People with High Cholesterol Live Longer

[AR's King Silabolin]

Japanese Research Exposes Statin Scam: People with High Cholesterol Live Longer

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, the Scottish doctor who wrote The Great Cholesterol Con recently stated on his blog that he has read the entire 116 page review:

For many years I have told anyone who will listen that, if you have a high cholesterol level, you will live longer. Equally, if you have a low cholesterol level, you will die younger. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a fact. The older you become the more beneficial it is to have a high cholesterol level.

This fact has become more difficult to demonstrate recently as so many people have been put on statins that the association between cholesterol levels and mortality has been twisted, bent and pumelled into the weirdest shapes imaginable. However, Japan, provides some very interesting data.

- See more at: Japanese Research Exposes Statin Scam: People with High Cholesterol Live Longer

Wow, didnt know that. Interesting!

[MuscleScience]

Oh boy, this hit on one of my biggest soap box subjects ever.

For almost 20 years, university scientist have know and basically debunked that high cholesterol causes arterial buildup of plaque.

Rather "chronic," inflammation is most appropriately associated with arterial sclerosis. We are starting to see this research come to light only because there is so much of it and so little to support high cholesterol as the culprit.

The caveat to that is, people with supra physiological high cholesterol 350 total or higher, probably do have a much increased risk of heart disease.

This next statement is not a political statement rather a reality of modern science. There are basically two divisions in science now. One being government funded, university led and the second being privately funded and university/private lab based. This is a generalization of course but serves for this discussion.

The federal government is broke, universities are broke and scientific funding at the government level is extremely picky on say what they will fund. The government agencies look at the relevance of a study to society and science as a whole. They love basically two things right now, global warming studies and public health. However even those dollars are hard to come by.

This leads scientist to carefully pick what type of study they tend to pick. This in effect helps facilitate research in one direction and neglect in others. Case in point, very few scientific studies relatively speaking are reproduced by another lab. In only the most groundbreaking studies and findings do these studies go through the full scrutiny of the scientific method. This leaving a large amount of research that has not been reproduced. Sometimes, a PhD student may do this as part of his/her Studies, but even then. The push is for new and novel research to maximize dollars. This is one reason that the cholesterol/heart disease connection has been so poorly misrepresented and even suppressed.

Now we come to privately funded research. While this can leads to great innovation it also can lead great deception. We all know and it's well documented how much the pharmaceutical companies have paid out in finds for things like fraud, bribery and corruption. That is well documented and is probably no surprise to anyone. But they have also helped lead to wonderful life saving innovations. The human element in this is a bigger factor when money and social status are at play. A defense contractor or pharmaceutical company will go to great lengths to fund a project, and they will hire the best and brightest to do so. But they expect favorable results, and if they don't get them, they will find someone that will.

Now it doesn't take a federal investigator to see the potential conflict of interest here. There are suppose to be methods and procedures to limit this. Again, the human element of needing and wanting to support ones livelihood and work is a hard equation to factor out. As you can imagine, if a privately funded study doesn't show a favorable result, that research is usually not published. Typically the direction is changed and or another factor is excluded. Even if for example the research shows that product X does not decrease Factor Y, but causes Factor Z to change negatively it is usually put in a pile and moved on.

Sometimes you have a favorable outcome to another factor that was not previously know. The classic example is how viagra was discovered. It was suppose to be a blood pressure med but gave its research subjects raging boners apparently.

So this leads us to statins and cholesterol. Now, statins DO lower serum cholesterol levels, there is little debate on that. However, to what if any extent do these decrease morbidity or mortality is hotly debated. Especially when you talk to publicly funded university research scientist. Exercise scientist, physiologist etc typically contend that cholesterol has little to no effect cardiovascular wise. In fact, use or staton drugs have actually been shown to increase the morbidity and mortality of its patients in all areas of health.

Medical and pharma researchers will contend that they always find cholesterol buildup in the arteries of those that died or have had heart disease. The difference is on which research they choose to believe. The theoretical bases that high serum cholesterol causes heart disease and statins are "proven," to lower that.

Or, that chronic inflammation is the cause and scab formation inside the arteries "trap," cholesterol as part of the normal clotting process regardless of serum levels of cholesterol.

My thought would be, depending on my financial interests., which side would I choose to believe?

[kelkel]

Rather "chronic," inflammation is most appropriately associated with arterial sclerosis. We are starting to see this research come to light only because there is so much of it and so little to support high cholesterol as the culprit.

Always good to know your CRP level. Dr. Stephen Sinatra is one of the best (imho) when it comes to cholesterol (read "The Great Cholesterol Myth") and is a big proponent of knowing your level. He also states that a simple way to evaluate cardiac risk is to divide your triglycerides by your HDL. If 2 or below you're in good shape.

Great post Muscle!

[RaginCajun]

Great topic! My genes say that I will have high cholesterol, father has it and grandfather had back blockage in his carotids when he was 87. My levels are just fine at the moment as I eat pretty well for the most part.

MS, you are right on with funding! 5-6 years ago I worked as a breast cancer research technician in a lab (not a strip club), and we were funded solely by grants. I could barely scratch by to make a living I was getting paid so low. Fast forward 6 years, newly working with a medical device company that is in dyer need of funding. Product is awesome, people love it, just they have no money to pay people to sell it!

[MuscleScience]

Great topic! My genes say that I will have high cholesterol, father has it and grandfather had back blockage in his carotids when he was 87. My levels are just fine at the moment as I eat pretty well for the most part. MS, you are right on with funding! 5-6 years ago I worked as a breast cancer research technician in a lab (not a strip club), and we were funded solely by grants. I could barely scratch by to make a living I was getting paid so low. Fast forward 6 years, newly working with a medical device company that is in dyer need of funding. Product is awesome, people love it, just they have no money to pay people to sell it!

I was in research for a number of years, was highly considering getting my PHD. My mentor at the time spent almost his entire 10-12 hour work day scrapping to get funding. He told me that he gets maybe 2-5hours a month of actually science in. I was just a grad assistant at the time and did all the data and experiment set up.

My best bud went on and got his PHD in exercise physiology/endocrinology after we graduated with our masters degree, (our program was a terminal masters program because we didn't have a PHD program in that area)
He is practically employed by supplement companies researching their products. When they don't get the results they want. They put a ton of pressure on him making sure he is doing shit right. He is a stat wizard, if he can't fin a positive effect, chances are your product is shitty lol

[MuscleScience]

Ha just saw this today lol

http://www.businessinsider.com/link-...cribing-2016-5

[tarmyg]

Awesome post. I decided quite a while back that I'll never put a statin in my body.