Heart disease is personal for me and my family. I held my father’s hand as he passed away from his second heart attack. And yes, Dad was taking a statin drug in an effort to prevent that second attack. Statins, prescribed to lower cholesterol, have become the bestselling class of drugs in history—based on a lie. The scam says that cholesterol is bad, that it causes heart disease, that if you just get the number down, you’ll be fine. These are all lies that have been spread to sell ineffective and dangerous drugs, most of them in the United States. Did you know that Americans make up five percent of the world’s population, but consume 40–50 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals?
Cardiovascular disease is not a disease of cholesterol, but inflammation. Cholesterol is actually protective. It contributes to long life and increases our resistance to infections and cancer. Blaming cholesterol for heart disease is like blaming the firefighter for the fire. You need cholesterol for the functioning of your brain and nerves, for the production of adrenal and sex hormones, and for the synthesis of vitamin D. If it were so harmful, why would your liver make 85 percent of the total amount of cholesterol in your body? Did you know that when you eat less, your body makes more cholesterol? And when you eat more, your body makes less cholesterol? An excellent book on this subject is Judith DeCava’s Cholesterol: Facts and Fantasies. DeCava digs deep into what the research has to say about the integral role cholesterol plays in the body’s functions.
In 20 years as a clinical nutritionist, herbalist and acupuncturist, I’ve seen that confused look in the eyes of hundreds of patients when I unplug them from The Matrix and let them know that cholesterol is not only good, but essential to vitality and resilience.
Here’s how it goes. You go in for your annual physical. Your doctor tells you your cholesterol is high, and if you don’t want to die of a heart attack, you’ll need a statin to lower it. But what qualifies as high? The maximum normal level of cholesterol in 1984 was 330. That’s right, 330, because back then it was taken into account that cholesterol levels naturally rise with age. Three years later, in 1987, the first statin drug came out, but it didn’t sell well. So the medical propaganda machine made up a new lie—cholesterol was evil. They scared people into taking a drug to get their cholesterol down to the new upper limit of 200. This number is not based on science or evidence, but on brilliant marketing. Cholesterol is one of the greatest scams in history. In fact, about half of all heart attacks and strokes happen to people with normal cholesterol. Learn more on this from courageous physicians who speak the truth about cholesterol and heart disease at www.spacedoc.com.
Back at your physical, your doctor probably didn’t mention that there’s no statin benefit for women, and only one out of every 100 men benefit from the drug. By comparison, one out of three people benefit from a placebo.
Just to be clear, there is no credible evidence linking dietary or blood cholesterol to cardiovascular disease, as Dad’s cardiologist claimed. And statins are not only ineffective, but also dangerous. Diseases caused by statins include diabetes, cancer, nerve and muscle damage, depression, suicide, and, ironically, heart failure. Another common side effect is something we Italians call stunad, which means stupid. The medical term is impaired cognition, and includes dementia and memory loss. It’s easy to remember because statin, stunad, and stupid all sound alike. See my short videos on cholesterol and heart disease here.
There are excellent lab tests for finding out what your risk of heart disease is, but your cholesterol level is not one of them. Tests that do work, such as checking urinary proteins, get ignored because there are no drugs to lower them. The only reason we discuss cholesterol at all is because of the drugs that are marketed to “treat” it.
So what can you do for cardiovascular health? First, ignore your blood cholesterol. Don’t be afraid of foods that contain it, and inform yourself before you do anything to lower it. Next, eat plenty of healthy fats, like grass-fed beef, organic eggs, wild fish, and olive oil, and cut down on your sugar and starch intake. Read more about this in the excellent book Know Your Fats.
Here are other steps you can take to avoid heart disease:
See a natural health professional who understands what tests really matter, and knows what to do about them. Please contact us to schedule a live or over-the-phone consultation. We’ll discuss useful lab tests and create a plan of action to prevent this needless condition.
Exercise one to two hours each week, with an emphasis on high-intensity, short-duration resistance workouts. This may be less than the Boulder norm of four hours a day, but it’s all you need.
Take whole-food supplements, including fish oil, and avoid synthetic vitamins. You can read more about this from the “Father of Natural Vitamins,” Dr. Royal Lee, here.
I work with patients who want to create a diet and supplementation program to address their individual concerns and meet their goals. As an old saying goes in Chinese medicine, “The inferior physician treats disease; the superior physician prevents disease and nourishes life.”
Love your cholesterol, because it loves you!
Photo from iStock/heart-lover
Dr. Michael Gaeta is an educator, clinician, and writer in the field of natural health care. His purpose is to create a world of vital, resilient people who find fulfillment through positive contribution, and who stay out of the medical system. Michael works with natural health professionals to improve patient care and practice success through his one-year clinicians’ mentoring program, live seminars and webinars, and distance learning programs. He holds licenses in acupuncture, dietetics-nutrition, and massage therapy, and he is a doctor of acupuncture in Rhode Island.
For seminar information and publications by Michael Gaeta, please visit Gaeta Communications.
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