The Cholesterol Myths : Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease

by Uffe, M.D., Phd. Ravnskov

Editorial Reviews

Ray H. Rosenman, MD--Former Director of Cardiovascular Research, SRI
Dr. Ravnskov has done a magnificent service. . . must reading for all interested persons, nutritionists and physicians.

Michael Gurr, PhD--Renowned Lipid Chemist
...he is not a lone voice in the wilderness and he deserves to be taken seriously.

Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions
Dr. Ravnskov's measured and clear-eyed analysis actually serves as a sledgehammer that breaks down barriers to healthy, sensible eating.

Book Description
Dr. Ravnskov takes aim at one of the biggest medical myths of our time--that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease--and slays the Goliath with page after page of brilliant analysis. Anyone who has been told to go on a lowfat diet or take cholesterol-lowering drugs should read this book first. . . and then give it to his or her doctor!

About the Author
Dr. Ravnskov has published almost 40 critical papers and letters about the alleged association between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. For his contributions in this field he received the Irish Skrabanek Award in 1999. His website (home2.swipnet.se/~w-25775), posted in 1997, has generated intense interest and has contributed to the emergence of skepticism about the diet-heart theory, now perculating through the medical community.

A book worth reading, February 24, 2001
Reviewer: Ira Pilgrim, Retired cancer biologist from Laytonville, CA USA
I am 76 years old and have had a high blood cholesterol level for at least the past 25 years. A normal cholesterol is considered to be under 200 mg/dl and mine ranges from 250 to 316. My LDL (the so-called bad cholesterol) is high and my HDL (the so-called good cholesterol) is low. While I have had health problems, they do not include heart or blood vessel disease. My blood pressure is about 130/80 which is pretty good for an old man. Yet, according to what I have read, I am at high risk for heart and blood vessel disease. A number of years ago I decided to look into it. I plugged the word "cholesterol" into Yahoo, and one site that I came up with was a web site by Uffe Ravnskov called The Cholesterol Myth. It said that what I had been hearing and reading about high cholesterol being bad for you was hokum. He made a good case for the thesis that if you exclude those people who have the gene for high cholesterol and early death, that cholesterol levels are meaningless. Also, that cholesterol level is not appreciably influenced by diet. That was not enough for me; I wanted the documentation, so I started a correspondence with him. One consequence was that, several years ago, he e-mailed me a copy of the English version of his book The Cholesterol Myths which had been published in Swedish and Finnish. That book, revised, expanded and fully documented, has just been published by New Trends Publishing. Ravnskov is both a physician and researcher. His publications have been in first rate medical journals and he is highly respected by his peers, including me. His book is extremely well researched and is well documented. It is clearly written; much more clearly than many publications that I have read by people whose native language is English. Ira Pilgrim For the complete review, go to Ira Pilgrim's Home Page

A Hot Book Indeed!!!, December 4, 2000
Reviewer: Stephen Byrnes from Honolulu, HI.
Would you buy a book that was literally set on fire by its critics on a television show about it in Finland? I would and so should you. The long-awaited English version of debunker extroidinaire Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's notorious book is now available from New Trends Publishing.

Ravnskov, a medical doctor with a PhD in Chemistry, has had over 40 papers and letters published in peer-reviewed journals criticizing what Dr. George Mann, formerly of Vanderbuilt University, once called "the greatest scam in the history of medicine": the Lipid Hypothesis of heart disease, the belief that dietary saturated fats and cholesterol clog arteries and cause atherosclerosis and heart disease.

If one thing comes through as you read the book, it is this: Ravnskov has done his homework. In painstaking detail, he critically analyzes and demolishes the nine main myths of the Lipid Hypothesis: (1) High-fat foods cause heart disease, (2) High cholesterol causes heart disease, (3) High fat foods raise blood cholesterol, (4) Cholesterol blocks arteries, (5) Animal studies prove the diet-heart idea, (6) Lowering your cholesterol will lengthen your life, (7) Polyunsaturated oils are good for you, (8) The cholesterol campaign is based on good science, and (9) All scientists support the diet-heart idea.

Equipped with a razor-sharp mind, an impressive command of the literature, and a deadly, needling sarcasm, Ravnskov methodically slaughters the most famous Sacred Cow of modern medicine and the most profitable Cash Cow for assorted pharmaceutical companies. Sparing no one, Ravnskov again and again presents the tenets of the Lipid Hypothesis and the studies which supposedly prove them, and shows how the studies are flawed or based on manipulated statistics that actually prove nothing. Ravnskov then answers the objections or rationalizations offered by diet-heart supporters, desperate to explain away inconsistencies and contradictions in their own data.

For example, Ravnskov opens with an analysis of the study that kicked off the Lipid Hypothesis in the 1950s: Ancel Keys' Six Countries Study (and later, the more famous Seven Countries Study). As most health professionals know, Keys' study showed that countries with the highest animal fat intake have the highest rates of heart disease. Keys' conclusion was that there was a cause and effect relationship because the country with the lowest animal fat intake (at that time, Japan) had the lowest rates of heart disease. Sounds convincing, right? Not so, says Dr. Ravnskov. And in a few pages the reader is informed how Keys hand-picked the countries he included in his studies, namely, the ones that supported his hypothesis, and conveniently ignored all of the other countries that didn't.

And this is just the beginning!

Ravnskov approaches true brilliance in his review of the studies that supposedly showed benefit from the current wonder-drugs pushed by the pharmaceutical industry: the statins. Hailed as miracle substances that "significantly reduce cholesterol and incidence of heart attacks," Ravnskov shows that these substances are probable carcinogens (women on the drugs had a much higher incidence of breast cancer) and that the overall statistical reduction of heart disease in the drug trials is negligible. Nevertheless, despite the dismal results of the very first trial (the EXCEL Trial which Ravnskov soberingly describes to the reader), the industry and its well-funded doctors urge their use, even in people who do not have heart
disease.

Ravnskov warns: "Because the latent period between exposure to carcinogen and the incidence of clinical cancer in humans may be 20 years or more, the absence of any controlled trials of this duration means that we do not know whether statin treatment will lead to . . . cancer in coming decades. Thus, millions of people are being treated with medications the ultimate effects of which are not yet known."

If there is one weakness of the book, it is its lack of explanations of what DOES cause heart disease. Ravnskov comes close to fingering a few factors such as high stress, excessive polyunsaturated fat intake, trans-fatty acids, and smoking, but he never offers his own theory as to what causes the Western world's number one killer.

This is, however, a minor glitch. Ravnskov has done the world a major service in presenting his findings. All health professionals need to listen to this scholar and listen very carefully for the advice offered by the medical establishment for the last 50 years to beat heart disease has failed miserably. It is time to turn away from cholesterol-lowering drugs that have frightening side effects. It is time to turn away from tasteless low-fat diets that harm children and deprive people of fat-soluble vitamins. And it is time to turn away from the junk science that characterizes the Lipid Hypothesis and its supporters. It is time, instead, to listen to reason and view all of the evidence against a failed hypothesis and discover the true and varied risks and causes of heart disease. It is time to listen to Uffe Ravnskov....