Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.
It’s been a while since I’ve hit the cholesterol and statin
drug topic. There are new research articles coming out all the time. Right now
there is even disagreement in the medical community as to who benefits from
statins and even if they are needed at all in some people.
For 40 years the medical community and the U.S. government
have warned that eating cholesterol rich foods like eggs would raise our LDL
and promote heart disease. Decades of research since then have failed to
produce any correlation.
The guidelines are still misleading and wrong because the
basic premise is faulty. Dietary fat is indeed associated with heart disease;
BUT it is the processed vegetable oils and margarines which are loaded with
trans-fats and omega 6 fatty acids that are the problem, not the animal fats
and saturated fats which are beneficial to the heart.
Back in the mid-20th century, Ancel Keys was a
prominent nutritional researcher with enormous influence. His views were widely
adopted by professional and government communities. He is the one who promoted
the low fat diet recommendations. Keys was largely funded by the sugar
industry.
Interestingly, some of his own follow up research completely
undermined his cholesterol and saturated fat hypothesis. He completely buried
these findings and never published them!
The newly discovered research was a huge study with over
9,000 participants. Each was followed for, on average, 15 months. These
people’s diets were strictly controlled and recorded. What they found was that
when you replaced saturated fats with vegetable oils, it did lower cholesterol
numbers by 14% after one year. The unpublished data reveals that for every 30
point cholesterol drop, there was a 22% increased chance of death! What? So the
conventional belief that lowering cholesterol creates longevity of life is
totally wrong. The opposite is true, lower cholesterol equals shorter
longevity.
New cholesterol guidelines were issued in 2016 by the two
leading groups in the U.S. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
suggests statins should not be used unless the patient has another risk factor
such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or smoking, in addition to a 10% risk on
the cardiovascular risk calculator. Under these guidelines some 17.1 million
Americans are candidates for statins. But under the American Heart Association
guidelines, almost 26.4 million people need them. That is quite a difference
even for them.
The numbers we really need to look at are what are called
“the number needed to treat.” This is how many people need to take a drug in
order for it to help one person. Here are these numbers:
-
100 people need to take a statin as a primary
preventive for 5 years in order for one person to avoid a heart attack, and none
will actually live longer!
-
250 people need to take a statin for up to six
years in order to prevent a single death from any cause!
By looking at relative risk, statins are made to look
helpful. But if you look at absolute risk statins benefit a mere 1 percent of
the population! So of 100 people using statin drugs, ONE person will have ONE
less heart attack…and no one is kept from dying from a heart attack. Absurd,
isn’t it?
Since statins virtually do nothing to reduce death and they
have over 200 side effects and clinical challenges, why take them, ever?
Eat more good saturated fats like animal fats, olive oils,
coconut oils, and avocados. These good fats are essential for your good health,
do not avoid them…eat more of them for a fuller, healthier life.