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Coronary Cholesterol Confusion

Go to Medline's website:

And type in the keyword, "cholesterol"

The good news is that you will come up with links to 197,632 different cholesterol studies which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The bad news is that by averaging 10 minutes reading each study abstract, you would invest nearly 2 million minutes of your time (over 1,372 days without setting aside time for sleep) to become the world's cholesterol expert. Of course, during that four year time frame, there most likely would be tens of thousands of additional new studies to review. Facing the task of painting the Golden Gate Bridge as your life's work (when one finishes, one begins anew), or reviewing all of the science, let me suggest that a nice new coat of paint for the bridge will accomplish so much more for mankind than a review of the cumulative garbage heap of corrupt and absurd science.

Instead, contemplate the nature of the intellectually bankrupt system which fuels such studies. The system that provides funding for scientific research. At $50,000 per study (just my own arbitrary number...after all, scientists and lab rats have to eat), we obtain a collective cost to society of nearly $10,000,000,000. Is that economical? Of course it is. Those same funds could be used to finance the construction of two Air Force AWACS planes. Or one space shuttle flight. Or, subsidized lunch for all the school kids who benefit from government promotion of skim milk for...about two weeks and 11,317 rolls of toilet paper.

So...rats and scientists scurry and consume and publish and reveal to the world nearly two hundred thousand different tidbits of cholesterol information, and what does the public do? Eat more bacon and eggs, that's what. Consume more cholesterol-rich foods such as cheese, pizza, and ice cream. Which brings me to the question of the moment:

What does cholesterol have to do with heart disease?

Heart disease is America's number-one killer. The choice is yours to either be a victim, or have a change of heart and let food be your medicine.

Is there really such a thing as "bad cholesterol?"

Repeat after me:

My body is not stupid. It does not do stupid things. It reacts to the stupid things which my mind directs it to do. Whoever designed the human body did so with an intelligent plan.

The following is not be taught in medical schools. The following represents the cause and cure of heart disease. You want simplicity? Here it is...

The manufacture of LDL Cholesterol (low density lipoprotein) is the human response to continuous heart damage. The internal production and secretion of this so-called "bad cholesterol" is the manner in which the body repairs its own damage. I call LDL cholesterol the body's own spackle. When picture hooks cause holes in your walls, you simply go to a hardware store to purchase a can of spackle. That fills the hole. Many events are responsible for heart damage. The largest heart study in American history (Castelli's Framingham Heart Study) has identified sulfur-based amino acids (from eating animal protein) as the key to the etiology of heart disease. So, the body's antidote to Atkins Diet insanity is to neutralize the damage caused by the ingestion of animal protein. Your body's response is to manufacture more LDL cholesterol.

The higher the cholesterol reading, the greater is the damage that must be repaired. So, what do naive meat eaters do when faced with high cholesterol rates? They seek advice from well meaning, but ignorant doctors.

Doctors prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs which take away the body's mechanism by which the damage is repaired. In other words, cholesterol-lowering drugs make things worse. Why not simply eliminate those factors which cause the damage? Because most doctors are not taught to think. They are taught to diagnose and prescribe medications. (There are exceptions to this "ignorant doctor" rule. They include John McDougall, MD, Joel Fuhrman, MD, Michael Greger, MD, and many others).

Animal protein (meat and dairy) contains an abundance of sulfur-based amino acids. The worst foods to eat (the highest levels of sulfur) are chicken and eggs. You do not want the rotten egg smell infusing into each of your body's cells. One must neutralize the resulting acid. To do so, calcium is leached from where it is stored: in the skeletal system. For this reason, those living in meat-eating nations have the highest rates of bone disease.

So, what can you do if you have high cholesterol and hope to prevent or reverse heart disease? The heart-healthy answer is to change your diet and furnish your body with clean fuel.

Here comes the best part of today's column. After you have your stroke or heart attack, your doctor will put you on a vegan diet to prevent a second coronary event. That much he has learned. Why then, has he not put you on that same diet in the first place?

Robert Cohen

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