Cardiologist: Millions of People Taking Statin Drugs Will Continue to Have Far Greater Chance of Harm than Benefit

Two recent articles published in the UK mainstream hard copy and online newspaper Express revealed there’s something wrong with cholesterol-lowering statin drug prescription policies, quoting several doctors who claim statins cause more harm than benefit. Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist professor at the San Francisco Medical Center, states: “Unfortunately, until all data is available and discussed with patients, millions of people taking these [statin] drugs will continue to have far greater chance of harm than benefit.” Dr. Rita Redberg's name might be familiar to our readers, because she appeared in an Australian two-part TV news documentary that has often been featured in several Health Impact News articles. Both parts were connected thematically and produced by Dr. Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D. And it was Dr. Demasi’s British Medical Journal (BMJ) article and study review that the Express article was reporting rather favorably with quotes from other doctors supporting her findings. The article’s focus was on the controversy it had ignited regarding the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

Meta-Analysis Study: Whole Fat Dairy Healthy, Saturated Fats Myth Exposed

A 2017 meta-analysis of 29 studies has concluded that consuming dietary dairy fat has no negative effects on all cause mortality or mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD). This includes dairy fats of all types. One of the researchers, Ian Givens of England’s Reading University, commented on the record: “There’s been a lot of publicity over the last 5 to 10 years about how saturated fats increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and a belief has grown up that they must increase the risk, but they don’t.” Actually, dairy and other animal sourced saturated fats have been wrongly condemned as a contributor to obesity and higher cardiovascular risk since Ancel Keys' notorious seven countries study over 50 years ago, which spawned the “lipid theory” of heart disease and obesity.

The Diet Police: Harassing Doctors Who Promote Low-Carb High-Fat Dieting

LCHF stands for a low carbohydrate and high fat diet. Not only does this diet protocol threaten the official nutritional dietary dogma of high carbohydrates and low fats (including NO saturated fats, as per USDA nutritional guidelines), promoting LCHF also threatens the sugar and processed food industries where it hurts, financially. So as with all things proven unscientific that support current industrial endeavors, promoting accurate current science to upset all endeavors associated with misinformation warrants attacks on the messengers while suppressing their scientific evidence. The science behind LCHF has been known at least since the 1920's when the ketogenic diet was developed at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a cure for childhood epilepsy, being used when drugs failed. Dr. Tim Noakes, MD, a South African scientist and emeritus professor at University of Cape Town’s Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine was attacked by nutrition officials almost three years ago in 2014. After three years of public court room hearings, with all its legal expenses and stressful distractions, he was recently acquitted.

Saturated Fat and Heart Disease: “The Greatest Scam in the History of Medicine”

Dr. Malcom Kendrick is a Scottish doctor and author of the book The Great Cholesterol Con. Recently he wrote a blog post on saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. He commented on how the science actually proves the opposite conclusion from what is commonly believed about saturated fats: To be honest, I have studied saturated fat consumption many, many… many, many, times. The one thing that has always stood out, most starkly, is the complete lack of any real evidence to support the idea that it causes cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, evidence contradicting it arrives on an almost daily basis.

Forbidden Cures: Avocados and Purple Potatoes Kill Cancer Cells

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” is a quote often attributed to Hippocrates, along with the “first do no harm” medical approach. He is considered the Greek father of Western medicine and his philosophical natural approach is repeated by many in the alternative health field today. But these quotes are rarely practiced in mainstream medicine. Instead, we have a culture suckered into eating unhealthy processed and fast foods and indoctrinated by mainstream medicine to believe only western modern medicine, ruled by the pharmaceutical industry's toxic synthetic chemicals, can keep you disease free. Most mainstream medical professionals disapprovingly wince or shrug their shoulders whenever someone inquires about dietary influences. Except for cautioning against cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, the attitude among most practicing M.D.s is just eat what you want and rely on our pharmaceutical solutions to fix you. Food as first medicine for cancer is mostly preventative, though some prove worthy as healing agents or adjuncts to other protocols. Studies show that avocados and purple potatoes kill cancer cells, for example.

Is Whole Milk Dairy Better Than Low Fat?

Are you still eating low-fat or no-fat dairy products? If you are, you probably think you’re doing the right thing for your health. And if you check with virtually any public health agency, they’d wholeheartedly agree. The American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, and American Cancer Society, for instance, all recommend low-fat or no-fat dairy. The US Department of Agriculture, in their nutrition guidelines for Americans, also advises, “Dairy Group choices should be fat-free or low-fat.” So what’s the problem? The advice to eat low-fat foods, including dairy, is antiquated, at least back to the 1970s, when low-fat diets were first recommended. It’s also not scientifically supported, and if you’re choosing low-fat over full-fat, not only are you missing out on taste, flavor and satisfaction, but you’re missing out on valuable benefits to your health – benefits that come from eating full-fat foods.

Coconut Oil and Other Saturated Fats Are Essential for Health

Saturated fats are commonly solid fats like animal and dairy fats and plant fats like nuts, avocado, and coconut oil. Unprocessed coconut oil remains solid up to 76 degrees Fahrenheit. It's impossible to know about a food's health benefits if the food is officially taboo. The nutritional taboo of saturated fat started by one man's highly publicized hypothesis that declared dietary saturated fats as the major source of heart disease. His name was Ancel Keys, a physiologist and researcher with the University of Minnesota who conducted a massive international study called the Seven Countries Study. Even then, several scientists questioned Keys' epidemiological evidence that led to his hypothetical conclusions. Ancel Keys made the cover of Time Magazine in 1961, the year when he managed to persuade the American Heart Association (AHA) to issue dietary guidelines that excluded saturated fats. In their place came refined carbohydrates and processed vegetable oils. The false causation of heart disease from saturated fats true cause is currently scientifically disputed by iconoclastic cardiologists such as Dr. Dwight Lundell, Dr. Stephan Sinatra, Dr. Ron Rosedale, Britain's Dr. Aseem Malholtra and other cardiologists and health experts who have been courageous enough to publicly speak against the unproven theory of the saturated fat causing heart disease theory.

Saturated Fat Helps Avoid Diabetes

About one in three Americans now has diabetes or pre-diabetes. That's nearly 80 million people, the majority of whom suffer from type 2 diabetes – a preventable and, often, reversible condition. The problem is that many Americans are unaware that the foods they're eating could be setting them up for a dietary disaster, and this isn't their fault. Public health guidelines condemn healthy fats from foods like butter and full-fat dairy and recommend whole grains and cereals – the opposite of what a person with diabetes, or any person really, needs to stay healthy. For the last 50 years, Americans have been told to eat a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet. Even diabetics have been told to eat 50 to 60 percent of their daily calories in the form of processed carbs! Research, including a new study involving dolphins, again suggests that this movement away from traditional full-fat foods is contributing to the rising rates of diabetes and metabolic syndrome across the globe.

Feds to Reinvent School Lunches with Flavored Skim Milk Full of Toxic Additives

Reps. G.T. Thompson (R-PA) and Joe Courtney (D-CT) recently introduced the School Milk Nutrition Act of 2015, which seeks to increase dairy consumption in children by mandating low-fat and non-fat flavored milk for each school meal. As usual, there are powerful interests involved: the dairy industry, looking to regain market share, is very much in support of the new bill. The bill completely ignores the evidence indicating that whole dairy, as opposed to low-fat or non-fat, is the healthier option. Research has shown that consuming whole-fat dairy lowers the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and bowel cancer, and causes less weight gain compared to low-fat and non-fat dairy. The federal government, and the sponsors of this bill, rely on outdated ideas pointing to saturated fat as the enemy despite current research that says otherwise.

Study: Government Guidelines on Low-fat Diet Were Not Supported by Science

In 2015, the British Medical Journal published a meta-analysis looking at randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that were available to US and UK regulatory committees that adopted low-fat dietary guidelines in the 1970s and 1980s to supposedly reduce coronary heart disease (CHD). The authors of the study state that to date, no analysis of the evidence base for recommending a low-fat diet to reduce heart disease has ever been studied. So the authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the RCTs that were published prior to 1983, which examined the relationship between dietary fat, serum cholesterol and the development of coronary heart disease. After analyzing multiple studies that included 2467 males, the authors found "no differences in all-cause mortality and non-significant differences in CHD mortality, resulting from the dietary interventions." They therefore concluded that: "Dietary recommendations were introduced for 220 million US and 56 million UK citizens by 1983, in the absence of supporting evidence from RCTs." How many lives have been ruined by the low-fat theory of heart disease?

Study: Doubling Saturated Fat in Diet Does not Increase Saturated Fat in Blood

2014 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year the dietary belief that saturated fats are bad and lead to heart disease began to crumble in the mainstream media. This "news" of course is not "news" at all for those of us in the alternative media, as we have been saying this for well over a decade now. The research in the scientific literature showing the health benefits of saturated fats in the diet has been around for even longer. What should be carefully noted in the mainstream media's reporting on saturated fats, however, is that it is almost exclusively related to dietary advice, and the sale of certain groups of food high in saturated fats, such as butter. The reason for restricting the change in the saturated fat myths of the past 50 years or so to only dietary advice is most likely due to the fact that processed food companies (such as Big Dairy) can still produce products that take advantage of this shift in consumer trends, as consumers wise up to the fact that when you restrict saturated fats in the diet, you tend to replace them with refined carbohydrates, which are linked to many health problems that are historically blamed on saturated fats. Undoubtedly, the processed food industry's answer will be more highly processed saturated fatty foods now. Where the change in the saturated fat myth is still not applied in the mainstream media is in the lipid theory of heart disease related to cholesterol. This is a holy grail in the pharmaceutical industry that supports a hundred BILLION dollar drug industry to lower people's cholesterol levels. So the cholesterol myth will die a hard death. Sadly, it will live on to bring in billions of dollars in pharmaceutical profits for the foreseeable future. The latest study showing the fallacies of the saturated-fats-are-bad belief system comes from Ohio State University.

Saturated Fat Phobia Lacks Scientific Basis

Does the thought of a rare-cooked, grass-fed steak, a couple of over-easy eggs cooked in butter, or a tall glass of raw whole milk make your mouth water? These satisfying foods that have been enjoyed for ages are now taboo, according to US health agencies, because saturated animal fats “cause heart disease” and should be severely restricted in a heart-healthy diet. As recently as 2010, the current recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) call for reducing your saturated fat intake to a mere 10 percent of your total calories or less. This is astounding, and quite the opposite of what most people require for optimal health! Fortunately, there are signs that the saturated fat phobia is lifting in the US, and not a moment too soon, as increasing research banishes the myth that saturated fats harm your health.

How Bad Science and the Pharmaceutical Industry Created Most Modern Diseases

Dr. David Diamond, who is an expert in neuroscience, explains how he was forced to become an expert in heart disease. Faced with the problems of obesity, high triglycerides, and bad cholesterol lab results, making him a prime candidate for a heart attack, Dr. Diamond decided to forsake the standard statin drugs treatment and try to treat his problems through dietary intervention alone. He embarked on a dietary course endorsed by the medical system to supposedly reduce his cholesterol levels and triglycerides, by cutting back on meats and fat and exercising more. After a couple of years, he found out that this dietary course not only did not reduce his risk for heart disease, it actually increased it. His triglycerides and cholesterol ratios got even worse. His cardiologist told him he needed to go on statin drugs immediately and that he was kidding himself by believing diet could change anything. Dr. Diamond then decided to study heart disease himself, researching the published literature, so that he could become an expert on heart disease. During the day he was a neuroscientist, but in the evenings and weekends he was studying about heart disease. What he found was that the idea of saturated fat and cholesterol causing heart disease was not based on any real science and is a myth. Modern dietary advice is actually causing obesity and most modern diseases.

Butter Consumption Reaches a 40-Year High

Butter consumption in the US has hit a 40-year high, largely resulting from a shift in consumer preferences away from processed foods. Between 1920 and 1960, Americans’ butter consumption declined by over 75 percent, yet heart disease went from a relatively unknown condition to the number one killer. Butter, especially raw butter from grass-fed cows, is rich in beneficial nutrients including vitamins, trace minerals, CLA, and beneficial fats. Butter produced from CAFO milk is inferior nutritionally as it comes from cows fed almost entirely GE grain, some fattened up with additional sugar from GE sugar beets and cottonseed. Buying dairy products from reputable local farmers will allow you to enjoy butter without supporting the inhumane conditions too common at factory farms.

The Deadly Consequences of Replacing Saturated Fats with Polyunsaturated Fats in the American Diet

Our #1 top read news story from 2013 was: Sweden Becomes First Western Nation to Reject Low-fat Diet Dogma in Favor of Low-carb High-fat Nutrition. As we reported last year, Sweden became the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice. The switch in dietary advice followed the publication of a two year study by the independent Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment. The committee reviewed 16,000 studies published through May 31, 2013. Now, top Swiss researchers, led by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, have urged the National Cholesterol Education Program, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Heart Association in the United States to follow their lead, and reverse years of dangerous and harmful dietary advice that has led to an increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates and Omega 6 polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fats. They have published their comments in the April 2014 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. So will American health "experts" reverse their dietary advice?

Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Myth Exposed in Mainstream Media in Australia

Outside of the United States, the myth that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease is quickly falling apart. Sweden just recently became the first western nation to reject the low-fat dietary philosophy in favor of a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet. A leading cardiologist in the U.K. made shock waves recently by appearing in the mainstream media and stating that saturated fats were not the cause of heart disease, but refined carbohydrates were. Now, ABC TV in Australia has now released a news documentary with the title: "HEART OF THE MATTER: The Cholesterol Myth: Dietary Villains and Cholesterol Drug War." This documentary interviews cardiologists, science writers, and other experts who expose the saturated fat and cholesterol myth. People around the world are waking up to these dietary myths, as well as the scam of cholesterol-lowering drugs and how harmful they actually are. But given that exposing this myth threatens the loss of billions of dollars in profits in the United States, will the mainstream media and the U.S. Government follow other western nations?

Cardiologist Speaks Out On The Myth of Bad Saturated Fat, Stating Carbs Are More Damaging Than Butter

A false interpretation of scientific studies has led to millions being "over-medicated" with statin drugs due to the proliferation of myths in the medical community regarding the role of saturated fat in heart disease. A Cardiologist is speaking out stating that almost four decades of advice to cut back on saturated fats found in foods such as butter and meat has paradoxically increased our cardiovascular risks.

Sweden Becomes First Western Nation to Reject Low-fat Diet Dogma in Favor of Low-carb High-fat Nutrition

Sweden has become the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice. The switch in dietary advice followed the publication of a two-year study by the independent Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment. The committee reviewed 16,000 studies published through May 31, 2013. The expert committee consisted of ten physicians, and several of them were skeptics to low-carbohydrate diets at the beginning of the investigation. They now conclude that butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight, and there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease.

Wonders of the Ketogenic diet: Two Men Who Ate Nothing but Meat for an Entire Year!

Low-carb diets and paleolithic nutrition are all the rage these days, and for good reason. Compared to the Standard American Diet, both of them are superb. Few of us would dare to take the two to their extreme, however. Giving up sugar and wheat is one thing, but what about giving up everything except meat? Yes, I'm talking about an ultra low-carb diet with even foods like nuts and berries removed. Unsurprisingly and understandably, studies on the long-term effects of such a diet are severely lacking. There is at least one study that did just this, however. Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian ethnologist who spent more than a decade with the Inuit during his arctic explorations, lived almost exclusively on fish and meat for 9 years. At the time, this was considered heresy and life-threatening, just as it is today. To the surprise of many (including Stefansson himself), he suffered no health problems during his decade of pure carnivorism. When he told people of his amazing experiences, he was met with skepticism from medical authorities who asked him to undertake a study that would replicate the results. He and a fellow explorer named Andersen agreed to eat an all-meat diet for an entire year in a closely observed setting.

Study: Saturated Fat Not Associated with Risk of Coronary Artery Disease, Coconut Oil and Dairy Fat Healthy

The lipid theory of heart disease linking saturated fat to coronary heart disease continues to crumble. Of course there never was any real solid science linking traditional saturated fats and cholesterol to heart disease, but that didn't stop the pharmaceutical companies from making billions of dollars from the sale of cholesterol-lowering drugs. Before the patent expired, Lipitor was the best selling drug of all time, nearly equaling the sales of all other drugs combined. An excellent study analyzing the existing medical literature regarding dietary fats and heart disease was just published in Advances in Nutrition by Glen D. Lawrence, PhD, from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY - Dietary Fats and Health: Dietary Recommendations in the Context of Scientific Evidence. This analysis is significant because it not only looks at the differences of dietary oils classified as saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MFA) or polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), but also the ratios of Omega 3 (ω3) to Omega 6 (ω6) fatty acids contained within PUFAs. Older research had suggested that PUFAs had a lower risk of heart disease. But the science actually points to only Omega 3 fatty acids, such as those found in fish oils, as being heart healthy, and not Omega 6 fatty acids, such as those found in corn and soybean oil, which comprise more than 90% of the dietary oil market in the U.S. The study also correctly vindicates the negative bias against saturated fat found in coconut oil and dairy products: "Several recent analyses indicate that SFAs, particularly in dairy products and coconut oil, can improve health."