Return to the Treating Disease with Alternative Medicine index.
Return to the Treating Disease with Alternative Medicine index.
The Risks of Cholesterol...
LOW Cholesterol, That Is!
Let me say it plainly – low cholesterol is dangerous.
I know that this goes against everything we've all come to believe. Of course we believe this mostly thanks to the massive amounts of advertising drug companies do about cholesterol-lowering drugs. But the facts tell us the real truth.
In fact, I found so much evidence about this that I can't fit it all into one article.
Let's start, shall we?
1) The most widely respected medical journal, The Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study entitled: Cholesterol and Mortality - 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham Study. This in-depth study proved that after the age of 50 there is no increased overall death associated with high cholesterol!
2) The same study showed a direct association between low levels (or dropping levels) of cholesterol and increased death. Specifically, medical researchers reported that cardiovascular disease death rates increased by 14% for every 1mg/dl drop in total cholesterol levels per year.
3) Researchers at the University San Diego School of Medicine (UCSD) discovered that high cholesterol in people over 75 years of age is protective, rather than harmful and that low cholesterol is a risk factor for heart arrhythmias (leading cause of death if heart attack occurs).
4) University San Diego School of Medicine also stated no study has ever shown cholesterol-lowering drugs to lower overall mortality in women.
5) The European Heart Journal published results of a 3-year study of 11,500 patients. They found in the low cholesterol group (total cholesterol below 160mg/dl) the relative risk of death was 2.27 times higher relative to those with high cholesterol.
6) These same researchers observed that previous studies found a higher increase in lung cancer when total cholesterol levels were below 170 mg/dl.
I trust you're as amazed as I was when I first read these results. It looks as if cholesterol is actually protective!
And as they say on the commercials, "wait, there's more!" I'll have more on this topic in part 2 of this article.
Return to the Treating Disease with Alternative Medicine index page
