Stop the Cholesterol Madness

After repeated conversations with me, a close relative in his late 50s decided to try the carnivore diet. He immediately began to feel better than he had ever felt. The carnivore diet is ultra-low-carb, similar to the ketogenic diet, which often raises LDL and total cholesterol. He has lost 22 pounds, lowered his BMI from 25.8 (overweight) to 22.8 (normal), lowered his blood pressure from 110/70 to 100/66, has more energy, lowered his triglycerides from 106 to 71 (lower is better), raised his HDL from 47 to 79 (higher is better), lowered his VLDL by 1/3, rid himself of chronic foot and hip pain, and he has no more leg cramping. As we will see later in this post, these changes indicate inflammatory, metabolic, and cardiovascular health improvements.

At the same time, he raised his LDL from 69 to 192 and his total cholesterol from 137 to 285, which made his doctors panic. Later in this post, we will see that LDL levels below 105 cause twice the amount of death. Despite this, his doctors have ignored nine positive changes and stressed two that, as we will see in this post, have little relevance in their ability to predict cardiovascular disease. What kind of a world do we live in when doctors fret when their patients become healthier? Read on if you are curious.

The Best Way To Predict Heart Attack Risk

Many traditional ways of measuring your risk for having a heart attack are not nearly as accurate as many believe. For example, many believe that our total cholesterol and LDL are the best indicators for heart disease, but the association is weak. As far back as 1964, Garrett, Horning, and Creech found no definite correlation between serum cholesterol levels and the nature and extent of atherosclerotic disease. They published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The famous Framingham heart study concluded in 1977 that HDL was a much better predictor of heart disease than LDL, and total cholesterol was not associated with any risk. In 1997, The Lancet published a paper on the elderly that showed for each 18 mg/dl increase of cholesterol, the chance of death went down by 15%. Amazingly, they also found that mortality from cancer and infection was significantly lower among the participants in the highest total cholesterol category. We believe these readings to be the best way to predict heart disease because we have been told to. Today I will show you some more statistical hocus pocus that helped promote these tests, and tell you about a much more accurate one you should get.