Until Willem de Vlamingh and his team of explorers first discovered black swans in 1697 in Australia, everybody believed that all swans were white. Thus, the “all swans are white” hypothesis was refuted by this discovery. That’s how science works. Or how it should work.
In the real world, scientists are highly adept at explaining away contradictions to their favored hypotheses. They will use phrases such as ” it’s a paradox”, or inform you that you didn’t measure the correct things, or there are many other confounding factors – and such.
I won’t even go into Big Pharma’s “greed factor” in dismissing such findings.
A 72-year-old man with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) was studied for many years, and try as they might; the researchers were unable to discover any evidence of cardiovascular (CVD) disease – of any sort.
As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick explains, his observations of many people with very high LDL and/or total cholesterol levels have shown that, even at very old ages, one can be free of any cardiovascular disease (CVD).
A mother of one of his fiends, with total cholesterol of 483 mg/dl, at age 85, continues to play golf and has not suffered from any cardiovascular problems.
However, none of these people had been studied in any detail. Which means that they can, and are, dismissed as irrelevant “anecdotes”.
A single case is NOT an anecdote, and cannot be lightly dismissed with a wave of the hand and a smirk.
Let’s get back to our 72 year old, who has an LDL consistently three to four times above “average”. He has tried various LDL lowering agents over the years. None of which had been successful in lowering his LDL. His average LDL level over a twenty-year period has been 486 mg/dl.
Remember that Total Cholesterol = HDL + LDL + triglycerides divided by 5.
Despite this, he has no signs of atherosclerotic plaque, in any artery, no symptoms of CVD and is – to all intents and purposes – CVD free.
Just in case you believe that this is just an “outlier”, let me inform you that the Simon Broome registry, set up in the UK many years ago to study what happens to individuals diagnosed with FH, will make you see the light.
Even though it has been used as one of the pillars of support of the cholesterol hypothesis, one of the most interesting findings is that people with FH live longer than the average person.
You can Google Simon Broome, to look at the registry.
Don’t deify your doctor and let him make all the decisions for you. You have a brain, common sense, study the subject yourself. You could come up with a better solution to your problem.
If you do succumb to your doctor’s prescribing statin medication, like Lipitor, at least supplement with Coenzyme Q 10 (CoQ10): even if he doesn’t suggest this.
Next week, I’ll tell you about the side effects of statin drugs.
That’s it for this week; see you all next time.
