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One warning--

"Cholesterol" tends to get used to mean two different things, and even otherwise clear writers like Gary Taubes don't always explicitly denote which one they mean: 1) the amount of cholesterol in your blood, which is mostly produced by your liver. I.e., if my blood cholesterol is 300 mg/dL, should I be worried? 2) cholesterol in your diet. I.e., should you avoid eggs?

I'd say the scientific consensus is that blood cholesterol (particularly small-particle LDL) drives heart disease, but cholesterol (or saturated fat) in your diet doesn't drive blood cholesterol (<10% effect).

So low-fat/high-carb diets were a fallacy and are not "heart-healthy," it's fine to eat eggs, but you should still try to reduce your LDL cholesterol if it's high and boost your HDL cholesterol if it's low.

3 comments

Cholesterol means one thing: "blood cholesterol". The doubt is if something in your diet affects your cholesterol.

Another point, still not proved, is if high total cholesterol drives heart disease. As far as I know, there is evidence that it doesn't matter at all.

As said in other comments, tryglicerids and HDL matters a lot more, according to this evidence.

And I strongly disagree with you conclusion that low-fat, high-carb diets are a fallacy according to being "herat-healthy"

My impression is that your tool is based on misinformation.

>I'd say the scientific consensus is that blood cholesterol (particularly small-particle LDL) drives heart disease

Blood cholesterol is a natural component of blood and is synthesized by all animal cells because it is an essential component of cell membranes. If you had no cholesterol in your blood you would be seriously ill.

Abnormal levels of cholesterol are associated with heart disease but it is not clear if they are the prime cause. The heart disease and abnormal cholesterol may both be caused by something else. There is evidence that excessive activation of the bodies inflammatory system may be more of a root cause.

(see http://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-surgeon-speaks-out-... for example)

Be careful about which sources you trust. Here's are a couple other articles from sott.net's "Health and Wellness" page: http://www.sott.net/article/287460-Vaccine-wars-Penalizing-t... http://www.sott.net/article/287450-The-not-so-surprising-ben...

I'll stick with Circulation, The Lancet, and JAMA, thank you very much. :)

Yeah I grabbed that link without checking up much. Although I still think there is evidence for the inflammation hypothesis.

    > [..] but cholesterol (or saturated fat) in your diet 
    > doesn't drive blood cholesterol (<10% effect).
    > [..] it's fine to eat eggs, but you should still try 
    > to reduce your LDL cholesterol if it's high and boost 
    > your HDL cholesterol if it's low.

This is highly interesting but I'm confused. Do you mean that diet doesn't matter when it comes to blood cholesterol and the LDL/HDL ratio can only be affected by medication or that only the ratio but not overall blood cholesterol can be influenced by the diet?

> Do you mean that diet doesn't matter when it comes to blood cholesterol

Diet matters a lot. Apparently, it has been shown that for some people, milk fat in the diet correlates strongly with serum (blood) levels of cholesterol.

However, the effect of cholesterol in your diet seems to have little to no effect on your serum levels.

Serum cholesterol is actually pretty important: It is the precursor to Vitamin D (the other ingredient being sunlight exposure). For sure, it is an indicator of trouble, but it is unclear if it actually causes trouble itself or is part of the body's attempt to make things right.

Statins reduce cholesterol, and reduce the incidence of heart attacks, but they either increase or do not affect all-cause mortality (depending on which study you look at).

The science is far from settled on this, despite what most medical professionals would have you believe.

So diet influences blood cholesterol levels, but it's not as easy as high cholesterol food causes high cholesterol in blood.