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Site Updates
High Cholesterol And Heart Disease - Myth or Truth?
Added August 23, 2008
The cholesterol-fed rabbit developed atherosclerosis but the response-to-injury rabbit never did. Why? Atherosclerosis is a disease of degenerating and infiltrating lipid. The hard facts about what really causes heart disease and how the medical establishment started with a sound foundation but wound up getting it all wrong.
Kendrick's The Great Cholesterol Con
Added August 22, 2008.
Read this book if you want a good laugh. It is filled with sarcastic humor, and reveals some of the most hilarious absurdities that pass for science in our day. But some of Kendrick's scientific errors and implausible speculations may just leave you scratching your head.
Cholesterol And Heart Disease - Just a Myth?
Added August 21, 2008.
An all-new critical review of Uffe Ravnskov's 2000 The Cholesterol Myths. Ravnksov's book is an important contribution to the debate about the role of cholesterol in heart disease, but Ravnskov ultimately leaves the reader with the idea that blood lipids have virtually nothing to do with heart disease, that existing animal models can teach us almost nothing about human heart disease, and that good scientists should never have given the cholesterol theory much weight because it was built entirely on a foundation of sand. In reality, blood lipids do matter, animal models are relevant, and though the cholesterol theory is a lopsided house, it is in fact built on a solid foundation of evidence that needs to be carefully looked at.
Colpo's Great Cholesterol Con
Added July 31, 2008
Colpo's book, The Great Cholesterol Con: Why everything you've been told about cholesterol, diet, and heart disease is wrong! is the best cholesterol skeptic book out there. It is an excellent companion to Steinberg's The Cholesterol Wars two gain two opposing points of view. You can read a critical review here.
How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Added July 29, 2008
Did you know that the Federal Reserve is privately owned? Read the truth about the Fed in this review of the two-part DVD, The Money Masters. This will eventually be part of a new section of the site about the political side of health, especially the rapidly growing attack on small farming and nutritional supplements, as the food supply concentrates into fewer and fewer hands.
New Blog and RSS Feed: The Daily Lipid
Added July 21, 2008
Not only do I have a new blog, updated nearly daily, but you can subscribe to it using the new RSS feed, allowing you to get updates as they are posted without ever having to visit the site!
The Cholesterol Wars
Added January 16, 2008
Are the skeptics wrong? Has cholesterol really been "indicted, tried, and ultimately found guilty" of causing heart disease? Daniel Steinberg, MD, PhD, argues this in his new book, The Cholesterol Wars: The Skeptics Versus the Preponderance of the Evidence. Steinberg is a cholesterol expert by any definition, having published over 200 papers on the subject and having been one of the main architects of the lipid hypothesis - but is cholesterol really guilty? Click here for a critical review.
Offsite Articles on Nutrition by Chris Masterjohn
Added 9/26/07
A compilation of some of my articles that are not available on this site.
Myth: High Cholesterol Causes Stroke
Added 9/20/07
Some authors argue that high cholesterol causes stroke and should therefore eat a diet low in cholesterol-rich foods like butter, liver and egg yolks in order to avoid this disease. The truth, however, is that high cholesterol increases the risk of ischemic stroke but decreases the risk of the more deadly hemorrhagic stroke. Moreover, cholesterol-rich animal foods are associated with a decrease in the risk of stroke.
Myth: Cholesterol-Rich Foods Raise Blood Cholesterol
Added 9/20/07
The myth goes something like this: arteries are like pipes; cholesterol is gooey, sticky gunk. When you eat cholesterol, it winds up in your blood. If the cholesterol level in your blood gets too high, it starts caking up the pipes. Thus, if you don't want your pipes clogged, don't eat foods rich in cholesterol.
In reality, dietary cholesterol has little or no effect on the cholesterol levels of over two thirds of the population. In the other third, dietary cholesterol does increase cholesterol levels, but makes the cholesterol packaged more safely into large and buoyant lipoproteins that are resistant to oxidation and stay in the blood where they belong and out of the vessel wall.
Cholesterol Synthesis and the Activation of Rho
Added 09/10/07
Much of the illusion that cholesterol causes disease may have to do with a chemical called Rho. Inflammation increases it, cholesterol correlates with it, and statins inhibit it.
Cholesterol-And-Health.Com Special Reports Is Now Available -- Subscribe Today!
Added 6/18/07.
I will offer each Special Report individually for $15.00 but by subscribing for a year you can obtain four Special Reports -- a $60 value -- for only $30. The first report, available now, is entitled, "Thyroid Toxins: The Double-Edged Swords of the Kingdom Plantae." It is 25 pages long with 66 references and contains six figures and one table. It covers goitrogens in soy, millet, cruciferous vegetables, and foods containing cyanogenic glycosides such as cassava, lima beans, flax, almonds, and fruits and fruit pits and seeds of the Rosacea family. It includes details about how different methods of processing increase or decrease the goitrogenicity of these foods and clarifies many common misconceptions about the effects of such processing.
Chris Masterjohn Responds to T. Colin Campbell Regarding the China Study
Added 3/4/07.
According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, author of The China Study, I am numbered among those who "are mischievously posing as qualified scientists" and have demonstrated "a serious lack of understanding not only of the fundamentals of scientific research but also of the principles of statistics, epidemiology andnutrition," by superficially citing uncorrected crude correlations" that I have selected "to reflect an alternative agenda or bias that has nothing to do with objective science."
You can now read my response here.
Myth: One High-Saturated Fat Meal Can Be Bad
Added 8/21/06
An Australian study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology by a group of researchers led by the Sydney, Australia Heart Research Institute's Dr. Stephen J. Nicholls was widely heralded as having shown that consumption of a single meal high in saturated fat harms the functioning of our arteries and promotes inflammation. In realtiy, the study showed nothing of the sort.
Cholesterol Is the Precursor to Vitamin D
Added 5/25/06
Cholesterol is intimately tied to vitamin D -- a vitamin with many functions in addition to its traditional role in maintaining calcium metabolism and bone health, such as cancer-prevention, immunity, blood sugar regulation, mental health, and more. Cholesterol is the precursor to vitamin D when we make it ourselves through exposure to sunlight, and cholesterol-rich foods tend to be rich in vitamin D. This article tells it all.
Food Composition Table: Distribution of Coenzyme Q10 in Foods Added 10/15/05
Our coenzyme Q10 article has now been updated with the most comprehensive food composition table showing the distribution of coenzyme Q10 in foods available on the internet. The information is drawn from only two studies, and when I am able to obtain more information it will be updated. It currently shows the coenzyme Q10 content of 98 different foods.
Statins Kill Your Brain -- Amnesia and Other Side Effects Added 09/13/05
A review of Statin Drugs Side Effects and the Misguided War on Cholesterol by former NASA astronaut Dr. Duane Graveline, MD, who discovered and was the first to publish the link between cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and transient global amnesia, when he noticed this phenomenon occurring in himself as a result of taking Lipitor, a drug he now refers to as the "Thief of Memory."
Cholesterol Guidelines Turn Healthy People Into Patients Added 09/07/05
Article by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD.
Cholesterol Is the Precursor to All Steroid Hormones Added 09/02/05
Cholesterol is the precursor to all steroid hormones. This makes it important for the regulation of blood sugar, inflmmation, mineral balance, and blood pressure, the maintenance of libido, the building of muscle mass, athletic performance, and more.
Cholesterol Is Necessary For Digestion Added 09/02/05
Cholesterol is the precursor to bile acids, which are necessary for the digestion of fats. This article shows a picture comparing the structure of cholesterol to the common bile acid, cholic acid, and describes how bile acids are synthesized, converted into bile salts, transported, and why they aid the digestion of fats.
Search Cholesterol-And-Health.com Using the Google Search Box! Added 09/02/05
You can now search Cholesterol-And-Health.com with Google's search box by clicking on the above link. This will allow you to search both the site and the back issues of our free newsletter for topics you are interested in.
The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Added 09/01/05
A review of Shane Ellison's Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs.
Statins Inhibit Isoprene Synthesis Added 08/31/05
The cholesterol-lowering drugs known as "statins" (Lipitor, Crestor, Mevacor, Zocor, Pravachol, Leschol, etc) not only inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol, but also inhibit the synthesis of all isoprenes. Isoprenes are a wide class of compounds that include the side-chain to coenzyme Q10, as well as many other compounds that anchor important proteins to cell membranes and play many other functions in the human body.