What’s good, bad or does anyone care anymore about cholesterol?
This is a confusing topic for many. For over 30 years Americans have been told that high cholesterol means you are going to die of a heart attack.
That’s all we have heard in the media and from our government.
But you may have noticed that there isn’t as much talk about it. It’s because they were wrong.
But like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the medical establishment just won’t come out and admit that everything they have been telling us for so long has just not stood up to the data.
So, let’s try to make sense of what we know about cholesterol and what numbers we really should be paying attention to.
EVERY CELL HAS CHOLESTEROL
First of all, cholesterol is vital. It is in every cell of your body.
It is not coming from the food you eat; it is manufactured in the liver. It’s what allows us to use fat for energy and regulates our hormones in our body.
The confusion comes when discussing the carriers of cholesterol – lipid (fat) proteins called HDL or LDL.
High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) – This is what the body uses to take fat from the blood and drop it in the liver. This is what is often called the “good cholesterol.”
Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) – A carrier protein that transports important chemicals to every cell of your body. It’s what transports such vital material like vitamin D. It was thought that this is the so-called bad cholesterol, but we will see that is not true.
HDL and LDL are not fats. They are proteins. But we measure them because they carry around fat with them. They are transporters.
What is particularly frustrating is that because of the mistaken belief that cholesterol was responsible for heart attacks, it was demonized instead of appreciated for the many good things it does for the body.
WHAT LDL DOES THAT IS GOOD AND VITAL
The demonized LDL performs many vital roles for your body. Your brain needs it. It is the raw material that your body uses to manufacture vitamin D from the sun, and vital hormones such as cortisol, estrogen, progesterone as well as testosterone.
Again, LDL is not cholesterol…it is a protein.
When you drop it too much using drugs such as Statins, you actually create serious brain problems.
The prestigious journal “Neurology” in 2014 showed that big pharma’s war on LDL is actually hurting brain health.
Their conclusion:
WHO PROFITS?
The most profitable drugs of all time have been statins which reduce LDLs. There are no drugs which increase the amount of HDLs.
The slick marketing campaigns of the statin manufacturers kept pushing the idea that if everyone took a statin then it would reduce plaque in the heart and reduce your chance for a heart attack.
But when scientists started analyzing this data and not reading the marketing materials, it became clear that the reduced heart attack risk was negligible. And to make it worse, the side effects were often severe and permanent.
(For more about the statin fraud, see this earlier article in Freedom Health News.)
THE TRUTH COMES OUT
In 2016, a study examined the claim that high LDLs lead to heart attacks. And they found no link.
You will notice that in all the “mainstream” medical journals, they will always say “LDL is thought to promote heart disease,” but they will never say “IT CAUSES IT.” Why? Because they can’t. It’s not provable truth. It is a theory.
And it is a theory that may be causing other problems.
We will be following up with this subject as we look into other medical myths. But hopefully this may explain why your doctor isn’t pushing you to lower your cholesterol as much he or she used to.
