I have been studying cholesterol for the past several months and this newsletter is compilation of the statements made by sources that I found and trust. This is NOT meant to be medical advice nor should it be construed as such. It is meant to give you the information you need to know about cholesterol in order to do your own research and make an informed decision about your own healthcare. I am grappling with this decision myself so it is important to me.
My purpose here is NOT to plagiarize. My purpose is to condense the source material into a 15 minute read. You can find the sources at the end of this newsletter and you can continue your own research.
What is cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a basic raw material made by your liver, brain and almost every cell in your body. Cholesterol is a fatty substance produced by your liver and found in certain foods. Cholesterol is a hormone factory. Cholesterol is important for the immune system. We make vitamin D from cholesterol. Understanding the functions of cholesterol is important to us all.
Enzymes convert cholesterol into Vitamin D, sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) and stress hormones. Cholesterol is used by the body to synthesize bile acids and digest food.
Cholesterol is an essential component of all the cell membranes in the body and makes up about 30 percent of the lipid bilayer. Cholesterol is essential to every cell in the body.
The liver makes cholesterol when we don’t get enough from food; the liver makes about 75 percent to 80 percent of our cholesterol, with the other 20 percent coming from food.
The brain is rich in cholesterol and accounts for a quarter of all the cholesterol we have in our bodies. The fatty myelin sheath that coats every nerve cell and fiber depends on cholesterol to communicate. When cholesterol is lowered, damage to cognition often follows.
Cholesterol also plays a big role in helping fight bacteria and infections. For example, you need cholesterol to manufacture vitamin D and a vitamin D deficiency (particularly in the elderly) is one of the reasons so many people get sick. There is compelling research that links less than optimal levels of vitamin D with heart disease, poor physical performance, osteoporosis, depression, cancer, difficulty in losing weight, and even all-cause mortality.
Each cell in the body, especially brain cells, are dependent on cholesterol for their health and optimal function.
Each cell in the body dies naturally over a 1 year time span and new cells are created to replace dying cells. This process of building new healthy cells to replace old dying cells depends on adequate supplies of cholesterol. When cell damage occurs - cholesterol is delivered to that damaged area, to execute the repair.
If a person is toxic and leads an unhealthy lifestyle they will encounter accelerated cell damage and death. Higher cholesterol levels are therefore needed to keep replacing dying cells in unhealthy people. Without extra cholesterol in the blood, so new cells can be produced, a person who has accelerated cell death will start dying very quickly.
Cholesterol hates water so it can’t travel by itself in the bloodstream. It needs to be carried to get from point A to point B. The “boats” that carry cholesterol (along with other things) are called lipoproteins.
Lipoproteins are generally characterized according to their density. Going from lowest to highest they are:
chylomicrons: very large particles that carry fat absorbed from the intestine
very low density lipoprotein (VLDL): which carry mostly triglycerides
Intermediate density lipoprotein (IDL): which carry a mixture of cholesterol esters and triglycerides
Low density lipoprotein (LDL): which are the major blood cholesterol carriers
High density lipoprotein (HDL): which carry cholesterol back to the liver to be either excreted or used to synthesize other molecules.
How is cholesterol measured?
The test they use today to measure cholesterol was invented in the 1960s and many honest doctors consider it obsolete in predicting anything substantive. Usually your doctor will give you four numbers - your total cholesterol, your LDL, your HDL and your triglycerides.
In my case - my numbers are 261 TOTAL, 174 LDL, 67 HDL, 104 TG. My BMI is 21, my glucose is 99, my vitals and CBC are normal, and my BP averages 120/74. I have had high cholesterol since my 20s. I did a coronary calcium test 10 years ago and the score was 4.9.
Based on the cholesterol guidelines and standards for 2024, my total cholesterol is high, my LDL cholesterol is high, my HDL cholesterol is great and my triglycerides are great.
Before the 1980s, doctors recommended that their patients have a total cholesterol of under 300. Therefore, my total cholesterol number of 261 would have been flagged as just fine. Things have changed. Goals have changed. Why?
Several doctors have said that the single most important metric to predict heart disease and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) is how many lipoprotein boats there are in the water. The boats matter - not the cargo. If there are too many boats in the water - the chance of an accident in the bloodstream is greater - which involves the development of plaque which is the most common cause of arteriosclerosis and the most likely to kill you.
You can find that number through a test called the NMR Lipo-Profile - which is rarely done.
While it is possible to measure LDL directly, it is most often calculated using a formula called the Friedewald formula. Although the formula is generally speaking quite accurate, it can be thrown off when triglyceride levels are very high. The issue with LDL is that they are measuring the concentration of LDL in the blood - not the actual number of particles. There is in fact good evidence that the number of particles matters more than the LDL number: having a large number of small particles is worse than having a small number of large particles.
Also, many doctors say that the ratio of triglycerides to HDL is one of the best predictors of heart disease and insulin resistance - and is much more meaningful than the total numbers that we are given. You want your triglycerides to HDL ratio to be around 2 or less. (For example, my triglycerides are 104 and my HDL is 67 - so my ratio is 104/67 = 1.55)
There are 13 different kinds of boats floating around in the bloodstream (not just HDL and LDL) and some are more likely to cause artery blockage than others.
How does this blockage happen? It all starts with an irritant. It could be a toxin. It could be cigarette smoke. It could be high blood pressure - which is banging the boats against the wall. Arterial walls expand and contract - they respond to the rhythm of the heart and a pulsing of blood. The innermost layer of the artery walls is only one-cell thick and called the endothelium. It’s this layer that gets damaged and causes heart disease.
There is a sub-class of cholesterol molecules (that isn’t usually tested for) that spikes in people with type 2 diabetes and the elderly called the MGmin. It’s created by a process called glycation. Glycation happens when there’s too much sugar in the bloodstream.
Sugar causes rogue small LDL molecules to park in the damaged walls where they don’t belong. They become squatters and cause inflammation and oxidation. If you’ve seen rust on metal - you’ve seen oxidation.
The immune system mounts an attack on these rogue particles with macrophages (like little pac-men) that gobble up the illegally parked particles to get rid of them. Then the muscle cells put a scab over the wound and add some calcium to harden it. This “scab” is called plaque and it can cause a narrowing, a blockage or a rupture.
Plaques contain cholesterol crystals. These crystals can only form from free cholesterol, something contained within red blood cells, but not the “LDL” cholesterol that circulates in the bloodstream (contained within lipoproteins). Likewise, much of the cholesterol found in atherosclerotic plaques is free cholesterol.
To solve this problem - it seems obvious that we need to reduce toxins and irritants that create this damage and the problems to begin with. However, the quick fix now appears to be to simply lower ALL cholesterol levels. Is that the wise approach for the human body? Let’s examine that.
How does cholesterol help or harm the body?
How did cholesterol (and saturated fat) come to be branded as the twin demons of heart disease in the first place? In 1953, a public health scientist named Ancel Benjamin Keys, launched a study called the Seven Countries Study - the first major international study investigating the links between diet, lifestyle, and heart disease. He was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1961.
He said his study confirmed that saturated fat caused heart disease. Critics say his study was flawed as he skewed the sample base and that his study actually showed that SUGAR, not saturated fat, was the real killer and he conveniently ignored that.
Food companies rushed to create low-fat versions of every food imaginable and replaced the fat with tons of sugar and processed carbohydrates. Butter was demonized and replaced with trans fat margarine. Remember that? I do.
80% of trans fats in the American diet today comes from factory-produced partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Obesity and diabetes skyrocketed in America after this change to a high-carb diet.
Heart disease deaths have declined slightly but even the CDC says that’s due to better treatment for heart attacks - and because so many people stopped smoking - and it has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.
CDC: Several factors contributed to the decline in heart disease risk. In 1964, the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health linked smoking and lung cancer, and a later report linked smoking with the risk of heart attack and stroke, noting that smokers had about twice the risk of dying from heart disease than lifetime nonsmokers. From 1980 to 2000, approximately half of the decline in heart disease death was attributed to improved treatment after acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina, secondary prevention post-myocardial infarction, treatment of heart failure, and revascularization for chronic angina.
Many of the general dietary guidelines accepted and promoted by the Government & the major health organizations are directly related to the cholesterol and saturated fat phobia started by Ancel Keys. Cholesterol-mania has caused Americans to focus on a molecule with a marginal relationship to heart disease while ignoring the real causes of heart disease.
One, don’t smoke. Two, drink alcohol in moderation. Three, engage in moderate-to-vigorous exercise for at least half an hour a day on average. Four, maintain a healthy weight (BMI under 25). Five, eat a wholesome, low-glycemic (low-sugar) diet with plenty of omega-3 fats and fiber. Where’s the part about lowering cholesterol? It’s not there.
What causes heart disease then?
Sugar is a far greater danger to your heart than fat ever was. Sugar is directly responsible for one of the most damaging processes in the body, something called glycation. Glycation is what happens when sticky sugar molecules glom onto structures where they don’t belong, essentially gumming up the works. What does this have to do with cholesterol and heart disease? Everything.
One primary way in which LDL cholesterol gets damaged in the bloodstream so it has to park itself is through oxidative stress generated by free radicals.
Free radicals can originate from processed food, alcohol, pesticides, pollution and smoking and damage DNA, proteins, and lipids, leading to cellular dysfunction and contributing to diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and neurodegenerative conditions.
Antioxidants work by donating electrons to free radicals, thereby neutralizing them and preventing damage. This donation stabilizes the free radicals, allowing them to function without causing harm.
Can you guess the other way it gets damaged? Glycation. Sugar is at the scene of several crimes, all related to heart disease.
A 1992 study examined the blood work of healthy centenarians in an effort to find out whether there were any commonalities among the members of this unusually long-lived demographic. It found three: low triglycerides, high HDL cholesterol, and low fasting insulin. Your diet affects two of these blood measures – triglycerides and fasting insulin – and both measures will fall like a rock when you reduce or eliminate sugar and processed carbs in your diet.
There’s no political lobby for “fat” - but there’s a powerful one for sugar. Think about that.
In 2003, the World Health Organization published a conservative, reasonable report called Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. In it, the WHO made a statement that it would be a good idea for people to derive no more that 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars. The report suggested that people could lower their risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease simply by curbing some of the sugar they were consuming. This study was pretty much buried.
In humans, a high-fructose diet raises triglycerides almost instantly. Fructose found in whole foods, such as in fruits, however, is a different story. There’s not all that much fructose in, for example, an apple. But fructose extracted from fruit, concentrated into a syrup, and then inserted into practically every food we buy at the supermarket, that’s a whole different animal. If you want a bunch of lab animals to become insulin resistant, all you have to do is feed them fructose.
Doctors have known for decades that chronic hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) increases the risk of atherosclerosis, which leads to heart attacks and strokes, and weakens immunity against infectious diseases. Carbs in general stimulate hormones that promote weight gain; fat does not.
What are statins?
Statins are a class of lipid-lowering medications widely used to inhibit cholesterol production by blocking the action of the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase in the liver.
Most doctors today will automatically recommend you take a statin drug if your cholesterol numbers are high. I know - because the last four have done so to me and I have resisted. Many of the doctors that I studied for this newsletter USED to feel exactly the same and they bought into the cholesterol-mania - but they watched their own patients with LOW cholesterol still get heart attacks and suffer debilitating side effects. So they started questioning everything. Just like me.
How big is the market for statins?
Each year they sell more than $33 BILLION worth of statins and that is expected to grow 5.9% a year to $47 BILLION by 2030. HUGE.
The global pharmaceutical industry has experienced significant growth during the past two decades, with revenues totaling about $1.5 TRILLION in 2022.
The Statins Market in 2024 is estimated at $33.3 BILLION which exceeds the market for the leading cancer drug Keytruda ($25 BILLION) - the leading covid vaccine ($15.3 BILLION) - the leading arthritis drug Humira ($14.4 BILLION) and the diabetes and weight loss drug Ozempic ($13.9 BILLION.)
Over 92 million people—35 percent of the U.S. population—are taking statin drugs. This number is a threefold increase from the previous decade. By 2020, the United States ranked sixth in the world in per capita statin use.
Before the introduction of statins, fibrates were the class of drugs used to lower cholesterol.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan had a sudden MASSIVE drop in cholesterol after the FDA approved the use of statins in America. He was an early guinea pig for statins. In 1990, he left office and 4 years later, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Do I think one had to do with the other? I don’t believe in coincidences.
Did you know that President Bill Clinton was also prescribed a daily statin drug called Zocor to lower his total cholesterol level in January 2001 when he left the White House? His total cholesterol back then was 233 and he weighed 216 pounds.
Doctors used to consider total cholesterol of under 300 normal. It wasn't until the invention of statins that the guideline was lowered to under 200. So, by the new guidelines, Bill Clinton's cholesterol number was deemed high.
After being on statins for 3 years, in January 2004, Clinton began the South Beach Diet and began working out strenuously with a "German man." He lost 35 pounds that year, he felt better, his cholesterol dropped and he stopped taking statins.
What happened next? He had a heart attack and an emergency quadruple-bypass operation.
They blamed his heart attack on the fact that he stopped taking statins and never mentioned he had lost 15% of his body weight and started working out vigorously at the same time. After his heart-attack, he went BACK on statins for 6 years.
What happened then? In February 2010, Clinton had another heart attack and needed emergency surgery. Doctors inserted two stents into one of his coronary arteries.
So, three years of statins did nothing to stop the first heart attack and six more years of statins did nothing to prevent ANOTHER heart attack.
In 2011, Clinton said he had become a vegan and had lost more than 20 pounds.
Yet, Big Pharma credits statins with saving Bill Clinton's life and has used his story to sell millions on statins.
How do Statins work?
Statin drugs target and inhibit the enzyme necessary to form cholesterol. The enzyme is HMG CoA reductase (3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase) in the blood and the liver. Without this enzyme, we cannot produce cholesterol. Statin drugs also cause the loss of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and is the most likely explanation for the frequent muscle pain and fatigue suffered by those taking statins. Statins are such a hard-to-tolerate class of drug that 75 percent of people prescribed statins no longer take them a year later.
What are some studies you should look at?
The Lyon Diet Heart Study (605 sick men & women) and the Nurses Health study (120,000 females) found heart attacks were due to five factors - none of them being cholesterol.
Don’t smoke, drink in moderation, exercise 30 minutes plus a day, maintain a healthy weight (BMI of under 25) and eat a lower sugar diet with plenty of omega-3 fats and fiber.
Recently an unpublished 56 month randomized study of 9,423 adults living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home found that replacing half of the animal (saturated) fats they ate with vegetable oil (e.g., corn oil) lowered their cholesterol, but for every 30 points it dropped, their risk of death increased by 22 percent. So, as you can imagine, it was never published.
The author who unearthed that study also discovered another (unpublished) study from the 1970s of 458 Australians, which found that replacing some of their saturated fat with vegetable oils increased their risk of dying by 17.6%.
Changes in the risk model presented by the American Heart Association in November 2023 may actually translate into new guidelines for prescribing statins. The new risk model could mean 40% less Americans would be prescribed statins.
To reach this conclusion, published in a JAMA Internal Medicine study in June 2024, researchers analyzed data from 3,785 adults who were 40 to 75 years old and took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from January 2017 to March 2020. Their 10-year risk of artery-narrowing cardiovascular disease was computed using the AHA’s Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease.
Emerging science appears to finally be showing that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as low-fat/high-carb diets and statin drugs, may obscure the real causes of heart disease.
Cholesterol is only a minor player in the cascade of oxidation, glycation and inflammation which is a cause of blockage, plaque and heart disease. Saturated fats are not dangerous. The killer fats are the trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils. Higher cholesterol appears to actually protect you from gastrointestinal disease, pulmonary disease, and hemorrhagic stroke. I have not been able to find any real long lasting studies to prove that statins have a significant impact on longevity beyond just a few days. If you can find one, send it to me.
A 1992 study examined people who lived to 100 and found that they had LOW triglycerides, high HDL and low-fasting insulin. Remember, the body makes triglycerides out of excess calories from carbohydrates. Too much sugar equals high triglycerides. The higher your triglycerides the greater the chance that you’re insulin resistant - which causes the inflammation that damages cholesterol in the bloodstream and starts the whole cycle of plaque formation and heart disease.
What are the reported side effects of statins?
Muscle pain, weakness, fatigue, memory & cognition problems and problems with sexual functioning. There’s tons of information on this - easy to find if you look for it. Also, just ask your friends who have taken them or are taking them.
Who should take them?
Statins are anti-inflammatory and they thin the blood. Studies show that those who benefited the most from lowering their cholesterol with statins were middle-aged men who already had heart disease.
What are recommended supplements from the doctors I studied:
Vitamin D, of course. Fish Oil. Multi-vitamins. CoQ10 is a kind of “energy fuel” for the heart. Magnesium relaxes the artery walls, reduces blood pressure, and makes it easier for the heart to pump blood and for the blood to flow freely.
Insulin has a profound effect on cholesterol. To reduce your risk of heart disease: lower triglycerides, increase HDL, and lower insulin. Keep your BMI healthy. Do this by eliminating sugar, processed carbs, seed oils and trans fats. Intermittent fasting will also help, as does at least 30 minutes of daily exercise.
PAUL GOSAR: "It seems that the goal of Big Pharma is to get people hooked on for life on the products, whether it be an annual flu or Covid-19 vaccines, perpetual statins to lower cholesterol, beta blockers for high blood pressure, expensive never ending cancer treatments. Yet all this intervention doesn't seem to yield much fruit. Chronic disease is skyrocketing. 50% of American adults have a chronic disease. 40% have two or more. Are Ozempic and related drugs the next big things that Big Pharma is going to push on millions of people no matter what the harms are or lack of effectiveness?"
All good questions.
Finally - when the media starts saying stuff like this - I automatically assume I’m being conned. What about you?
I hope I’ve given you enough information so you can do your own research, ask the right questions and have an informed conversation with your doctor. That’s what I am going to do. Godspeed!
PS: When they arrested Trump the first time my BP and my heart rate went way up and they put me on a beta blocker to slow it down. Three months after I started that med my glucose, LDL and triglycerides spiked and they started pushing statins again on me hard. I said no. The BP med made me dizzy so I cut it in half and the next step is to stop it altogether. I learned that BP meds can cause dizziness and cause people to fall (break hips) and create more problems. I found that out myself.
I started eating better, cut out most of the sugar, reduced my salt intake to around 1500 mg a day, exercised more, prayed more and my BP came down - and so did my triglycerides and glucose. I learned from my own experience that BP meds raised my blood sugar and the literature says they can cause type 2 diabetes and high triglycerides - so then they can push BOTH meds. Not kidding.
I also eat a grapefruit every day (it's like a natural statin - that's why they don't want you to eat grapefruit if you are on statins.) I don't know if that helps but I've learned the first course should be diet and exercise and then if that doesn't work - try the next step. One step at a time. I just had a body fitness test and they say I need to lose 2 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle. Working on that. Hope that explains my newsletter. Peg
SOURCES: The Great Cholesterol Myth, The Truth about Statins, The Great Dangers of Statins, The Truth about Statins, Epoch Times on Statins
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