Cholesterol how important?

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An interesting article

Have we been conned about cholesterol?

by MALCOLM KENDRICK - More by this author »

 

Last updated at 19:59pm on 24th January 2007

Conventional medical wisdom about cholesterol and the role of

statins is now being challenged by a small, but growing number of

health professionals. Among them is Dr Malcolm Kendrick. A GP for 25

years, he has also worked with the European Society of Cardiology,

and writes for leading medical magazines:

 

When it comes to heart disease, we have been sold a pup. A rather

large pup.

 

Actually, it's more of a full-grown blue whale. We've all been

conned.

 

If you've got a raised risk of heart disease, the standard medical

advice is to take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug to cut your

chances of having a heart attack because, as we all know,

cholesterol is a killer.

 

Indeed, many of you already believe that you should take statins for

the rest of your natural lifespan. ......

 

......But is it all worth it? According to an article being published

in the medical journal The Lancet this week, the answer is probably

no.

 

.....A leading researcher at Harvard Medical School has found that

women don't benefit from taking statins at all, nor do men over 69

who haven't already had a heart attack.

 

There is a very faint benefit if you are a younger man who also

hasn't had a heart attack - out of 50 men who take the drug for five

years, one will benefit. ...

 

....Nor is this the first study to suggest that fighting cholesterol

with statins is bunk. Indeed, there are hundreds of doctors and

researchers who agree that the cholesterol hypothesis itself is

nonsense.

 

What their work shows, and what your doctor should be saying, is the

following:

 

 

• A high diet, saturated or otherwise, does not affect blood

cholesterol levels.

 

• High cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease.

 

• Statins do not protect against heart disease by lowering

cholesterol - when they do work, they do so in another way.

 

• The protection provided by statins is so small as to be not worth

bothering about for most people (and all women). The reality is that

the benefits have been hyped beyond belief.

 

• Statins have many more unpleasant side effects than has been

admitted, while experts in this area should be treated with healthy

scepticism because they are almost universally paid large sums by

statin manufacturers to sing loudly from their hymn sheet....

 

Rest at link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html

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tComments

Thanks Vince