“Food faddism is not only an affection of the simple-minded. In a piece-of-mind article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a cardiologist wrote touchingly about seeing his four-year-old daughter Ariel sneaking to the fridge in order to have some of the ice-cream that her granny had bought. ‘From conversation around the house she knew what foods were high in saturated fat and cholesterol and that they should be avoided’. She felt guilty and her daddy felt guilty about her guilt. He also felt guilty that he had not yet measured her cholesterol, but he consoled himself that ‘there is no uniform agreement among all experts on when to start screening small children’. Poor Ariel!”

Finally they’ve reached a consensus. Non sensus consensus, of course. Consensus, like most of them, harmful.

Poor Ariel, poor children!

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“What is the point of decreasing the number of “cardiac events” without decreasing overall mortality, when the harm caused by the side effects of statin therapy is factored in? The failure of statins to reduce all-cause mortality clearly supports the call for more effective approaches. Guidelines should reflect this finding, certainly in their recommendations for women.”

Apparently, the ALLHAT research teams were not quite so honest in their conclusions, given the clearly stated outcomes of their study.

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I took that sentence in the study as a CYA statement. That it wasn’t going to step-on ‘someone’s’ toes. What do you think?

Also this sentence: “But both groups showed the same rates of death, heart attack and heart disease.”

Is that based on shoddy statistics? I’m not questioning to be argumentative—– I really want to know, since statistics are definitely not my forte!

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“The ALLHAT lipid-lowering treatment study found only a small (nonsignificant) decrease in cardiovascular event rates for pravastatin compared to usual care, and no difference in mortality. But THESE RESULTS DO NOT ALTER CURRENT CHOLESTEROL TREATMENT GUIDELINES, which are based on a series of other clinical trials with larger cholesterol reductions than that observed in ALLHAT.”

In other words, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain . . .

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I know what I think.

The following is from an article at the Weston A. Price web site; a site I’d advise should be read with your critical-thinking hat on. But it does give some hints as to where to go for more reading.

“ALLHAT (Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial), the largest North American cholesterol-lowering trial ever, showed that mortality of the treatment group and controls after three or six years was identical. Researchers used data from more than 10,000 participants given cholesterol-lowering drugs and followed them over a period of four years, comparing the use of a statin drug to “usual care,” namely maintaining proper body weight, no smoking, regular exercise, etc., in treating subjects with moderately high levels of LDL-cholesterol. Of the 5170 subjects in the group that received statin drugs, 28 percent lowered their LDL-cholesterol significantly. And of the 5185 usual-care subjects, about 11 percent had a similar drop in LDL. But both groups showed the same rates of death, heart attack and heart disease.”

Also:

“While the evidence relating elevated cholesterol levels to CHD is strong and consistent, clinical trials have not demonstrated that cholesterol-lowering reduces total mortality. Moreover, observational studies show a U-shaped relationship of cholesterol and mortality, with higher mortality rates for persons with cholesterol levels less than 160 mg/dl and greater than 240 mg/dl compared to those in the range 160-240 mg/dl”

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