📖 Malcolm Kendrick - The Great Cholesterol Con
📖 Malcolm Kendrick - The Great Cholesterol Con
The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It
Remember to add your book recommendations in the comments below.
Today’s book is:
The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It by Malcolm Kendrick
Statins are the so-called "wonder drugs" widely prescribed to lower blood cholesterol levels that claim to offer unparalleled protection against heart disease. Many experts claim that they are completely safe and that they are also capable of preventing a whole series of other conditions. This groundbreaking study exposes the truth behind the hype surrounding statins and reveals a number of crucial facts, including that high cholesterol levels do not cause heart disease; that high-fat diets—saturated or otherwise—do not affect blood cholesterol levels; and that for most men and all women the benefits offered by statins are negligible at best.
Other data is also provided that shows that statins have many more side affects than is often acknowledged. This hard-hitting survey also points a finger at the powerful pharmaceutical industry and an unquestioning medical profession as perpetrators of the largely facetious concepts of “good” and “bad” cholesterol that are designed to convince millions of people to spend billions on statins.
With clarity and wit, this appeal to common sense and scientific fact debunks common assumptions on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle and diet, as well as the idea that there is a miracle cure for heart disease.
You can buy the book here (Amazon link).
So we are expected to believe that our bodies, which have supposedly evolved over tens or hundreds of millions of years, have somehow ended up producing a molecule that is somehow dangerous and needs to be controlled in almost every human.
The same molecule is manufactured in our livers, to the extent of about 75% of our needs (too important to rely on diet), forms the basic structure of every cell in our bodies and is so important to brain function that the brain maintains a separate control mechanism to ensure adequate supply. And, for good measure, the same molecule is also the starting point in the manufacture by our bodies of many vital hormones and vitamins.
A key point that Dr Kendrick makes is that, of all the cholesterol-lowering mechanisms, only statins have ever shown any cardiac-related benefit to humans. So if cholesterol is the problem, why would this be? One senior US cardiologist (plenty of interests to declare one suspects) has speculated that it’s HOW statins lower cholesterol that is important, meaning that the other drugs get to the right cholesterol end-point but just the wrong way. Quite why this should make a difference he didn’t explain. In the real world the answer is likely that as statins are vaso-dilators, they do have some potential benefit, particularly in critical situations such as during or immediately after cardiac events. This suggests their use in limited circumstances, and certainly not (as the ghoul Whitty seemed to endorse a while back) as Smarties to be munched by the entire population.
The mindless vilification of cholesterol is for me analogous to the equally mindless vilification of CO2. The former is arguably the most important molecule in our bodies, the latter absolutely necessary for meaningful life on earth. Yet per The Science both are bad. You really couldn’t make this shit up.
after i had my heart attack in 2020 i got prescribed statins.
i took them for a year or so.
i read a substack by kendrick and stopped taking them.
only after i had stopped taking them i read about their side effects.
it has taken at least two years for the tenderness in my lower legs to subside.