Full Transcript Cholesterol myths and statin marketing 0:00 So is cholesterol important? 0:02 Well, yes and no. 0:05 And there's an excellent book called The Great Cholesterol Myth by a doctor named Steven Sinatra, just like Frank Sinatura. 0:13 Steven sinatra and it talks about the real story on cholesterol and the use of statin medication. 0:20 So I highly recommend that. 0:23 So, you know, one of the cholesterol myths is that having high cholesterol means you're going to have a heart attack. 0:29 So everybody's working, right, on lowering cholesterol. 0:33 And the most common way they tell you to lower cholesterol is with medication. 0:38 What we found is this is very misguided because for a variety of reasons. 0:47 The main reason that it happens is there's a big push by the pharmaceutical companies for doctors to prescribe statin medication. 0:55 There's something that the Pharmaceutical companies like, it's called compliance. 1:00 And we usually think of compliance as being willing to go along with the program or whatever. 1:04 Their version of Compliance is if they can find a medication that you have to take every day for the rest of your life, That's compliance, 1:14 and that is a monetary boon to them. 1:17 When you take things like antibiotics for a week and then you stop and don't need them anymore, I mean, why do you think There are problems in antibiotic development. 1:25 That's not where the big money is, because we take it for a short period of time, and then we're done. 1:30 So the more medications they can get people on where you are told you have to take every day, you don't have take the rest of your life, 1:39 it's bigger financial rewards for them. 1:42 And the first thing that happened with statins is that Lipitor, are any women here on Lipitore? 1:51 Okay. 1:51 Lipitor, you don't have to raise your hand. 1:54 What? 1:59 Lipitour, there was a slight of hand that was done in the studies when lipitor first was brought on the market. 2:08 They found that it didn't do a thing for women. 2:11 But it did seem to lower cardiovascular disease in men. 2:15 So they, instead of separating the data and saying, you know, use it in man but not in women, well, they were going to lose half the population if they 2:23 said not to use in in woman.
Why low-fat diets backfired 2:25 so they mixed the date all together and said, Well, the day for men and women shows that it does have some benefit. 2:33 Everybody's prescribing it for women as well as men Lipitor does absolutely nothing for women. 2:41 The more information that comes out about cholesterol, the more we realize that cholesterol is not the problem. 2:51 Why is some of the cholesterol getting deposited in our blood vessels? 2:55 That's the question. 2:57 It doesn't happen because you have high cholesterol. 3:01 except in rare instances where there's a genetic familial problem with extraordinarily high cholesterol, which is a different story. 3:08 And that's not what affects 99% of the population. 3:14 What we know is that having very low cholesterol under 160, and a lot of your doctors want to get you under 16, down to 140, you have increased risk of dying. 3:28 And if you have cholesterol over 240, you had a decreased risk of dying. 3:34 So your total cholesterol is not what makes a difference in your long term health. 3:45 The other great cholesterol myth is that if you eat eggs because they have cholesterol, you're going to have a heart attack. 3:50 That's not true. 3:52 Dietary cholesterol does not put cholesterol in your blood vessels. 3:56 What puts cholesterol into your vessels is an accumulation of things that we're gonna talk about. 4:04 So the real cause of cardiovascular disease is not having high cholesterol, it's not eating cholesterol. 4:11 It's now eating saturated fat. 4:13 Other things that we're going to get to. 4:15 And one of the things has been really misguided, I think it is finally turning around a little bit, is this whole idea that you should eat a low-fat diet. 4:25 And so when people remove fats from their diets, you know, there are only three things you can eat. 4:29 It's either fats, carbohydrates, or proteins. 4:34 So if you take fats away, that leaves you with carbohydrates and protein.
Problems with statin studies and short doctor visits 4:39 And believe me, when the whole low-fat craze happened, people did not start eating a whole lot more chicken, turkey, and fish. 4:46 They ate a lot of carbohydrates. 4:48 And all the processed foods, if you take fats out of processed food, the only way to make them taste good is to put a bunch of sugar in or a punch of salt. 4:57 So this whole starting in the 70s was the rise of the obesity epidemic and was really the big push to eat a low-fat diet. 5:07 So low fat diet has really gotten us into trouble. 5:13 What other things? 5:14 This I already talked about. 5:15 So the great cholesterol reality is that statins equal money, and that's why they're pushed so strongly. 5:22 And one of the problems, I was a doctor who practiced conventional medicine until seven years ago, for like over 25 years. 5:33 I believe the articles that were in our medical journals, are very scientific journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, 5:41 which is probably one of the better ones. 5:44 The American Journal Cardiology. 5:46 I was at OBGYN, so it was the Journal, the American College of OB-Gyn. 5:56 I respected the scientific articles that were in there, and so I acted upon them. 6:01 If a certain study said that this drug was tested and it worked better than something else, then I would always want to do what seemed to work better for patients. 6:10 not realizing how much of the funding comes from pharmaceutical companies. 6:14 So the studies are very skewed, and you'll find that for vaccine studies, you find for statin studies. 6:23 You find it for a lot of different medication studies so doctors are acting on their best knowledge, reading what's in their journals, 6:30 thinking that this is unbiased science, and there's unfortunately very little unbiased science anymore. 6:38 Nobody wants to fund it, you know, the NIH funds are decreasing, so most of the funding comes from an interested party, interested in promoting what is 6:47 being studied and showing it in the best light. 6:50 And I think that's where we've gotten with statin medications. 6:54 The other thing is, doctors have really been pushed into spending very short visits with patients. 7:01 I know it's very unsatisfying for patients, I wasn't happy about it as a doctor, but really the quickest thing you can do is write somebody a prescription 7:11 and send them on their way. 7:13 Starting to talk about lifestyle and like, can you reduce carbs in your diet? 7:17 Well, what would that mean? 7:18 What would you have to give up? 7:20 And, you know, What could you do instead of it? 7:21 and what kind of exercise are you able to do? 7:23 You have a knee problem? 7:25 Could you this type of exercises or that type exercise? 7:29 That takes a while and I mean in a five or seven minute visit there really isn't time for that.
Cholesterol, inflammation, and particle size 7:35 So there's a lot of push to write prescriptions as treatment, that's not a treatment. 7:42 A treatment is caring for the whole person. 7:45 And cardiovascular, I mean, it's all about lifestyle. 7:49 And studies have been done. 7:51 Lifestyle changes are just as effective as medication for almost every cardiovascular thing you can think of. 7:59 But it takes time, and doctors don't have a lot of time. 8:06 See, where were we? 8:07 Yeah, so like I said, the NIH and your cardiologists are killing you. 8:11 And they literally are because they're sending you down a wrong pathway telling you it's all about your cholesterol level. 8:20 Here's the latest view on cholesterol. 8:22 It's not an offending agent. 8:26 Cholesterol is not what gives you cardiovascular disease cholesterol going up is actually a healthy response to some Invader into your body It's like an 8:38 immune response We also know that severely lowering cholesterol with statin medications increases cancer risk, breast cancer in women and prostate cancer 8:49 and men, because it's affecting the immune response part that cholesterol plays in our body. 8:55 I mean, we make cholesterol Our brain needs cholesterol. 8:59 Our immune system needs Cholesterol. 9:01 I mean, would we have developed as a species after all these millions of years with one particle that only did bad? 9:08 Chолesterol does a whole lot of different things than our bodies. 9:12 And one of the things it does is provide us with immunity. 9:19 So when we see, we'll stay on cholesterol for a minute longer, when see high cholesterol we need to think what, not stamp it out, 9:27 but what could be going on here that this person's body would be making more cholesterol. 9:34 What inflammatory situation is going because this is all about inflammation, that silent process that goes on under the surface, 9:43 inside your body that generally you're not aware of. 9:46 Some people know they have inflammatory situations. 9:49 They have rheumatoid arthritis and they inflamed joints or other inflammatory diseases where they get symptoms. 9:56 But a lot of us just don't even know we have inflammation going on. 10:02 What is important about cholesterol, and I don't have it on here, but we'll talk about it later, is not what your total cholesterol level is, 10:11 it's the details in understanding your cholesterol profile. 10:16 It's what is the size of your chelesteral particles?
Hormones and cardiovascular disease 10:20 How much oxidized cholesterol is there in your bloodstream? 10:23 We can measure that. 10:25 Do you have little tiny cholesterol particles that are very likely to get under that nice velvety endothelium and cause you a problem? 10:32 Or do you big fluffy cholesterol particle that's are like beach balls and they just bounce off the wall and don't really settle in under the endoselial lining? 10:41 So those are some of the details that we need to know about. 10:44 Not just looking at your total cholesterol and going, oh your cholesterol is 223, you need a statin. 10:50 I have so many patients whose cholesterol's just a little over 200 and Their doctors are insisting they be on statin medication. 10:58 It's not the proper treatment. 11:01 And I want to talk about hormones and the role of hormones because a lot of us in anti-aging medicine view cardiovascular disease as a hormone deficiency 11:12 disease and we see a lots of examples of this.
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