Is Your Cholesterol Level Really ‘High’? Tearing Down the Cholesterol Myth

Excepts by Justin Smith with permission because we both want you to thrive!

Pharmaceutical companies and those people in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies have altered the definition of high cholesterol in order to increase the number of people who are eligible to take cholesterol medications. This article explains how many people who have been told they have ‘high’ cholesterol, in fact have a normal cholesterol level.

Statins Exposed on TV 

Recently, Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson aired a piece describing the financial ties between experts who set the cholesterol clinical guidelines and the pharmaceutical industry.

What is Normal Cholesterol? 

The bell shaped curve is the normal distribution of sometime we can measure. This phenomenon has been observed for centuries. It is the most fundamental and the most widely used concept of statistical analysis.

The bell curve has certain characteristics. For example, if we measure the height of women in the U.S., we would find that most women have an average height, a small number of people are very tall and a small number of people are very short. This is a normal distribution and is represented by the typical bell shaped curve. 

As would be expected, the range of values that are found for cholesterol levels within a population also follow a normal distribution. And cholesterol levels vary tremendously between different people. Supporters of cholesterol-lowering medications would have us believe that the ideal cholesterol level is below 200 mg/dl (or 5 mmol/l), but we have known for decades that cholesterol varies from 105 to 343 in people who are perfectly healthy.

The bottom figure shows the range of normal levels found in healthy people. 

This same range of cholesterol levels has been seen in people who do have heart disease and people who do not have heart disease, as documented by Professor Brisson using data from the Framingham Study – which is one of the largest studies ever done in it. 

Since the Framingham Study, other studies have also confirmed that people with heart disease have the same cholesterol levels as people who do not have heart disease.

For example, in the UK, the typical person who has a heart attack tends to have the same cholesterol level that is seen for healthy middle-aged and older people in the general population.  Something that is not unique to the UK. 

A study published in the Lancet, included 5,754 patients from Australia and New Zealand who had already had a heart attack. The average cholesterol level of this group of people was around 220 mg/dl (5.7 mmol/l). Data from the WHO Global Infobase shows that around the same time, the average cholesterol level for the general population was also 220 mg/dl (5.7 mmol/l). So people who suffered a heart attack had the same average cholesterol level as the general healthy population. 

A study published in the American Journal of Cardiology included 8,500 American men with existing heart disease had findings almost identical. 

It wasn’t that long ago that we were told anything above 250 mg/dl (6.5 mmol/l) was too high. And over the last few years the threshold has progressively been lowered and lowered – each time without scientific evidence to support the lowering of the threshold, and each time the decision to lower the threshold being taken by experts with links to the companies that make statins. Of course, each time the threshold is lowered, millions more people become eligible for cholesterol-lowering medications – massively increasing the market size for the drugs. 

Lowering the threshold massively increases the market size for statins overnight. Screenshot from Statin Nation.

Those with vested interests have done a really good job of confusing people about normal cholesterol levels and created a huge amount of unnecessary fear about it solely for the purpose of turning healthy people into patients. 

Cholesterol Lowering Statin Drugs Side Effects:

• Muscle damage (myotoxicity): view 80 studies here.
• Nerve damage (neurotoxicity): view 54 studies here.
• Liver damage (hepatoxocity): view 32 studies here.
• Endocrine disruption: view 16 studies here.
• Cancer-promoting: view 9 studies here.
• Diabetes-promoting: view 8 studies here.
• Cardiovascular-damaging: view 15 studies here.
• Birth defect causing (teratogenic): view 11 studies here.

Statin drugs affect adversely diseases like Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and ALS by Inhibiting Remyelination in the Central Nervous System.

Eat these 3 foods regularly, and you can lower your cholesterol by 50%! 

This is WORTH the moment it takes!

Many thanks to Justin Smith for allowing me to reprint excerpts. Justin writes Statin Nation.