On High Blood Cholesterol, Heart Disease & Cancers (by Dr JB Lim)

The Blogger's note: This is yet another spontaneous and educational comment written by nutritionist/scientist Dr Lim Ju Boo offering a very insightful advice to people who love to eat BAK KUT TEH ("meat bone tea"), CHAR KUEY TEOW ("stir-fried ricecake strips") and HOKKIEN MEE in his reply to an email forwarded by Mr Leo Nathan. The email reads as follows:

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EXTREMELY GOOD NEWS FOR BAK KUT TEH, CHAR KUEY TEOW & HOKKIEN MEE LOVERS!
More reasons to eat Chee Yau Char (“pig's lard”) now because it contains Natural fats and not Trans fats as in processed food made by Man.

*Low Cholesterol Levels Increases Cancer Risk*- American College of Cardiology
For years, I've been telling my patients that the medical establishment's obsession with lowering cholesterol per se to prevent heart disease is causing more harm than good.
If your doctor continues to get you worried about your high cholesterol levels, here's *a bit of news* for you...

In fact, your high cholesterol may be protecting you from cancer.

Today, I'll explain the truth behind the myth of cholesterol, and show you how to achieve heart health naturally.

A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology revealed that driving down cholesterol levels actually increases the risk of cancer.

Researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine found that among people taking "*statin drugs - like Lipitor and Zocor* - there was a higher* *rate of cancer*. Although the link between the drugs and cancer wasn't clear, there was no doubt that *drastically low cholesterol levels *correlated to cancer risk.

The big drug makers continue to sell the notion that the best way to fight heart disease is to lower LDL levels, the so-called "bad" cholesterol.

Yet 75 percent of people who suffer heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.
It makes sense that low cholesterol levels are linked to cancer because cholesterol is one of your body's basic building blocks. You need it to produce testosterone, to build and repair cell membranes, and to preserve your nerve cells through the formation of the protective "sheaths" that cover them.

Starving your body of this critical substance will lead to other health problems. We already know that extremely low cholesterol levels result in muscle weakness, fatigue, depression, decreased sex drive, and "brain fog." This new research shows that there may be even more deadly consequences.

What really matters is not low "bad" cholesterol, but high levels of HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol. As long as you have a high HDL count - 75 to 80, for example - it doesn't matter whether your total cholesterol is 150 or 350. A high HDL will always keep your risk of heart disease extremely low.
So why haven't you heard this already? It may be because there's *no drug that effectively raises good cholesterol levels*. You can only effectively do it naturally.

Consume natural fats. Avoid processed or fast foods containing* "trans" fats * - these man-made substances *were never meant for consumption*, and your body doesn't know what to do with them. They wind up clogging your arteries and putting you on the fast track to heart disease. *

Instead, get your fat from free-range or grass-fed animals, eggs, nuts, and unprocessed vegetable oils*. These are some of the healthiest foods you can eat. (As with all foods, look for organic or minimally processed options whenever possible.)

The health benefit of these natural fats comes from their balance of *Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids*. Your body needs both but, as with cholesterol, they have to be in balance. *Omega-3s are great for your heart. They've been shown to prevent irregular heartbeat, reduce clogging of the arteries, lower blood pressure, and decrease inflammation in body tissues*.

If you stick to eating *natural fats*, you'll automatically get the right ratio of Omega-6 and Omega-3, which is about 2:1. As an added bonus, you'll automatically raise your "good" cholesterol levels and you'll reduce your risk of cancer.
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Reply from Dr JB Lim:
Sunday, 13 February, 2011 4:36 AMFrom: lim juboo

Bcc: lautaionn

Dear Leo Nathan and all your e-mail pen-pals,

I give almost full marks to your health articles here. It may require some 30 pages to elaborate about many old-fashioned theories the nutrition and medical communities have been misleading themselves, and also pass them on to the ignorant public about high blood cholesterol, heart disease, cancers and all those stuff. The trouble is that most nutritionists, dieticians, clinicians, and health-care professionals doing routine jobs don't read research papers and journals to update themselves with newer knowledge about health and nutrition.

As a result, they still are obsessed about high blood cholesterol linking it with heart diseases, and using lipid-lowering stantin drugs to ‘solve’ this problem? Unfortunately, these are old-fashioned theories. They only think they have solved the problem. The problem is, not only some of these nutritionists, dieticians, doctors and health-care professionals are still in the dark on the latest findings. They merely do routine work on clinical nutrition, so they don’t read to update themselves. They also mislead their patients and the ill-informed public about high cholesterol and heart disease when the enormously huge longitudinal Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts, United States which initially started this craze and obsession about cholesterol and ischemic heart disease in 1948 have long since after further extension of that study issued out another official statement that no amount of cholesterol levels, whether high or low -density lipoprotein, chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL and HDL, in the blood has any link with coronary heart disease (CHD).

The risk linking heart disease, stroke, and metabolic syndrome is very complicated one, and many, many papers have since been published independently after the extremely famous Framingham Heart Study first started this obsession craze in 1948. This very famous Framingham Heart Study was, and still is, a cohort study over two subsequent generations so far. It is still an on-going project today, projected as a very long-term longitudinal study.

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Unfortunately many other separate studies embarked since the Framingham Study have contradicted each other until even very well-informed, very well-read, nutrition scientists and medical researchers today are uncertain about the directions to take. It is not just about high blood cholesterol, trans fatty acids, lipid per-oxidation, free radicals damage to the lipids, and what you eat, or what you should not eat, etc, etc, but also many other non-dietary risk factors that are contributory, such as:

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· smoking
· high blood pressure
· high blood cholesterol
· diabetes
· being overweight or obese
· physical inactivity

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You just can’t solve this lifestyle and nutrition problem using stantin drugs as doctors think. Health is far more than just dishing out medications. These stantins generations of lipid-lowering agents cause liver damage or cancers in the long run. You suppress the problem at one end, but because the root causes were not addressed, the suppressed ball pops out at another end of the tank. Heart and almost all degenerative diseases require drastic modifications in the way we eat and live. Are we willing for this very difficult change? But that’s the only way to prevent all chronic diseases and aging problems.

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Please ask all the uninformed nutritionists, dieticians, clinicians, and your e-mail friends too who are dwelling in the dark ages to read one of these many, many links about the myth on cholesterol and heart diseases:

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http://www.becomehealthynow.com/ebookprint.php?id=1112
http://www.ravnskov.nu/myth2.htm

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Also please note this official statement from one of the Directors of the famous Framingham Study.

"In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people's serum cholesterol...we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active." Dr William Castelli 1992 (Director of the Framingham study)
There are many criticisms too by many, many other researchers debunking the connection between cholesterol and IHD (Ischemic Heart Disease) published here and there among them, prestigious journals like Lancet, JAMA, British Medical Journal (BMJ) Among many, many others too are (examples):

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http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_2.html

http://www.thehealthierlife.co.uk/natural-health-articles/heart-disease/new-study-reveals-heart-attack-risk-factor-00839.htmlarticles/heart-disease/new-study-reveals-heart-attack-risk-factor-00839.html

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So Leo Nathan, I support the views of current generations of nutrition scientists, and medical researchers and also to some extent (cautiously) your e-mail article “EXTREMELY GOOD NEWS FOR BAK KUT TEH, CHAR KUEY TEOW, HOKKIEN MEE LOVERS!”

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But just take care. Don’t go overboard with your Bak Kut Teh, Char Kuey Teow, and Hokkein Mee hypothesis. They are still a hazard. A lot of studies still need to be done. It has still to be evidence-based nutrition. We are still very uncertain about the outcome of consuming all these if we are not supported by enormously huge population, well-designed studies that have to be repeated independently over, and over again that showed consistent results. That is gold standard in scientific research.

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As scientists, we are talking about evidence-based Science, Nutrition, and Medicine. We are not fortune-tellers, or story-tellers passing gossips and myths around what we personally believe. Health is also not about what other people’s grandmother, mother, aunt, or brother-in-law believe, and then pass it on into the Internet for others.

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Just tread cautiously, and not as fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.

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Thanks.

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jb lim