The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It [Paperback]

 

 

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Despite monumental efforts, cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of disability and death in many countries. The Great Cholesterol Con by the British physician Dr Malcolm Kendrick will be a very discomforting piece of literature for many of his learned colleagues. For in this groundbreaking work, Dr Kendrick shows painfully clearly that the medical establishment has been chasing the wrong enemy for over four decades, while the real villain has been staring them right into their faces.

In the first chapters, Dr Kendrick uses plain textbook biochemistry to show that there is no such thing as a `cholesterol level', that there is no thinkable way for the bogyman LDL to cause arterial plaque, that the idea that the `good' HDL could reverse plaques by breaking out incorporated LDL is a perfect example of magic thinking and that the ingestion of saturated fat can not have any influence at all on the amount of any lipoprotein floating around in the blood stream. He presents statistics from the WHO ("Not the pop band, but the World Health Organisation") that show that countries with the lowest saturated fat intake invariably have a much higher cardiovascular heart disease mortality than the countries with the highest saturated fat intake.

After describing in detail why statin therapy probably does more harm than good in the general population, Dr Kendrick explains the observation that people with inherited super high LDL levels (familial hypercholesteraemia or FH) indeed do have a substantially increased risk of dying of cardiovascular disease. In the land of FH, children aged ten die of massive heart attacks (although others live happily to be 104...) Even to those who clearly understand that the cholesterol hypothesis must be utter bonkers, made up in the minds of the worlds most gifted fairyologists, this has always been a hard one. For many doctors, it is the kind of Aha experience that overrules all the contradicting evidence. Children aged five get massive heart attacks, aha! Astatinate, astatinate! Aha!

To speak with Dr Kendrick: "And Aha to you too!" Once again, it's not what it looks like. Actually, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than so. To begin with, many individuals with FH not only have elevated levels of harmless LDL, they also have higher levels of lipoprotein a, most often called Lp(a). This is ordinary LDL, with a slightly different protein coat. Lp(a) - which is never measured in ordinary cholesterol tests - is the only cholesterol containing vehicle that actually is atherogenic. Extremely so. It is a potent clotting factor. Once incorporated in clots, it makes them as robust as concrete, keeping them out of reach for natural clot dissolving agents. Secondly, many hypercholesteraemiacs (but not all of them) suffer from a whole range of other clotting abnormalities. These people should be identified and subsequently treated for their life threatening clotting disorders, not for their elevated LDL levels.

Then what is it that really causes this dreaded `killer of the Western world'? Well, a huge part of the cause is in our brain, or more precisely, in our nervous system. Perceived stress - especially the prolonged stress brought on by social dislocation, lack of control, insufficient reward - disrupts the HPA-axis: an intricate and highly complicated set of hormonal feed back loops that allows us to properly deal with life's challenges. By constantly pushing the HPA-axis over the edge, we are effectively giving ourselves various degrees of `Cushing's Disease,' a malady characterised by chronic overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol. Cushing's Disease, invariably ruins the cardiovascular system. This is well documented. The sub clinical form - which is induced by such apparently unrelated stressors as smoking, cocaine or steroid abuse, discrimination and spinal cord injury - is no less dangerous. Kendrick explains exactly how this works. His model also for the first time explains the distribution of cardiovascular heart disease in time and place. Why did the Fins once have the world's highest heart disease mortality? Did anybody know that Finland endured the greatest forced relocation in the recent European history?

Once you have read the first lines, you will read the whole book, probably right on the spot. It is extremely information dense, so it definitely helps that Malcolm Kendrick is one of the better writers of our time, gifted with an ultra dry Scottish wit. I challenge everybody in the field - cardiologists, GP's, lipid researchers, health insurers, nutritionists and journalists - to carefully read this book and shoot at its flaws.

I expect a deafening silence. It requires a great deal of courage to admit that one plus one is two, when you have always maintained it is three.

(......)

This is the book to read when your doctor tells you your cholesterol is high. It is absolutley critical that you read this book before you agree to take statins or go on a low fat diet to correct your cholesterol levels. Kendrick has done his homework--the book is full of scientific studies--and you need to know the results. Cholesterol is NOT the killer we were led to believe. Statins do NOT help most men and do NOT help any women at all (in fact, they have serious side effects). The dietary fat = cholesterol = heart attack hypothesis (and it IS a hypothesis, not a fact) is completely wrong and not backed up by any scientific studies. If you read this and are hedging, wondering, "How could so many experts be wrong?", consider the following story as reported by Kendrick:

"In 1988, the Surgeon Generals office decided to gather together all the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease...Eleven years later, the project was killed."

Why? Kendrik explains that, in eleven years, the S.G's office could not find a shred of evidence to back up the hypothesis, and so shut the project down citing "additional expertise and staff resources" as the reason. That should tell you what a shaky foundation rests under the food pyramid, the low fat bandwagon, and the cholesterol = heart disease myth.

My only complaints about this book are some editing problems (errors and typos) and the lack of an index or bibliography. The information, however, is rock solid.

For more reading on the subject, try:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

This book explains that the cholesterol hypothesis is well and truly dead! It has been disproven, comprehensively. The current obsession with cholesterol levels and avoiding saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet is utterly misguided.

This book was very convincing on this point but if you'd like a far more in depth explanation and history I'd highly recommend 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Gary Taubes. This book is also impeccably referenced and argued.

This book explains that:

- High cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease
- A high fat diet, saturated or otherwise, does not affect blood cholesterol levels
- Saturated fats are not in any way damaging or dangerous
- Statins offer very little protection against heart disease and are not worth taking for most people, especially women
- Concepts of good and bad cholesterol are ridiculous and 'madcap'
- Statin drugs are the most profitable drug ever and make pharmaceutical companies billions and billions of dollars a year and this is why the cholesterol hypothesis continues to be so relentlessly promoted
- Matthias Rath (as supported by Linus Pauling) has part of the heart disease puzzle right when he talks about the role of low vitamin C levels in causing heart disease
- Statin drugs have many dangerous side-effects such as muscle pain, depression and progressive memory loss, death and hideous deformed babies when given during pregnancy
- Low cholesterol levels are bad for your health
- The war against cholesterol, using statins, comes close to a crime against humanity

I loved the comment that eggs are full of cholesterol 'because it takes a lot of cholesterol to make a healthy chicken' and that our brains need a good amount of cholesterol to function at all well. The idea of throwing away egg yolks and all their nutrition and eating just the whites, for supposed health reasons, is foolish in the extreme.

Overall I'd give this book and 8 or 9 out of 10. I had real problems with the quality of the last chapter however, and that chapter I would give a far lower rating, so I've compromised and given the book 3 out of 5.

I recommend skipping the last chapter entirely or taking it with a huge grain of salt and then reading excellent books on how to treat or avoid heart problems such as 'Detoxify or Die' or 'The Cholesterol Hoax' by Dr Sherry Rogers.

To say that heart disease is caused by emotional stress and to ignore homocysteine levels, omega 3 vs omaga 6 imbalances, low vitamin C levels (as per Linus Pauling and Matthias Rath's research), the huge toxic load of people today (heavy metals, plastics and pesticides etc.), trans fats, the moving away from traditional and nutrients-dense foods and mass nutrient deficiencies (including deficiencies of the major fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K plus magnesium) is not good scientific writing. Stress is but one factor of more than a dozen significant factors and certainly is nowhere near the top of that list. The idea that stress is only a problem now, in recent times, is also hard to take seriously.

On the plus side, this book had one of the best styles of writing I have ever found in a health book. The first few chapters in particular were very enjoyable to read and even made me laugh out loud a few times!

I just wish the very poorly written and argued conclusion chapter had been omitted form this book, it really lets down what is otherwise an excellent book.

This book is essential reading if you're an egg yolk, cholesterol or saturated fat dodger and especially if you're taking a statin drug. Don't fall for the statin drug hype and be very wary of any doctor that does!

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E.

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