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Cholesterol and Heart Disease
Typed manuscript, date unknown. Likely written circa 1981.
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Atherosclerotic heart disease, or more commonly called “coronary artery disease”, may be described as a disease of recent origin. It seemed to grow in frequency in the second and third decades of this century. Much thought was given to the cause for its beginnings, and because cholesterol is involved as part of our diet, much effort was expended to incriminate it in some way by controlling the cholesterol in the diet. Several very important factors, however, were overlooked:
- Without any cholesterol in the diet, the liver maintains the cholesterol level at a regulated value. It performs this synthesis from a simple two-carbon atom of acetate, which is a degradation product of both carbohydrate and fat that corresponds to alcohol.
- If there is as much as 0.15% of cholesterol in the diet, it causes a regulated reduction of cholesterol by 50% in the liver.
- This remarkable regulatory mechanism was recognized in the second decade and is published in a textbook called Applied Physiology by Benson Wright. It is pointed out that blood cholesterol is regularly and markedly raised in cases of thyroid deficiency and will be returned to normal by the supplementation of thyroid hormone.
- A magnificent analysis of one subject of atherosclerosis1 by Joseph Stambul shows that cholesterol is regulated in the body also by di-iodo-tyrosine, as well as the thyroid hormone.
- There is no evidence whatever to indicate that eliminating cholesterol in the diet would have any effect on coronary artery disease.
Despite all of these facts we are still bombarded with television advertising by the Fleischmann Company selling corn oil margarine with the implication that because it contains no cholesterol, it acts as a protector in heart disease. This same company makes almost all of their income from distilling whiskey, but they do not tell the public that whiskey does not have cholesterol either and is the most important element in the diet for promoting cholesterol manufactured in the liver. The F.D.A. is also remiss in allowing this company to keep the population in a quandary as to what it can eat and what it cannot, in protection against heart disease.
This is especially true of some of our finest foods–butter and eggs and liver particularly. They are banned because they have such a high cholesterol level but I have given twelve eggs a day to a woman patient who had been in intensive care for heart disease and was told that she could not touch any fat. On supportive vitamins and minerals to this large intake of eggs for four months, she became completely well and required no coronary drugs of any kind. After nine years she is in excellent health at 72, and was an invalid at 63.
The use of drugs to stop cholesterol synthesis in the liver is one of the worst therapeutic regimens that has ever been offered to the public. “Mer-29” killed a number of patients and was taken from the market. Similar drugs to replace it were not much better. Supportive vitamins and minerals, particularly iodine, di-iodo-tyrosine and thyroid have a better effect on the liver and the entire metabolism than any control of cholesterol synthesis.
With the permission of its author, Thomas N. James, M.D., I am reprinting his Presidential Address of November 1980 to the American Heart Association entitled: “Sure Cures, Quick Fixes and Easy Answers” (A Cautionary Tale About Coronary Disease). This is one of the most interesting articles ever written on this confused subject of cholesterol and coronary artery disease. As President of the American Heart Association and a physician who has spent much of his professional career dealing with the subject of heart disease, his paper should be distributed more widely to the public and not left only for the ears of those who attended the Scientific Session of the American Heart Association. I hereby give thanks to Dr. James for his permission to reprint this paper.
For those who would like to read further on this subject, I recommend the book entitled The Cholesterol Controversy by Edward R. Pinckney and his wife Cathy.
References Cited:
- Stambul, Joseph, M.D. Atherosclerosis (An Interpretation of Its Mechanism and A New Approach to Prevention and Treatment). Out of print, Reprinted in book of John A. Myers, M.D., Metabolic Aspects of Health (Nutritional Elements in Health and Disease). pp. 303-339, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, P.O. Box 2614, La Mesa, California, 92041.
- Wright, Samson, M.D., F.R.C.P. Applied Physiology. 8th Edition, 1945, pp. 730-1, Oxford Medical Publications, Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.
- Pinckney, Edward R., M.D., Pinckney, Cathy. The Cholesterol Controversy. Sherbourne Press, Los Angeles, California.