Cholesterol: A Curse or a Life Saver?

A lot of what you are going to read here lends itself to too much controversy and would, I am sure, be highly criticized by a good part of the medical profession and all of the pharmaceutical companies that make cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, my experience in the nutritional field and study of research published in very reliable medical journals, corroborates my thinking on this subject. I think you should know what I believe to be the truth.

I want to tell you a couple of stories to preface my remarks. The first happened some twenty or so years ago. One of the leading pharmaceutical companies came out with a new discovery, a cholesterol- lowering drug that was touted to be the cure-all for heart problems and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). It was given a broad reception in the medical community. Doctors were so brainwashed by the drug company that they immediately began prescribing the drug to many of their patients. The drug was called “Mer – 29”. Well, to make a long and sad story short, “Mer – 29” had been on the market only a very short time (about six months to a year as I remember), when many of these patients began to experience serious visual problems and general systemic problems from altered liver function. The trouble was traced to the drug “Mer – 29”, and it was immediately removed from the market. Until the last few years, very little was heard about the necessity to lower cholesterol.

Now for the second story. A few years ago when the word “cholesterol” was still associated with good food and considered a valuable component of good health, the editor of the Wall Street Journal interviewed the president of one of the large drug companies. During their conversation, the editor was told that this drug company (and I will paraphrase his remarks) had discovered a wonderful new drug that would lower cholesterol levels, but the big problem was that they didn’t have a market for it! Well, I’ll bet you can guess the rest of the story. Multimillions of dollars have been spent in “educating” the medical profession, the FDA, the AMA, and the general public that cholesterol is the culprit causing heart attacks and that these new $2 pills would be the answer. Now you have seen the results of this massive advertising campaign. Doctors all over the country are putting patients on these new cholesterol-lowering drugs. There are several of them now. Many companies have gotten into the act.

The two stories sound very similar, don’t they? The only difference is that the end of the second story has not yet been written. The rest of the story is now beginning to emerge after these drugs have been used for a few years. The harm that these drugs cause is being seen more and more and is being reported in some of our medical journals. I will quote some of them after I give you a little more information on cholesterol.

You are being led to believe that cholesterol is a bad word and that if you don’t know “your number” you may be in danger of dying an early death. What you aren’t being told is that “your number” can change very significantly from day to day or even hour to hour depending on many independent factors such as the time of day, fatigue, stress, food intake, and state of mind. You may be treated for a high cholesterol level which might not have been high if it had been taken at a different time or under different circumstances. I don’t know “my number.” I have no fear of cholesterol. If cholesterol is the real cause of heart attacks, why is it that more than 50 percent of heart attack victims have normal cholesterol levels? Also, if this cholesterol theory (and that’s all it is – a theory) is true, how can it be that millions of people in their seventies and eighties have cholesterol readings above 250 and have no signs of arteriosclerosis?

Cholesterol is an absolutely essential substance in the body. The cell membranes of all the trillions of cells in the body are made of cholesterol. The hormones in our bodies are made of cholesterol. Much of our energy is converted from cholesterol. All the nerve sheaths are made of cholesterol. It is not true that the lower the cholesterol, the healthier the person. In fact, as you will read later in this article, lowering cholesterol by artificial means such as drugs, is causing a higher mortality rate than among those not treated! You don’t read this in your newspapers or hear it from your friendly television doctors who just may have a vested interest in what they tell you.

The human body has to have an adequate amount of cholesterol to be healthy. If you don’t eat it in such good foods as eggs, liver, and butter, your liver will manufacture it. Except in rare cases, which are attributed to genetic abnormalities, our bodies have an automatic mechanism in the liver that regulates the cholesterol level of the blood at any given time. Your cholesterol level may fluctuate as much as 50 percent or more depending on the amount of physical and mental stress you are under at the time your blood is drawn.

One of the principal functions of cholesterol is to protect our bodies during periods of stress. We may be doing the wrong thing to artificially lower our cholesterol level – nature may have elevated it for a reason. To illustrate this point, experiments have been done on racecar drivers where their cholesterol levels were checked before and after a big race.

The “before” levels could be perfectly normal, but the “after” readings were found to be increased by as much as 100 percent. The abnormal readings returned to normal when the unusual stress factor was no longer present.

Linus Pauling, biochemist and two-time Nobel prize winner, proved in his extensive research on this subject that high cholesterol levels of themselves are not harmful to health. It is only when the cholesterol sticks to the blood vessel walls that it becomes a problem. He also showed that it is the lack of certain nutrients that cause the vessel walls to become roughened and cracked so that the cholesterol can stick to the damaged vessel. As long as the vessel walls are slick and smooth, there can be no accumulation of cholesterol to cause clogging of the vessels and the consequent devastating effects.

Elevated cholesterol is merely a symptom of much deeper metabolic problems and should not be viewed as a cause. However, as is usual, the medical profession has been taught to treat symptoms and not causes. Hence all the hubbub over cholesterol levels. We have fallen into the trap of following the crowd, which is, many times, the wrong thing to do. Many physicians, like the drug companies, have been encouraging “cholesterol screenings”, many of which have been proven to be as much as 50 percent inaccurate! A patient came into my office a few months ago who had been to a “free screening” at a local mall. She was told that her cholesterol level was 330 and that she should see her doctor immediately. She did as she was instructed, but before getting too excited, we did another test in a reliable laboratory and found the true reading to be 177. Before getting too paranoid about all the cholesterol propaganda, think about the economics of the situation.

One of the most well-known cardiologists of my time, Paul Dudley White (now deceased) said that before the turn of the century such things as heart attacks were virtually unknown. Yet, think of all the eggs, meat, and natural fats our forefathers ate. In the early part of this century, the average amount of sugar consumed per person was less than 20 pounds per year. This has gradually increased over the years until it is now about 120 pounds per person per year. In the early 1900s, there was almost no refining of flour, which removes most of its nutrients. Today, almost all flour is refined.

At the turn of the century, we were still eating natural fat foods. Now most of the fats we are ingesting are partially hydrogenated “low fat” foods, which are being touted as better for us but in reality are killing us. Do we need to look further for the answers to the heart attack epidemic of today? Vitamins “A”, “B”, “C”, and “E” are known to protect against heart attacks. Many minerals like magnesium, calcium, and selenium have also been proven to protect, and yet this information has been largely withheld from the public. We must get back to more normal eating habits if we are to overcome the chronic diseases that plague us today!

The doctor’s “drug bible” is the Physicians Desk Reference. It contains complete drug information on all drugs on the market and is published annually. If you read the dangers, possible dangers, and precautions for most of the drugs being dispensed today, you would quake in your boots. Let me quote just a little bit about one of the major cholesterol-lowering drugs on the market. I will not disclose the name of the particular drug since the warnings for all of them are about the same. Brand X has been shown to reduce both normal and elevate LDL cholesterol concentrations. The effect of Brand X induced changes in lipoprotein levels, including reduction of serum cholesterol, on cardiovascular morbidity or mortality has not been established.

Here we have a major industry, which makes billions of dollars from the sale of these drugs, telling physicians that it hasn’t been proven to do any good. Now, isn’t that dandy? It then goes on to warn physicians to do frequent liver tests to determine possible damage and that the damage caused may be irreversible. There are two pages of warnings and dangers for this particular drug, yet it is being used in wholesale quantities with very little attention to the warnings.

The October 1992 issue of Medical World News had a three-page article entitled “Lipid Controversy Builds Up”. In it, some of the following things were written.

“It has long been known that too much cholesterol is not healthy for the heart; it now appears that too little cholesterol can have equally deleterious effects on the body’s organs. Researchers have known since 1970 that low cholesterol was linked to an increase in hemorrhagic stroke, a finding first observed by the Japanese investigators who noticed a high rate of cerebral hemorrhage and low blood cholesterol in their country. Those with low cholesterol had two times the risk of dying of cerebral hemorrhage, five times the risk of dying from alcoholism, three times the risk of dying from liver cancer, and twice the risk of committing suicide. There is, however, a growing belief that the use of lipid-lowering drugs in low-risk populations whose only risk factor is high cholesterol may be ill advised.”

Well, what do you know about that?

The September 10, 1992, issue of Medical Tribune (now in its 40th year of publication) said:

“There is no argument that an association between very low cholesterols and non-cardiac mortality exists”. Further in the article it says: “Low cholesterol levels are associated with up to a four-fold greater risk of chronic obstructive lung disease.”

In the October 1992 issue of Hippocrates, a medical journal, an article states:

“The basic health message holds true: if someone is eating a good diet, to heck with cholesterol.” Those are my sentiments exactly; however, you must know what constitutes a “good diet.”

Please don’t get the idea that I think unusually high cholesterol levels are normal or without harm. What I am trying to impress on you is that these levels are the result of other metabolic dysfunctions that need to be corrected and that cholesterol is merely taking the rap.

I never miss a chance to eat eggs, liver, nuts, and many of the other foods containing natural fats – along with plenty of the other good foods, of course-and plenty of vitamins and minerals. Maybe that is why I can still work and play sixteen hours a day and have no aches and pains. Think about it.

One piece of good news was published recently in a medical journal. Those who eat a handful of nuts daily have half the risk of heart attacks as those who don’t. How can that be? Nuts contain fat, and current propaganda is telling us that fat is bad for our hearts. My comment would be: of course nuts are good for us. They contain lots of good, essential fatty acids and a lot of magnesium and vitamin “B6”.

Reprinted with permission from “Letters to My Patients” by Harlan O. L. Wright, D. O. Available from PPNF in CD format (see order page).