Death By Supermarket (31 page)

There are many other examples of drugs that are making matters worse, but the most classic are the cholesterol-lowering drugs. Because of the lipid hypothesis, the subsequent low fat diet, and the accompanying science-fiction fats that caused the epidemic of heart disease, drug companies are now cleaning up by selling us these drugs.

We’re not hearing messages on TV to stop eating chemical- and heat-treated polyunsaturated vegetable oils, partially hydrogenated polyunsaturated vegetable oils, refined white flour, refined white sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, MSG, aspartame, factory-produced animal products, and other science-fiction substances. No, we continue to get messages to eat heart-unhealthy oils, like canola and soy.

For more than fifty years we’ve had hammered into our heads the misconception that total cholesterol numbers are the number one indicator of our risk of a heart attack. The fear of cholesterol is so entrenched in our culture that it’s likely here to stay. Almost without fail, when I meet someone who hasn’t read my books but learns I write about health, I hear comments about his or her low cholesterol efforts.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women, that women with high cholesterol live longer than women with low cholesterol, and that it’s more dangerous for women to have low cholesterol than high. People who suffer from heart disease sometimes have elevated blood cholesterol numbers, but not everyone who has elevated blood cholesterol numbers develops heart disease. Everyone with heart disease does not have elevated blood cholesterol numbers. In fact, most people with heart disease do not have elevated blood cholesterol.
³⁰⁰

Study after study has proven that your cholesterol number, regardless if it is high or not, is not an indication of risk or lack of risk for heart disease.
³⁰¹
Dr. Enig told me, “Blood cholesterol levels between 200 and 240 mg/dl are normal. These levels have always been normal. In older women, serum cholesterol levels greatly above these numbers are also quite normal, and in fact they’ve been shown to be associated with longevity. Since 1984, however, in the United States and other parts of the western world, these normal numbers have been treated as if they were an indication of a disease in progress or a potential for disease in the future.”
³⁰²

Dr. Enig maintains that cholesterol in the blood is a good thing. “The official advice to lower serum cholesterol levels has brought about numerous supplements with the attached claim that consuming them will lower cholesterol. This further supports the myth of cholesterol as an undesirable component of body and diet. In fact, the body uses cholesterol to repair and to protect. When improvement to the health of the body brought about by good changes in lifestyle or diet results in a lowering of serum cholesterol, it can be counted as an example of the body no longer needing the extra circulating cholesterol. The repair has been accomplished.”
³⁰³

Cholesterol is a waxy compound that maintains the structure of every single cell in your body. In fact, every cell in your body makes its own cholesterol, and your liver manufactures it day and night for use throughout your body. Your body has a system of checks and balances so that it will always have enough cholesterol to keep up the ongoing repair and replenishing of your body on a cellular level.

Cholesterol and triglycerides, which are water insoluble, are packaged into water-soluble lipo-proteins so they can float through your watery bloodstream. Your total cholesterol is arrived at by adding together the three different cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins: high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), and very low-density lipoproteins (VLDLs). HDLs, LDLs, and VLDLs are delivery vehicles that take cholesterol and triglycerides to and fro within your body via your bloodstream. They have been labeled good and bad, but each lipoprotein actually has a healthy purpose in your body.

HDLs are said to be “good” lipoproteins because they recycle cholesterol back to the liver. LDLs carry cholesterol from the liver to your cells for use as raw material. LDLs are labeled “bad” because they can get damaged in route and thereby waylaid, and they can end up depositing cholesterol in your artery walls. Damage occurs to LDL lipoproteins by oxidation caused by free radicals.

Another way LDLs get damaged is from excess blood sugar, which “caramelizes” LDL lipoproteins, similar to dunking an apple into a bubbling cauldron of caramel candy. In addition to coating LDLs, this candy coating also builds up on your cells and arteries. So by stopping eating factory food and eating only real food, you will protect your LDLs.

VLDLs carry triglycerides (fat) throughout your body for use as energy. Since HDL and VLDL levels are like kids on a teeter-totter, if your eating and lifestyle habits raise your HDLs you are going to see your VLDLs go down proportionately. The opposite is also true.

Since HDLs, LDLs, and VLDLs all perform different functions, adding them up to arrive at a total cholesterol number does not tell you anything one way or another. But this is just another example of the medical establishment getting stuck on something and having it so entrenched in our society that it is likely, and very unfortunately, here to stay.

The food, diet, and drug industries have made billions of dollars on cholesterol-lowering measures such as “heart healthy” food products, lab tests and so on. The drug industry would also like each and every adult (and now children) to take cholesterol-lowering drugs even though study after study has concluded that atherosclerosis increases in patients whose cholesterol is decreased by more than 60 mg/dl and that atherosclerosis worsens just as fast or faster when cholesterol levels go down as when cholesterol levels go up, that people with low cholesterol levels suffer from just as much atherosclerosis as people with high cholesterol levels, and that lowering cholesterol levels increases your risk of dying from violence or suicide.
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Statins deplete the body of the essential molecule coenzyme, CoQ
₁₀
. A lack of CoQ
₁₀
weakens the heart muscle and can lead to congestive
heart failure, muscle weakness, neurological disorders, and even death. Even more alarming is that statin drugs suppress vital immune cells called helper T-cells, which help protect us against from cancer as well as fungal, bacterial, and viral infections. By taking statins you are lowering your immunity.
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If you don’t eat enough cholesterol to sustain your body’s need for cholesterol, your body sees this deprivation as a time of famine and activates the enzyme HMGCoA Reductase in your liver, which overproduces cholesterol out of the carbs you eat. Cholesterol-lowering drugs work by switching off this enzyme. Switching off HMG-CoA Reductase means that your body may not be getting the cholesterol it needs for important ongoing building and replenishing.

One study that compared high doses of Lipitor (made by Pfizer) with less potent Pravachol (made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which sponsored the trial) showed that patients taking Lipitor were significantly less likely to have heart attacks or to require bypass surgery or angioplasty. Lipitor was shown to halt plaque growth; Pravachol was shown to only slow plaque growth.
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I asked Dr. Eades to weigh in: “The study showed only very modest benefit (0.6 percent reduction in occurrence rate of heart attack in five years) at an enormous cost. One hundred and sixty-five healthy people would, over a period of five years, have to spend $1.2 million purchasing Lipitor to extend the life of one person by five years. The money comes out of the pockets of consumers, insurers and taxpayers. Statins don’t come without side effects, some of which are merely debilitating, some of which are lethal. Although the statin class of drugs do indeed lower cholesterol, a number of recent studies have begun to dispel the notion that elevated cholesterol is even a player in the development of heart disease. Moreover, if lowering cholesterol is the point, a recent study of modern hunter-gatherers shows that these groups naturally maintained LDL levels below the magic 100, without benefit of statins, simply by following a healthy meatbased diet, higher in protein, lower in carbohydrate, and replete
with good fats. Our advice: Eat real foods, save the money you’d spend on statins, and don’t risk the possibility of serious side effects.”
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Factory-food makers are married to drug manufacturers in two important ways: First, factory foods make people sick, thus the need for drugs. And second, factory foods and drugs are both purchased by individuals who are convinced that what they are doing is healthy. In addition to eating “healthful” factory substances approved by the FDA, the AMA, and the AHA, we are now convinced that Americans are heart attacks waiting to happen, and to prevent a heart attack from occurring we must take cholesterol-lowering drugs. If the (global) $492 dollar per year cholesterol-lowering drugs we are taking are so effective, why are Americans still dying from heart disease?

Since cholesterol is necessary to make many hormones, the factory-food diet (including phytoestrogenic soy) has lowered testosterone in some men. Since cholesterol is necessary to convert sunshine to vitamin D, which is necessary to utilize calcium, this diet has eroded the bones of women. Since brain cells and neurotransmitters are made from cholesterol and protein, factory products have ravaged our brains. And drug companies have jumped in with drugs to fix these problems.

What is really sad is that people are now programmed into thinking that they can continue eating factory-food substances as long as they take drugs. Moreover, many people are deathly fearful of the real food diet that would save them from developing the maladies that are causing them to be prescribed drugs in the first place. These are the people who look askance at a rib-eye steak and real butter but fearlessly admit to being on a perilous cocktail of drugs including statins, antidepressants, and impotence drugs. Americans have become so acculturated to drugs that having a medicine cabinet full of drugs is normal.

Philip Roth’s novel
Everyman
explores the remorse of a man whose philandering and hedonistic obsessions had left him bereft of meaning and companionship in his golden years. Along the way he suffers one cardiac event/surgery after the next. A background cast of characters are by turns
decimated by drugs. One is laid low by chemotherapy, one has a stroke from taking a risky migraine drug, and another’s back pain cannot be alleviated by pain pills so she downs enough to do herself in. Since drugs, drugs, drugs, and more drugs (and their side effects) are perfectly natural for us, drugs are thus a likely backdrop for “everyman’s” story. Meanwhile, our anti-real food, socially acceptable pharmaceutical (but not recreational!) drug mentality, perpetuated by organizations like the American Heart Association—“the most respected source for health and nutrition”— is killing Americans.

It’s important to note that stress can temporarily cause your cholesterol numbers to skyrocket—so if you are stressed out about having high cholesterol the day that you have your labs drawn, the number that comes back is likely not going to be an accurate account of what is really going on with your cholesterol. Nevertheless, it’s not any one lipoprotein number or the total cholesterol number that should scare you. And the emphasis on your genetics is just another unnecessary detour. A genetic predisposition does not automatically mean that you are doomed. There is more and more evidence that heart disease is caused by a constellation of factors related to eating and lifestyle habits.

Deficiencies of B vitamins in the diet (folic acid, vitamin B
₆
, and vitamin B
₁₂
) raise the level of an amino acid called homocysteine in the bloodstream. When elevated, homocycteine has been found to cause arterial damage and plaque. You can reduce your risk by eating foods rich in vitamin B or by taking vitamin B supplements. Foods high in folic acid are brewer’s yeast, oranges, green leafy vegetables, wheat germ, asparagus, broccoli, and nuts. Foods high in vitamin B
₆
are whole grains, meats, fish, poultry, nuts, and brewer’s yeast. And foods high in vitamin B
₁₂
are meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy.

Prolonged high insulin levels, as we talked about earlier, encourage coronary artery plaquing. (High insulin levels are caused by sugar/refined carbs, stress, dieting, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, aspartame, steroids, sedentary lifestyle, recreational, and OTC and prescription drugs.)

It’s now understood that inflammation is a major risk factor for heart disease. Normal inflammation is part of the immune reaction that helps your body to heal from injury. When the immune system refuses to turn off, inflammation can result in a relatively small arterial plaque ballooning and blocking the passage to the heart, causing a heart attack (heart muscle death). Why are we so inflamed? Could the gallons of coffee and Diet Coke have something to do with it? The cocktail of OTCs and prescription drugs? Sitting with our laptops or watching TV and eating carbs and trans fats? An anti-inflammatory diet includes fish (small fish so you are not getting a bi-weekly dose of mercury), wheat germ and walnuts, healthy oils (reviewed on
page 114
); and any brightly colored vegetable or fruit.

Chapters 9
through 11 told you all about the relationship between chemical- and heat-processed polyunsaturated fats and heart disease (i.e., the relationship between trans fats and free radicals and heart disease). I would venture to say if these fats had never entered our food chain we would not be discussing heart disease today.

In the past several decades, Americans have turned their attention toward preventative measures and healing because our instincts are telling us that we are sick on a deep level. Although we may not be conscious of it, the repercussions of our individual ill health manifest in the collective ill health of our society as a whole. For example, if a child does not do well in school because he or she suffers from neurotransmitter imbalances it ultimately affects society as a whole for the span of that child’s life.