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Tag: heart health

Targeting “Bad Cholesterol” with Drugs Does Not Help Heart Health

Setting targets for ‘bad’ (LDL) cholesterol levels to ward off heart disease and death in those at risk might seem intuitive, but decades of research have failed to show any consistent benefit for this approach, reveals an analysis of the available data, published online in BMJ Evidence Based Medicine.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs are now prescribed to millions of people around the world in line with clinical guidelines. I have never been a fan of these drugs and have been talking about my disapproval of statins since at least 2008.

In this study, researchers looked at the data to see if cholesterol-lowering drugs do what they claim to do and reduce the risk of heart disease and death. Their conclusion:

“Considering that dozens of [randomized controlled trials] of LDL-cholesterol reduction have failed to demonstrate a consistent benefit, we should question the validity of this theory.”

While I’m not surprised, I’ll be some of you are experiencing some cognitive dissonance because for decades we have been trained to believe that we need cholesterol-lowering drugs in order to live longer. As it turns out, when it comes to statins and other cholesterol-lowering drugs helping us live longer, it’s more a myth than a reality.

So, will this information change prescribing patterns of cholesterol-lowering drugs by mainstream doctors?

Probably not. As the researchers noted: “In most fields of science the existence of contradictory evidence usually leads to a paradigm shift or modification of the theory in question, but in this case the contradictory evidence has been largely ignored, simply because it doesn’t fit the prevailing paradigm.”

Your doctor may not acknowledge that the only one benefitting from your statin prescription is the drug company, but now you know and can make this decision for yourself.

If you’re nervous to stop taking one of these drugs, check out these other articles I’ve written about cholesterol and health, and please feel free to contact me to discuss natural ways to lower cholesterol without drugs.

Coconut Oil: Good or Bad for Your Health?

Lately there has been some noise in the press about coconut oil being unhealthy and even poisonous due to it being a saturated fat. I am here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth as coconut oil is good for you in so many ways.

I thought we had begun to accept that fats are necessary for health and not the demons that we had been taught from the flawed studies released in the 1980s regarding heart health and saturated fats.

Not only have traditional tropical communities have eaten coconut oil without toxic effects for millenium, but recent studies have looked at coconut oil’s benefits for diseased like Alzheimer’s, autism, and even gingevitis. Unless you are sensitive to coconut in general, it’s a safe and effective moisturizer for hair and skin, and can even help heal from a sunburn.

Coconut oil is super beneficial due to its unique make up of medium chain triglcerides (MCTs). Unlike other fats, MCTs are metabolized quickly by the liver and turned into ketones that are utilized by the body in many ways to support health.

The type of coconut oil we want to avoid is “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” coconut oil. Stay away from this stuff for sure.

But coconut oil, which is solid at room temperature and is the only plant-based saturated fat, is definitely healthy and good for you. So eat up.

Of course, some people are sensitive to coconut, and they should stay way from it to avoid sparking inflammation in their bodies. If you’re curious and want to find out if you could be sensitive to coconut, shoot me an email and I’d be happy to talk to you about it!