A Diagnosis of High Cholesterol

This is something that happens quite often. I became interested in what percent of the population has high cholesterol and searching on "which country has the highest cholesterol?" returned this (click for larger):

Humm, that means the cold countries with higher income levels (that eat the most animal products) have the the greatest incidence of high cholesterol and the warm countries with lower income levels (that eat more plants) have the lowest. How about that, epidemiological evidence at our finger tips.

Countries with the highest standards of living consume the most meat per capita as a result of several factors, including:

1) industrialized mass production (factory farming of animals) creating greater access.

2) the incorrect idea "we need more protein", when in fact the opposite is true. We eat too much protein in the developed world, particularly animal protein, which contributes to the chronic diseases problem.

https://www.wri.org/data/people-are-eating-more-protein-they-need-especially-wealthy-regions

3) a line from the above link says: "In 2009, the average person in more than 90 percent of the world’s countries and territories consumed more protein than estimated requirements". (In addition many nutritional biologists believe "estimated requirements" are too high to begin with.)

4) consumption of animals have become the cultural norm, which is resistant to change.

Ironic isn't it that high standard of living countries have the highest levels of chronic disease. Ironic because those diseases are caused by poor diet choices which are easily reversed with proper diet. Perhaps it's also no accident than that in the "Happiest Countries in the World" surveys the happiest countries tend to be the the least wealthy. Less chronic illness may have something to do with that...it's difficult to be happy when we do not feel good.

Why do we do this to ourselves? The answer is not all that obvious and has to do with psychology (as opposed to intelligence). Briefly, we are driven by instinct not reason, but that's a different (and very interesting) topic. Another way of putting it is we (humans) are not stupid, but we are also not as "smart" as we think we are. And that is the direct cause of all kinds of stupid mistakes.

Anyway...

A good friend had a diagnosis of high cholesterol recently and is debating with himself whether to take the recommended statins or try to lower levels with a dietary change. The standard recommendation from cardiologists is (of course) to take the statins. The standard explanation is "it's not your diet, it's your genes. The only treatment that works is statins". And statins do work to reduce cholesterol and cardiovascular disease mortality, but they also cause negative side effects, which according to the Mayo Clinic are muscle pain and damage, liver damage, increased blood sugar or type 2 diabetes, and last but certainly not least, neurological side effects.

Statin side effects: Weigh the benefits and risks

And it's also true that diet alone can reduce cholesterol and cardiovascular mortality, and the only side effects are dramatic improvements to or elimination of other chronic diseases. A very specific diet, the Esselstyn Protocol, reverses heart disease.

Dr. Esselstyn, who spent his career as an accomplished surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, published a paper (link below) after his second study, where he lays out the case for how and why a low fat whole food plant based diet reverses cardio vascular diseases.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/

We need non toxic-inputs to the body for health, in order of priority, clean air, clean water, and clean food. How long we can survive without air? A few minutes. Water? A few days. Food? A few months.

Scientific studies of nutrition and health are very complicated, an entire topic of its own. A comprehensive look at the history of this "little problem" by the nutritional biochemist T. Colin Campbell is quite illuminating in this era of "soundbite science".

https://tinyurl.com/4duzmm5n

Even in the best case (no bias leaking unconsciously or deliberately into model construction) we are looking for single mechanisms with all confounders eliminated or accounted for. Otherwise we are back to epidemiological, which is not considered hard science.

Conflicting studies are the rule not the exception.

Campbell makes a very compelling case that single mechanism studies of nutrition have led us down the wrong path. They are based on an incorrect assumption that individual components work in isolation as they would in concert with other components.

But guess what, we don't need to know exact mechanisms to have a very good idea about outcomes.

So what is common sense anyway? Some define it as not knowing, a form of ignorance. That is the wrong definition. The correct definition is "an innate aptitude for logic and deductive reasoning". This is also the definition that infers that common sense is "uncommon". If it were common there would likely be far fewer individuals dying prematurely from culturally uninformed diet choices (which is probably roughly 80% of the population).

Science and art are both important, one without the other is a rudderless ship. This is true on cultural and individual levels.

So yes by all means be as informed as possible, but don't exclude the obvious because it can't be proven yet.

Here's a google search on "a plant-based diet and cardiovascular disease":

https://tinyurl.com/btkjpazy