When researchers began to publish studies that sugar was associated with heart disease, the wealthy and powerful sugar industry paid large sums to divert the blame to cholesterol. A 2016 JAMA paper titled “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents” tells the corrupt and sordid story.
“Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. The Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD.”
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote The Great Cholesterol Con to help re-educate people who have been brainwashed to think that cholesterol is ‘the bad guy.’ He said:
“Why do you think that an egg yolk is full of cholesterol? Answer: because it takes one hell of a lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken. It also takes a hell of a lot of cholesterol to build, and maintain, a healthy human being. In fact, cholesterol is so vital that all cells, apart from neurons can manufacture cholesterol, and one of the key functions of the liver is to synthesize cholesterol. We also have an entire transportation system dedicated to moving cholesterol are the body.”
To emphasize the importance of cholesterol, Dr. Kendrick lists the effects of a rare genetic condition of very low cholesterol called Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome (SLOS). Serious and even fatal effects include:
- Spontaneous abortion and stillbirths
- Death from multi-organ system failure during the first few weeks of life.
- Congenital heart disease
- Vomiting, feeding problems, constipation toxic megacolon, electrolyte disturbance, failure to thrive.
- Blindness due to cataracts, optic nerve abnormalities
- Hearing loss
Kendrick remarks that a very low cholesterol level is not something we should strive too hard to achieve. And he lists some of the beneficial things about cholesterol that are often overlooked in favor of demonizing cholesterol as the cause of heart disease:
- Although neurons don’t make cholesterol, synapses that connect brain neurons and other cells are made almost entirely of cholesterol.
- Vitamin D is synthesized from cholesterol by the action of sunlight on our skin. Low cholesterol equals low Vitamin D.
- Cell membranes of all our cells require cholesterol for structural integrity. Without adequate cholesterol, cell membranes are leaky and unstable.
- Cholesterol is a building block for most sex hormones – that’s definitely a Love Factor! Statin users lower their cholesterol and are prescribed Viagra.
- Cholesterol is a key component of bile, which is needed for food digestion.
Cholesterol As An Antioxidant
When cholesterol reacts with free radicals (unstable molecules made during normal cell metabolism, or that land in our bodies from external pollution, it becomes oxidized. This means that cholesterol is an antioxidant and has to step in to fill that role when a person doesn’t have enough natural antioxidants to do the job. A future study will likely show that if you are deficient in Magnesium, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Fish oils, etc, your cholesterol becomes elevated. Unfortunately, that study will probably never be done.
When Cholesterol Became the Bad Guy
I wrote about cholesterol in The Magnesium Miracle. Here’s what I found:
In 1913, two Russian researchers fed large amounts of cholesterol to a group of hungry rabbits. When they saw yellow gunk clogging the rabbits’ arteries, they leapt to the conclusion that cholesterol must be responsible for coronary artery disease.
Robert Ford, as long ago as 1969, called the cholesterol theory of heart disease a tragic blunder. Ford explained that dietary cholesterol is harmful only if it is stale or rancid (AKA oxidized). When he read the original article by the Russians he was amazed to discover that they had fed their rabbits “pure crystalline cholesterol dissolved in vegetable oil” to produce the cholesterol buildup in arteries. They didn’t stop to think that crystalline cholesterol is not something the body can use but is “an unnatural stale substance now known as oxycholesterol (oxidized cholesterol), which is not found in fresh food or in the healthy human body.” Ford said the cholesterol theory of heart disease was untrue in 1913 and is still untrue and has served to deceive us by delaying discovery of the real causes and cures.
Udo Erasmus wrote in Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill that “The cholesterol scare is big business for doctors, laboratories, and drug companies. It is also a powerful marketing gimmick for vegetable oil and margarine manufacturers. In the end, cholesterol will be exonerated from its role as primary villain in cardiovascular disease.
Banning Cholesterol From Your Diet
Remember the ban on eggs, butter, and fatty meat all instituted after cholesterol was elevated to the cause of heart attacks? Well, it turns out that according to the famous Framingham studies “the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people’s serum cholesterol.” Since cholesterol would not bend to a low-fat diet, drugs became the main focus of medicine and Big Pharma.
The Drug Treatment of Cholesterol
When I was in medical school in the mid-1970s, normal cholesterol levels were around 245 mg/dL. In the first edition of The Magnesium Miracle, I reported allopathic medicine’s “normal” value of cholesterol at 180–220 mg/dL. Now, doctors are advising that cholesterol should be below 200 mg/dL (5.2 mmol/L) to be considered normal. What can doctors possibly do to help their patients achieve such a low cholesterol level? Prescribe statin drugs!
Dr. Kendrick hits another one out of the park with his book “A Statin Nation: Damaging Millions in a Brave New Post-Health World” which reinforces what I wrote in The Magnesium Miracle.
It’s been known for years that statin drugs do lower cholesterol levels, however that has not translated into a longer life or less heart disease. Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease and chasing cholesterol with powerful drugs is a very unhealthy solution.
Statins are a group of powerful drugs that block a specific enzyme in the liver that helps make cholesterol. When that enzyme is blocked, cholesterol levels are lowered. That enzyme, however, does much more in the body than just make cholesterol, so when it is suppressed by statins there are far-ranging consequences.
One major side effect that medicine acknowledges is elevated liver enzymes and disrupted liver function. If you take statins, you must have regular blood tests to look for liver damage. Stopping statins if your liver is damaged usually reverses the problem. Another acknowledged side effect, statin myopathy, is an iatrogenic (doctor-induced) condition that damages muscles and is entirely related to statin intake. Up to 20 percent of statin users can suffer muscle pain, tenderness, and weakness. Unfortunately, several statins also contain toxic fluoride molecules that can irreversibly bind magnesium, contributing to magnesium deficiency and the side effect of muscle pain.
However, there is something very important that Kendrick doesn’t know about statins – that magnesium is a natural statin.
Magnesium is a Natural Statin
A well-known magnesium expert, Mildred Seelig, M.D., just before she died in 2004, wrote a fascinating paper with Andrea Rosanoff, Ph.D., showing that magnesium acts by the same mechanisms as statin drugs to lower cholesterol. I explained this mechanism in The Magnesium Miracle.
Every metabolic activity in the body depends on enzymes. Making cholesterol, for example, requires a specific enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. As it turns out, magnesium slows down this enzymatic reaction when cholesterol is present in sufficient quantities and speeds it up when we need more. HMG-CoA reductase is the same enzyme that statin drugs target and inhibit. The mechanisms are nearly the same; however, magnesium is the natural way that the body has evolved to control and balance cholesterol, whereas statin drugs are used to destroy the whole process.
If sufficient magnesium is present in the body, cholesterol will be limited to its necessary functions—the production of hormones and the maintenance of membranes—and will not be produced in excess. Remember, most of the cholesterol is in the body is produced in the liver, so if it’s not needed, the body won’t produce it – but this mechanism depends on having sufficient magnesium.
It’s only in our present-day circumstances of magnesium-deficient soil, little magnesium in processed foods, and excessive intake of calcium and calcium-rich
