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epmaybe

I'm not sure that I follow. Does high LDL cholesterol not increase your risk of cardiovascular disease?

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There's been increasing evidence that high cholesterol is a symptom of cardiovascular disease, not the cause.

Editing because lots of people want sources.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513492/

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warni...

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis#Accelerated_gr...

This is a group I was unaware of until providing you links: http://www.thincs.org/index.php

Can you source that? I'm having trouble finding much in the way of that claim.

There's not much of a correlation. I think only half of the cases of cardiovascular disease have elevated LDL cholesterol. It's always more complicated than simply having elevated cholesterol; it's overall diet, exercise, and plain old genetics that have the largest effect.

Agreed. Cardiovascular disease is definitely multifactorial, as are most diseases without a known genetic cause. Even those diseases with a clear genetic abnormality, the other factors contribute to the development of said disease.

Yes, and I'm not advocating that you should inject LDL Cholesterol everyday, just saying the science may have unfairly focused on one variable.

Can you link of that evidence? In form of scientific studies (quality ones)? This is not a general "you can't prove your point, you don't have science". I'm actually interested. I have been looking for hard science in this area and have seen none that would back up your claims.

I'm interested in this as well.

So far, all I've found is some research that artificially lowering LDL or raising HDL may not show clear correlation to lower heart disease risk- not quite the same thing as saying LDL isn't generally correlated to heart disease risk:

Broad overview:

  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cholesterol-conundrum/

Studies references (but not cited) in the article above:

  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe0801608

  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1107579

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/05/18/now...

The linked paper goes into more detail, of course. And this is only one drug, but there are quite a few other failures of similar type, though less dramatic, discussed in the "Cardiovascular Disease" section of his blog. He always links the original papers, but they're often paywalled or highly technical.

It might be an indicator of other problems, but it's not clear that it's causative. Start reading _Good Calories, Bad Calories_ and go from there.

It's been a while since I've read that book, but I seem to remember Taubes argued that LDL cholesterol could plausibly have a negative effect on cardiovascular health and that VLDL cholesterol had a extremely negative effect on cardiovascular health. Am I misremembering?

Those are scientifically accepted ideas, but I haven't read Taubes' book. If he didn't say it, maybe you heard it elsewhere.

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