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Mr. Matt's Reviews > The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will
The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will
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As a middle aged man, I went to the doctor a couple of years ago and he read the riot act at me. My LDL was too high. Rather than blindly accept his recommendation to take statins to lower my cholesterol numbers, I decided to research how to improve my health naturally - without medications.
This book adds much needed perspective to the question that many middle aged people ask themselves - what do these cholesterol numbers really mean, and do I really need to take an expensive drug (from Big Pharma) to lower my cholesterol numbers? Long story short, cholesterol is a passenger rather than a driver of cardiovascular disease. Lower cholesterol via meds is a complete scam and likely counter-productive.
To be fair, these are pretty bold statements and I'm not a MD or PhD or researcher. But Bowden makes a pretty compelling case. First and foremost, the author lays out the scam that Big Pharma is playing on all of us. There is a critical difference between absolute and relative risk.
Suppose you track 100 middle aged men over 5 years. Two of them will have a heart attack. Now give those same 100 men a statin. Only one will have a heart attack. That's an amazing 50% reduction in heart attacks, right? Wrong. It's a 1% absolute reduction in risk. The pharmaceutical companies promote the relative risk reduction because it sounds AMAZING and they make loads of money selling statins; however, the absolute risk reduction is negligible given the side effects of statins. Worse yet, the absolute risk of type 2 diabetes goes up 5% (as I recall from the book) when you take statins! Do you really want to reduce your risk of heart disease by 1% and suffer all sorts of side effects (including muscle pain, weakness, ED, and more) only to increase your risk of diabetes by 5%? Hell no.
Also worth bringing up in that LDL is a blanket term that covers both 'good' LDL and 'dangerous' high-density LDL. Without understanding the nature of the LDL in a particular person's blood, you have no idea of whether or not that LDL is healthy or unhealthy.
At the end of the day, LDL is a passenger. If you have high triglycerides, low HDL, and other markers of cardiovascular/metabolic disease, you need to attack the root cause: inflammation. The standard American diet (high simple carbohydrates, vegetable oils, factory farmed meats and dairy) is causing chronic inflammation and drives insulin resistance in the body.
The answer is redonkulously simple: eat real food. Eat food that your great grandparents would've recognized as food. If it's in a box, has plastic wrapping, and so on, it is probably not food. It's probably a food product.
Three stars out of five. The book expanded my knowledge of cholesterol and exposed the scam that Big Pharma is pulling on all of us, but it was a book that I was happy to put down in the end. Lots of information and not quite as readable as I had hoped for.
This book adds much needed perspective to the question that many middle aged people ask themselves - what do these cholesterol numbers really mean, and do I really need to take an expensive drug (from Big Pharma) to lower my cholesterol numbers? Long story short, cholesterol is a passenger rather than a driver of cardiovascular disease. Lower cholesterol via meds is a complete scam and likely counter-productive.
To be fair, these are pretty bold statements and I'm not a MD or PhD or researcher. But Bowden makes a pretty compelling case. First and foremost, the author lays out the scam that Big Pharma is playing on all of us. There is a critical difference between absolute and relative risk.
Suppose you track 100 middle aged men over 5 years. Two of them will have a heart attack. Now give those same 100 men a statin. Only one will have a heart attack. That's an amazing 50% reduction in heart attacks, right? Wrong. It's a 1% absolute reduction in risk. The pharmaceutical companies promote the relative risk reduction because it sounds AMAZING and they make loads of money selling statins; however, the absolute risk reduction is negligible given the side effects of statins. Worse yet, the absolute risk of type 2 diabetes goes up 5% (as I recall from the book) when you take statins! Do you really want to reduce your risk of heart disease by 1% and suffer all sorts of side effects (including muscle pain, weakness, ED, and more) only to increase your risk of diabetes by 5%? Hell no.
Also worth bringing up in that LDL is a blanket term that covers both 'good' LDL and 'dangerous' high-density LDL. Without understanding the nature of the LDL in a particular person's blood, you have no idea of whether or not that LDL is healthy or unhealthy.
At the end of the day, LDL is a passenger. If you have high triglycerides, low HDL, and other markers of cardiovascular/metabolic disease, you need to attack the root cause: inflammation. The standard American diet (high simple carbohydrates, vegetable oils, factory farmed meats and dairy) is causing chronic inflammation and drives insulin resistance in the body.
The answer is redonkulously simple: eat real food. Eat food that your great grandparents would've recognized as food. If it's in a box, has plastic wrapping, and so on, it is probably not food. It's probably a food product.
Three stars out of five. The book expanded my knowledge of cholesterol and exposed the scam that Big Pharma is pulling on all of us, but it was a book that I was happy to put down in the end. Lots of information and not quite as readable as I had hoped for.
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