From the BBC.com website

http://vimeo.com/33549663

15 all. New balls please.

This topic would be funny if it wasn't so serious. It is not the statin question again since no-one seems in any doubt that for people who can take statins they lower cholesterol.

The speakers on the vimeo site agree but what they can't seem to find is any research/evidence that high cholesterol is a bad thing. In fact France who eat large amounts of fat have similar cholesterol levels to the Lithuanians who only small amounts of fat and yet have a much greater incidence of heart disease.

The BBC article now sounds a little thin when "a charity" says that if we don't all take our statins we are all going to die. Perhaps they can provide the missing evidence about low cholesterol being good for you.

It's all very perplexing.

I can't watch the video as it crashed my computer. But re French paradox ,some French researchers deny a French Paradox

Returning to the question raised in the introduction of this review, we can now say that CHD rates are not so low in France, animal fat intake not so high, and the diet-heart concept not so unique that the existence of a “French paradox” may be
sustained any longer, except as cultural fantasy or a marketing ploy

Click to expand...

http://www.dialogues-cvm.com/document/DCVM49.pdf
Incidently the French are (or were in 2002) prescribed far more statins (in terms of dosage) than the UK (2nd out of 14, UK was 10th .
http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7436/385?tab=responses
I live in the area of the apparent French Paradox, though don't have local 'genes', my doctor still wants my LDL cholesterol to be less than 80mg/dl ( 2.07mmol/l) ,the UK guideline is 3 mmol/l ;the rest of Europe 2mmol/ l.

Hi. Does anyone know why Type 2s are supposed to have a higher incidence of heart disease? Is it merely because many T2s are overweight hence at higher risk due to their weight not their diabetes? What a pity DUK don't focus more on controlling Hba1c levels and good diet i.e. low-carb rather than putting out articles about cholesterol based on very weak research

The NHS pays for the cost of complications; the other guy is selling books. Use some common sense. If he had the evidence to support his claims, he'd have published in a journal and not written a book targeting the general public who, no offence, will not be able to tell if he's right or not.

The french drink red wine moderately, ( is it the resveratrol from the grape that removes fat ). French people seem to have better control on their health.

I do not know where experts get there statistics from, how come there all different.

Got to admit it is all very interesting.

Surely there must be a simple test device out there that can monitor our daily requirements as to keep us healthy.

For example in the good old days a car had few faults, yet easily repaired if a fault occurred. Nowadays got to plug the car into a lap top at a price just to find out if everything is ok.

Are we being treated as mushrooms, Kept in the dark and fed a lot of Bul***t (processed foods and fat).

Roy.

AMBrennan wrote
The NHS pays for the cost of complications; the other guy is selling books. Use some common sense. If he had the evidence to support his claims, he'd have published in a journal and not written a book targeting the general public who, no offence, will not be able to tell if he's right or not.

Click to expand...

We don't want a repetition about received wisdom 'good', content of a book 'bad.'

Quite a few of us T2Ds are scandalised by the complication-enhancing, healthy carbs-promoting NHS diet.
This for me destroys any argument backing the NHS line. Perhaps the NHS is creating complications to pay for.
Much research points in another direction. I certainly wouldn't suggest reading one rogue book, and making a decision on that.
If you can get it to work for you then brilliant. I keep reading about T2Ds who amaze doctors with their control, not following NHS guidelines.

Never forget the diet-heart hypothesis or lipid hypothesis are just that. Unproven ideas about how atherosclerosis occurs.
There's more than a French paradox to worry about. For those who look there are too many unanswered questions about the currently followed hypotheses.

And how you can insult the intelligence of the general public is beyond me. Do they lack your common sense ?

The writer of the book is an author, not a medical man. Which won't get him into journals, but equally won't stop him using medical evidence and opinion.

Geoff

What a poor piece that was BBC.... talk about sloppy and under-researched hyperbole.

Shocking state of affairs that they keep peddling this dubious "advice"... I suspect quite a few people follow it more or less and I would love to know what happens next.... "Keep eating like you said doc but why doesn't my HbA1C come down?" Better up your dose.... repeat ad nauseum or until the patient figures out the advice is off the mark... I wonder how many complications have resulted and we are not told about...
I try to explain to general folk I meet about all this and they often think I must be wrong... or paranoid... I despair. 8)

The real villain here is not the BBC, merely the messenger, but DUK who are 'experts' on diabetes aren't they??

As I said earlier there's more than a French paradox to sweep out of the way :



and Dr Malcolm Kendrick's article about it (notice the missing <<graph>> which I've supplied )

http://www.disease-treatment.com/archiv ... 45401.html

Enjoy

Geoff

More about the correlation or lack of it between high cholesterol and heart disease :

Interestingly, the following measures are not even on the radar screen, as far as arterial stiffness is concerned: systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and fasting insulin levels.

What about the lipid hypothesis, and the “bad” LDL cholesterol!? This study is telling us that these are not very relevant for arterial stiffness when we control for the effect of blood glucose measures. Not even fasting insulin levels matters much! Wait, not even HDL!!! A high HDL has been definitely shown to be protective, but when we look at the relative magnitude of various effects, the story is a bit different. A high HDL’s protective effect exists, but it is dwarfed by the negative effect of high blood glucose levels, especially after meals, in the context of cardiovascular disease.

Click to expand...

http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.co.uk/ ... c-and.html

This article links it largely to postprandial levels

Geoff (trusting the general public with intelligence)

Thanks for posting Simply It is all about raising awareness and reducing the risks.

I have been staring at that graph and it gives remarkable information but there are two things I don't quite understand.


1. Why has someone joined up all the dots?

2. Would it be clearer as a table re-sortable so that either of the axes could be in the left hand column?

Just a thought.

AMBrennan wrote
The NHS pays for the cost of complications; the other guy is selling books. Use some common sense. If he had the evidence to support his claims, he'd have published in a journal and not written a book targeting the general public who, no offence, will not be able to tell if he's right or not.

Click to expand...

What? A bit like Charles Darwin didn't do when he published "On the Origin of Species"? :shock:

How about Isaac Newton when he published "Principia"? :shock: Nicolaus Copernicus "De Revolutionibus"? :shock:

Ever read Richard Dawkins' "the Selfish Gene"? :shock: How about Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life"? :shock: Stephen Hawkings' "A Brief History of Time"? :shock:

Bibliophobia isn't cool kids.
Not all authors are motivated by money.
Not all controversial books turn out to be wrong.
Can we all agree to stop the book bashing?
Please?

I have been staring at that graph and it gives remarkable information but there are two things I don't quite understand.


1. Why has someone joined up all the dots?

2. Would it be clearer as a table re-sortable so that either of the axes could be in the left hand column?

Click to expand...

Probably, the linked points make no sense except to create dramatic peaks.

Have a look at the original data for the cholesterol levels and the rest of the paper. I actually can't understand why Kendrick didn't use the Monica data for mortality which are available. (not withstanding all the problems with Mortality data in that an other studies) It needs to be noted that for the total cholesterol measurement, four populations (Perth, Australia, Kaunas, Lithuania, and Ticino and Vaud/Fribourg, Switzerland) had major problems in the external quality control
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/1/181.full#F1

I wonder what a graph comparing mortality and treated/untreated high cholesterol would show?
I'm not drawing it but have look at the treated cholesterol figures for Lithuania and Russia and Toulouse France.
My thoughts could be wrong but basically in Toulouse' a much higher percentage of those with high levels of cholesterol were treated, compared with nil in Lithuania and some parts of Russia.)
Note the countries where fewer people were regularly tested and where individuals knew their cholesterol levels.

Some geographical patterns in the frequency of cholesterol measurements emerged. The highest frequency was observed in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain in both men and women, while the lowest were seen in Russia and Lithuania

Click to expand...

And of those that knew they had high cholesterol

The highest awareness among people with hypercholesterolaemia was in populations in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and North America and, in men, also in Australia. The awareness was lowest in Lithuania and Russia

Click to expand...

So might the high mortality rate for CVD be something to do with treatment of those with high cholesterol, rather to do with the actual prevalence of high cholesterol in the country ?
(Just an hypothesis!)
Areas where there people with high levels of cholesterol are neither detected nor treated have higher CVD mortality

But what about the Swiss figures, paradox perhaps??? (caveat on data)lowish treatment levels but also , according to Kendrick, lower mortality .
A 25 year follow up of the same individuals found that for individuals each CVD risk (obesity, smoking, high BP and high cholesterol was associated with a higher CVD death rate, all 4 together was associated with a 9.6 years shorter expected survival for a man aged 50.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22080525
But then again within country studies of both Lithuania and Russia show a rather different picture with areas of high incidencce of hypercholesterolaemia.
Diet and serum lipids: changes over socio-economic transition period in Lithuanian rural population
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/447
Cardiovascular epidemiology in Lithuania
http://www.seminarsincardiology.com/pdf ... -68-75.pdf
And in Russia
Total Cholesterol and Mortality in China, Poland, Russia, and the US
http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/art ... 47-2797(03)00388-0/abstract

Simple graph but not the whole story.
edit to fix transposed figure in link. ( thank you, to the person who p'm'd me about it... some people obviously read!)

Squire Fulwood said:

I have been staring at that graph and it gives remarkable information but there are two things I don't quite understand.


1. Why has someone joined up all the dots?

2. Would it be clearer as a table re-sortable so that either of the axes could be in the left hand column?

Just a thought.

Click to expand...

He sould have done a regression analysis, and plotted the line of best fit. I don't have the raw data to do it on his behalf but, by inspection, it'd be something close to a horizontal line, suggesting that the two variables are (almost) uncorrelated.

phoenix wrore
I actually can't understand why Kendrick didn't use the Monica data for mortality which are available.

Click to expand...

In his book The Great Cholesterol Con he does as here :



He then says

As you can see, ahem, a very clear pattern arises.As average cholesterol levels rise heart disease rates fall, then go up, then fall, then go up, then fall, then fall a bit more, then go up, then fall ... The point I want to make is that there is a complete dissociation between cholesterol levels and heart disease.

Click to expand...

Geoff

I have tried all of the statins to lower my cholesterol but have had problems with muscle spasms so can't take them. Have tried other drugs but terrible diarrhoea, so a bit frustrated with it all really. I am type 1 and have chol of 6.5. I guess I will have to do it with diet and exercise although have been this level for many years. Doctor says its in my make up as my good chol. Is very good and triglycerides are also good, so only bad chol is bad! Any goof ideas?