The Great Cholesterol Con

The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and how to Avoid it

John Blake Publishing Ltd

Contents

WHAT IS HEART DISEASE, ANYWAY?

The main underlying theme of this book is heart disease – what causes it and what doesn't. But the term 'heart disease' is virtually meaningless. A pedant would say that heart disease is a 'disease of the heart', but there are hundreds of them, most with complex names – myocarditis, pericarditis, ventricular hypertrophy, Woff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, to name but four.

However, the big daddy, the one that kills most people, is not truly a disease of the heart at all. It is a disease of the arteries that supply blood to the heart, and is usually called atherosclerosis. 'Athero', or 'atheroma', describes the build up of grey-white/fatty gunk in the artery walls. These thickenings are sometimes called atheromatous plaques, or just plaques. 'Sclerosis' means general thickening and hardening. One of the other confusing elements when reading about heart disease is the amount of jargon. AKA medical terminology.

Atheromatous plaques come in many different varieties. The American Heart Association even has a grading system from one to five, and then further subsections into type 5(i) and 5(ii) ... and probably type 4(B), subsection (ii) paragraph 6. You get the picture.

Plaques are generally thought to progress from an initial 'fatty streak', as found in the arteries of most ten-year-olds, which gradually becomes bigger and thicker. Eventually, the plaques can reach the point where they actually calcify, turning arteries into stiff, almost bonelike tubes. The process of turning from a fatty streak into a calcified plaque is supposed to take years and years, although no one knows for sure how long things take because no one has ever hung around to watch an individual plaque going through its lifecycle (not in a human being, at least). The general assumption seems to be that it all takes decades.

Having said this, it is not the mature, stiff, calcified plaque that is the problem; it is an intermediate stage, the so-called 'unstable' plaque. At some point during their (allegedly) slow development, plaques turn into something that looks like a cyst lurking within the artery wall; a thin capsule surrounding a semi-liquid centre full of goo. This goo is made of all sorts of stuff. Fats, dead white cells, broken down bits of blood clot etc.

The great danger with this type of plaque is that the thin wall surrounding the goo bursts, or breaks down. This 'goo exposure' sends a hugely powerful message to the blood-clotting system, and results in a blood clot (also called a thrombus) forming over the burst plaque. If the blood clot is big enough then it completely blocks the blood supply to whatever organ that particular artery was supplying:

If that orga

Statins are the so-called "wonder drugs" widely prescribed to lower blood cholesterol levels that claim to offer unparalleled protection against heart disease. Many experts claim that they are completely safe and that they are also capable of preventing a whole series of other conditions. This groundbreaking study exposes the truth behind the hype surrounding statins and reveals a number of crucial facts, including that high cholesterol levels do not cause heart disease; that high-fat diets—saturated or otherwise—do not affect blood cholesterol levels; and that for most men and all women the benefits offered by statins are negligible at best. Other data is also provided that shows that statins have many more side affects than is often acknowledged. This hard-hitting survey also points a finger at the powerful pharmaceutical industry and an unquestioning medical profession as perpetrators of the largely facetious concepts of “good” and “bad” cholesterol that are designed to convince millions of people to spend billions on statins. With clarity and wit, this appeal to common sense and scientific fact debunks common assumptions on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle and diet, as well as the idea that there is a miracle cure for heart disease.

"[The Great Cholesterol Con] will save you a lot of heartache—LITERALLY!"  —Examiner.com

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick has contributed to numerous medical journals on the topic of coronary heart disease and currently runs a general practice.