What causes heart attacks (part two)

Yet another good reason to go LCHF....

http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/what-causes-heart-attacks-part-two/

This is a great article from Tom Cowan at Weston A Price ......thanks for the link Ali, and I couldn't agree more, there are so many good reasons for living the LCHF lifestyle.

All the best Jan

AliB wrote:Yet another good reason to go LCHF....

http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/what-causes-heart-attacks-part-two/

I would be cautions what they say on that site, my doctor told me the main reason for heart attacks is cholesterol clogged arteries due to amongst other things smoking like a chimney.

Edwina

Edwina wrote:

AliB wrote:Yet another good reason to go LCHF....

http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/what-causes-heart-attacks-part-two/

I would be cautions what they say on that site, my doctor told me the main reason for heart attacks is cholesterol clogged arteries due to amongst other things smoking like a chimney.  

Edwina

Hi Edwina,

There is a definite correlation between smoking and heart attacks, but interestingly there is no correlation between smoking and cholesterol.

One the many areas of medical orthodoxy that following a low-carb diet challenges is the cholesterol/heart disease idea. Have a look at this site; it is run a British GP Dr Malcolm Kendrick and he has some incredibly powerful arguments for why the demonisation of cholesterol is just plain misguided; it has no scientific basis.

http://drmalcolmkendrick.org/about/

Here is a good thought experiment that essentially overturns the whole cholesterol/heart disease idea:-

We know that statins reduce cholesterol significantly.

We also know that statins only reduce the chance of having a heart attack in primary prevention (i.e. where someone has not yet had a heart attack) by about 3% with a number needed to treat of between 50 and 100 (it's VERY difficult to get the figures) and treatment time of around 5 years.

If cholesterol was so important in heart disease how can that reduction be so low? The statins are reducing (slightly) your chance of a heart attack but they are massively reducing your cholesterol. Therefore it cannot be the cholesterol that is causing the heart attacks. Statins must be doing something else that accounts for the reduction. Probably they have some slight anti-inflammatory effect.

Interesting eh?

Best

Dillinger

"We also know that statins only reduce the chance of having a heart attack in primary prevention (i.e. where someone has not yet had a heart attack) by about 3% with a number needed to treat of between 50 and 100 (it's VERY difficult to get the figures) and treatment time of around 5 years."

As you say it has been proved beyond all doubt statins help very few if any people. It has also been proved many people suffer very serious and debilitating side effects from statin use. This $30 billion a year con is coming to and end because low and behold a new class of cholesterol lowering drugs (much more expensive than statins) is on the way.

If you accept as I do a low trig count and high HDL is good that leaves LDL to consider. It is now believed it's the type and size of LDL particles that makes the difference between good and bad for our health. As we know in the UK this is not measured, therefore  the medics are working on nothing but guess work.

I try never to forget many of the same medics are telling us to eat starchy carbs with every meal, that the fats man has ate since the beginning of time are dangerous, the same medics that preside over the abysmal data produced by the audited NHS stats ever year.

Today's sermon concludes with hymn number 137 For those in peril on the flog

Cholesterol levels in the blood are inflammation markers. The less LDL, the less inflammation.

If you have high cholesterol, you have high inflammation. Cholesterol travels around the bloodstream being deposited where it is needed for repair.

The good news is, LCHF diets reduce inflammation which lowers cholesterol levels.

AliB wrote:Cholesterol levels in the blood are inflammation markers.  The less LDL, the less inflammation.

If you have high cholesterol, you have high inflammation.  Cholesterol travels around the bloodstream being deposited where it is needed for repair.

The good news is, LCHF diets reduce inflammation which lowers cholesterol levels.

Not necessarily so Ali with respect. The Cereal Killers video demonstrated after around a month on a low carb high fat diet the presenters LDL went very high and the medics were worried. On further investigation the LDL was found to be the large fluffy so called safe LDL. As said previously we don't get tested for that. One thing is for sure just as many people have heart attacks with so called good numbers as bad, with the exception from people suffering from very high cholesterol numbers known as hypercholesterolaemia. Check this out, the older we get especially for women, the lower the cholesterol the nearer we are to death.

I once read a study about very old women living in a French old peoples home, the higher their cholesterol numbers the longer they lived. Low cholesterol numbers in young men has been linked to depression, violence and suicide. It makes you wonder eh.