Bad Cholesterol May Be Losing Its Bad Image

As you probably know, docs want you to raise your good HDL cholesterol and lower your bad LDL cholesterol. This advice may not apply any more.

Scientists at Texas A&M University have found that LDL cholesterol is actually needed by the body to build new muscle. This finding is as important for children developing new muscle as it is for older folks who are losing muscle. LDL cholesterol also helps circulate Vitamin D around our body.

Now here’s the kicker, Dr. Harlan Krumholz of Yale’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine found that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attacks as did old people with high cholesterol.

In addition, a review of nineteen studies of more than 68,000 deaths by the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found that low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.

This means the prescriptions that are written for cholesterol lowering drugs may not be saving lives at all; instead they may be causing more deaths by lowered cholesterol.

As a matter of fact, the medical community recently lowered acceptable cholesterol levels to below 200 mg/dl. This reduction put many more people on cholesterol drugs.

To make matters worse, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is now urging cholesterol screening for all children between the ages of 9 and 11. The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed this recommendation.

These are probably not great ideas! These results point to a big oops since a lot of modern medicine is focused on reducing bad cholesterol.

It’s your heart.

(Reported by the Alliance for Natural Health, November 29, 2011)