Dietary Cholesterol Can’t Cause Heart Disease

Piles and piles of studies have abjectly failed to support and substantiate the hollow and archaic claim that dietary cholesterol causes heart disease. It was an interesting hypothesis in the quasi-almost-modern scientific era early last century. That hypothesis died in the subsequent one-hundred-plus years, as scientists continued to unravel cholesterol’s important role in cell formation, hormone synthesis, etc., and especially how the culprit is inflammation, and that inflammation creates atherosclerotic plaque buildup regardless of blood serum values of lipoproteins.

In spite of understanding exactly HOW heart disease evolves (thank you, science), this hasn’t dissuaded people from hoping to make statistical and epidemiological cases for the ancient belief in cholesterol-makes-heart-disease. But even there, the antiquated belief gets destroyed. In yet another recent study at Harvard, moderate egg consumption is not associated with heart disease risk: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/…/moderate-egg-consumption-no…/

People have written about this ad nauseam, but for some reason the errant understanding of biology won’t seem to die. My wife and I were at a bed and breakfast weekend not long ago, and another visitor insisted on eating a stack of whole grain waffles with syrup (“doctor’s orders”) because partaking in the eggs or bacon would be a “bad idea” for his “high cholesterol.” We shook our heads.

Let’s just say for a moment that you don’t want to study the biochemistry. Can we all at least agree that rampant inflammation isn’t a great idea? Insulin is inflammatory. Glucose spikes WILL drive insulin and inflammatory cascades. Don’t believe me. Don’t believe some anachronistic “expert.” Don’t believe the biology textbooks. Don’t believe the Wikipedia entries on atherosclerotic plaque formation. Don’t believe Harvard. Just get a glucometer and see. Test before and after consuming cholesterol-free waffles or a liter of cholesterol-free orange juice. Test before and after eating a stick of butter.

And, in fact, everyone actually already knows the truth intuitively. If you’ve ever known someone or personally tried very high fat/zero carb dieting, they or you lost 5-10lbs in a day or two because the body sheds inflammation rapidly in those circumstances. If you’ve ever eaten a heap of starch or sugar, you gain pounds in minutes. Anti-inflammation in one. Pro-inflammation in another. Do you think a swollen body with constant blood volume increases has a better or worse chance at damaging blood vessels?
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Dietary cholesterol cannot cause heart disease.