates of heart disease in younger men – including emigrant Asian Indians, Eastern Europeans, Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals – tend to have significantly lower cholesterol levels than the surrounding populations/countries.

Perhaps the single most directly contradictory fact is that, in young Japanese men, the average cholesterol level has risen over the last 20 or so years, yet the rate of heart disease has fallen. As with many facts in this area, if they don’t fit the cholesterol hypothesis, dismiss them.