Ignore the Awkward! How the Cholesterol Myths Are Kept Alive

This book by Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD, was published Dec. 1, 2010. The following description and review are from [www.amazon.com]

Product Description:

The cholesterol campaign is the greatest medical scandal in modern time. If you have read the author's previous books ´The Cholesteol Myths´ (out of print) or 'Fat and Cholesterol are GOOD for You', you should know that for certain. For instance, according to more than 25 scientific studies old people with high cholesterol live the longest. Another shocking fact is that the authors of a recent American study of more than 130,000 patients with acute myocardial infarction found that on average, their cholesterol was lower than normally. Their finding has already been confirmed by others. What they also found was that three years later, mortality was twice as high among those whose cholesterol was the lowest. Their conclusion? We must lower cholesterol even more! But there is much, much more. The author's aim with this book is to show how prominent scientists have turned white into black by ignoring all conflicting observations; by twisting and exaggerating trivial findings; by citing studies with opposing results in a way to make them look supportive; and by ignoring or scorning the work of critical scientists. Those who have not read his previous books may not quite understand the width of these misleading processes. He has therefore included a short and simplified review of the most obvious contradictions to the cholesterol hypothesis. At the end he presents what he and his colleague Kilmer McCully think is the real cause, here told in a more simple way than in his previous book.

Reviewer Laurence Chalem writes:

Adding value to his previous tomes, Dr. Uffe Ravnskov provides an accessible, logical, entertaining, factual, convincing, trustworthy, invaluable book that more than just summarizes the dogma to date on the lipid hypothesis amplified in his previous books; he arms the reader with straightforward, well-documented answers to the question "Why and how have we been deceived?"

In "Ignore the Awkward! How the Cholesterol Myths are Kept Alive," Dr. Ravnskov discusses the many abominable ways so-called scientists have used to seduce the world. His first six chapters spell out how pseudo-scientists, the cat's paws of Big Pharma, have built and maintained their sponsors' empires, which, in the sixth chapter, includes a summary of studies he more fully delved into in his previous book. But it's his new insights of these studies in the next eight chapters that make the book worthwhile. If you have read Dr. Ravnskov's other works, then the first part is a refreshing, fast-paced review; if you are new to the cholesterol myth, then his book serves as a great primer. Either way, you are sure to come away with deeper insight into the subject as a result of reading it.

Discussed in the book include the North Karelia project, the Helsinki Heart Study, the Oslo Trial, the angiographic trials of Greg Brown, the Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (LRC), the Coronary Drug Project, the WHO Trial, MRFIT, the Miettinen Trial, most of the statin trials including the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S), HPS, LIPID Trial, EXCEL, WOSCOPS, AFCAPS/TexCAPS, where 2.4% of the subjects died in the treatment group and 2.3% died in the control group, and JUPITER, where chances of staying alive after being 50 years old increased from 97.2% to 97.8% if you took a Crestor tablet every day, yet increased your chance of getting type 2 diabetes. Here Dr. Ravnskov subtly introduces us to the term "Number Needed to Treat (NNT)," by stating that 330 healthy people would need to take the drug everyday so one of their lives would be saved. Would you put ointment on a cut knowing that it would work on only one out of 330 applications?

Moreover, it is Dr. Ravnskov's explanation of the way that those who propagate the cholesterol myths get us to believe these things that is the reason you should get this book. Dr. Ravnskov explains those strategies in the middle eight chapters, and they include ignoring critics, ignoring alternative explanations, explaining away facts, outright lying, etc., ending a later chapter with a brief anecdote of his negative experience with industry "spoofing."

Without stealing any thunder from Dr. Ravnskov, let me compress his thesis by saying that cholesterol could very well be one of the most important molecules produced by Homo sapiens, that any benefit by taking statins is the result of anything but its cholesterol-lowering ability, and that, to reiterate the researches of Gary Taubes, Barry Groves, Malcolm Kendrick, David Brownstein, Marshall Deutsch, Duane Graveline, Björn Hammarskjöld, Paul Rosch, Morley Sutter, Glyn Wainwright, Nicolai Worm, Henry Lorin, Mary Enig, Joel Kauffman, Luca Mascitelli, Kilmer McCully, Michael de Lorgeril, and many others, while also bringing back many fond lyrics from classic rock tunes, cholesterol is not the devil; it is, in fact, one of the most important molecules in the body. No, the villain, better stated as villains, as he concludes the book, are the many microorganisms that call our body home--of the ten trillion cells in the body, only one trillion are ours--supported by too few vitamins, especially D and C, or copper in our diet, and too much iron or homocysteine in our blood. Dr. Ravnskov closes by describing the most likely mechanism for vulnerable plaques and true causes of this heretofore poorly described condition of being human. Enjoy your coconut oil, cheese, heavy cream, and real butter. Mmmm, butter...

Corrections:

-- [www.amazon.com]
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-- Published Jan.10, 2010