Cholesterol Myths And Facts 1 - 8

Cholesterol Myths and facts My name is Vera Marcher I am the Chairman of LNS Uffe Ravnskov have been here before That was such a success, that he is here again Uffe is a doctor, author and docent at Lund University He has many good massages about cholesterol What it is. That is has nothing to do with atherosclerosis. That you can forget about blood lowering medicine. and forget about measuring cholesterol level. You should just live healthy You can ask questions doing the lecture. We are here until 13.30, where we have a surprise You have the word Uffe Thank you What I am about to talk about is written up there The Cholesterol Hypothesis Hypothesis Saturated fat -> High Cholesterol -> atherosclerosis -> infarction It is one of the biggest medical scandals in modern medicine I am not just claiming this. I have studied this in more than 20 years I have published more than 100 scientific articles in the largest Scandinavian and international magazines I am no beginner. I know what I am talking about The first time I hear about this idea, I was just out of medical school in Copenhagen in 1961. There was an article from Framingham, where they said that the ones with elevated cholesterol, have a higher risk of infarction I reacted immediately, because you cannot argue like that. Just because it a little bit higher, should that cause infarction? I use this example. I a house is on fire, there is firefighter around the house Saying that cholesterol causes infarction is just as stupid as saying that the firefighters set the house on fire. Just because there is a statistical connection between two things does not mean that one caused the other. Yellow fingers does not lead to lung cancer. It is the smoking the lead to yellow fingers and then… I thought that someone quickly tell.. Smarter researcher would change that idea. I was horrible wrong This is a simplified version of the The Cholesterol Hypothesis There is something in the food that makes the leads to high cholesterol, saturated fat. The high cholesterol leads to atherosclerosis Atherosclerosis leads to infarction, strokes and other serious diseases How are you going to prove that? Let’s begin with the first one. Do you get high cholesterol by eating saturated fat? The first one to claimed that was an American professor in physiology His name is Ancel Keys He has probably never seen a patient. I might explain some on his claims His first idea was that all fat results in high cholesterol As prove he published an article He had collected data from 16 different populations That is what this figure is showing On the horizontal axis we have fat consumption On the vertical is the cholesterol level He said that it is clear. Eating lots of fat leads to high cholesterol level That is the ones up here Eating small volumes of fat results in low cholesterol The problem is that he don’t tell the source We can’t control the numbers But to prove he is wrong is easy I have put in some of the populations that he apparently “forgot” The one is very incomplete. There is many more. But you can see down here It is very deviant There is someone, how eat a lot of fat and have low cholesterol It is the maasai people in Africa 60-70% of their calories come from saturated fat. They have the lowest cholesterol measured for healthy people If you include data from people worldwide, you get a picture looking like a starry night I also reacted to this because I had just study medicine I still knew the chemistry and physiology.. More or less I knew that cholesterol is one of the most important molecules the body We use cholesterol for building cell walls We use it for making hormones Stress hormones, sex hormones We have a cholesterol molecule that we change a little bit, and then we have a hormone that is vital for us We also use cholesterol molecules for making D-vitamin Exposed to the sun, cholesterol molecule turns into D-vitamin Cholesterol is a precursor to bile acid Without bile acid we cannot absorb fat-soluble vitamins The brain can’t function without cholesterol The brain is the most cholesterol containing organ Without a continuing supply of cholesterol, the brain will not work Cholesterol is so important, that all cells can produce it If the cells can’t produce enough themselves, they send a message to the liver. Then the liver sends cholesterol for help The Cholesterol we eat represents a fifth to a quarter of the cholesterol in the body The liver produces 4-5 times more cholesterol than we eat If we eat to little cholesterol, the liver increase the production If we eat more cholesterol, the liver relaxes You cannot use the cholesterol level to anything sensible Some people are born with low cholesterol and live happily until they are 90 Some people are born with very high cholesterol, they also live until they are 90 If you have a group of people with very low cholesterol, more of them die of cancer and infection diseases In a group of people with high cholesterol more die of infarction, but the has nothing to do with cholesterol It is something completely different I come back to that This figure was published by Keys Keys was a cheater You will see this in a minut After this he change his mind Now is was not all fat that was dangerous It was only saturated fat He made some experiments on people If he gave them more saturated fat, their cholesterol level increased If he gave them less saturated fat, the cholesterol level decreased When you study what he did, you find out that he actually did two things When decreased the saturated fat, he also added polyunsaturated fat We know that polyunsaturated fat can lower cholesterol slightly Why that is, nobody knows When he increased saturated fat, he reduced polyunsaturated fat Hence, it is impossible to say, was it because of the saturated fat, Or because of the polyunsaturated fat It also turned out that they was not using real saturated fat Egg, butter, cheese, meat They used polyunsaturated fat from plants, chemical changed with oxygen It is call trans fat It was fat, but a lot of it was trans fat And we know today that trans fat results in higher cholesterol. I Denmark trans fat is now forbidden in food. The same thing is happening in the rest of the world