I will let people draw their own conclusions.
"Before looking at the connection between blood cholesterol levels and heart disease, it is worth highlighting a critically important - remarkably unheralded - fact: After the age of 50, the lower your cholesterol level is, the lower your life expectancy.
Perhaps even more important than this is the fact that a falling cholesterol level sharply increases the risk of dying of anything, including heart disease.
The dangers of a low cholesterol level were highlighted by a major long-term study of men living in Honolulu: 'Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases the risk of death.'
Somewhat ironically, the danger of a falling cholesterol level was first discovered in the Framingham study: 'There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years [of the study] and mortality over the following 18 years.'
It seems almost unbelievable that warnings about the dangers of a high cholesterol level rain down every day, when the reality is that a low cholesterol level is much more dangerous than a high level. Given this, why would anyone want to lower the cholesterol level? On the face of it, it would make more sense to take cholesterol-raising drugs. Especially after the age of 50."
"Perhaps the largest single analysis of cholesterol levels, and death from cardiovascular disease (and other diseases), was published in 1992. This review included over 100,000 women, aggregated from a number of different studies and countries.
"To quote from the study:
'The pooled estimated risk for total cardiovascular death in women showed no trend across TC (total cholesterol) levels.' In short, for more than 50 percent of the world's population - women - raised cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease.
Moving to men, it is true that under the age of 50 there does seem to be an association between raised cholesterol levels and heart disease. But after the age of 50, when more than 90 percent of heart attacks happen, the association disappears.
In addition, those populations in the world with the highest rates of heart disease in younger men, including Emigrant Asian Indians, Eastern Europeans, Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals, tend to have significantly lower cholesterol levels than the surrounding populations/countries.
Perhaps the single most directly contradictory fact is that, in young Japanese men, the average cholesterol level has risen over the past 20 years, yet the rate of heart disease has fallen. But as with many facts in this area, if they don't fit the cholesterol hypothesis, they are dismissed."
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