KT writes:
G'day, Anthony
We haven't corresponded since your first book came out.
I saw you mentioned on this YouTube video and thought you might like to note the criticism, in case someone less friendly hits you with it before you find out about it.
[His criticism of you] begins at 7:47, also at 10:25.
Anthony replies:
Gee, yet another effeminate superhero insulting me from afar.
“Plant Positive” has seen fit to lump me in with “Paleo” commentators who I have little in common with, and then vociferously impugns my integrity and motives. PP, who I shall refer to from this point on as Pee Pee, to more accurately reflect his malevolent piss-ant status, calls me a “cholesterol confusionist”, a “saturated fat apologist” with “fringe views” and in a mocking tone of voice calls me “cutting edge”, the inference being that I’m so far out on the lunatic fringe even the Flat Earth crowd thinks I’m a little strange.
But the real cracker is when Pee Pee claims I have a “professional” vested interest in defending saturated fat and cholesterol.
You’ve got to be kidding. As in, you’ve got to be friggin’ kidding.
Pee Pee hasn’t stopped to consider that maybe I do genuinely believe the cholesterol theory of heart disease is an unscientific load of garbage. There was once a time, years ago, when I too was a brainwashed moron like Pee Pee and believed the cholesterol theory. I religiously ate a very low fat diet, avoided saturated fats like they were some kind of flesh-eating virus, and ate lots of “healthy” whole grain foods in accordance with the reigning cholesterol-phobic dogma. My reward was a number of adverse health effects including elevated blood pressure and a screwed up blood sugar metabolism. Being one of these weird people with the ability to question what he’s been told when it proves untenable, I began researching the whole anti-saturate, anti-cholesterol phenomenon. After viewing the evidence in its entirety for myself – i.e., I went to the library and pulled up the actual studies for myself and scoured through them with an eagle eye, rather than relying on bullshit pamphlets, articles, popular books and YouTube videos – I quickly relieved myself of my anti-cholesterol brainwashing and realized that the lipid hypothesis was a fraud.
If Pee Pee had enough brain power to examine the evidence in its entirety, maybe he’d come to the same conclusion too. But he’s a myopic vegan wanker who, like most dogmatic twats, is only capable of honing in on the research that seems to support his views. Even then he needs to distort it and misrepresent it to support his case.
I guess you could say Pee Pee is “cutting edge”. He cuts away the evidence that doesn’t support his views, then pushes it right over the edge of his desk into the wastepaper basket.
Heaven forbid Pee Pee pull his head out of his ass and examine the evidence in its entirety. That would mean having to abandon his closely-held beliefs, something that no self-respecting dogmatist would ever do. Nope, I’m the one who’s out to deceive the public. Yep, I’m just a money-hungry charlatan looking to add to my warehouse full of Lamborghinis, my flotilla of multi-million dollar yachts, and my collection of private islands.
Excuse me for a moment; I think I hear my mobile phone ringing:
“Hello…hey honey, what’s going on?...uh huh…okay…Monte Carlo…uh huh…this weekend…in the private jet?...ummm…okay…see you at the heli-pad babe…okay…ciao!”
Sorry for the interruption folks, that was my wealthy supermodel girlfriend…looks like I have to cancel golf with Bill Gates this weekend, I’ll be hobnobbing instead with the elite on the French Riviera…gee, this life of opulent and absurdly lavish wealth I allegedly live can be so inconvenient sometimes. Sheesh! Now where was I?
Oh yeah…this isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of just being in it for the moolah. Here’s an attack on me by a German doctor who sells a book on heart disease for $249.00, but claimed that my EUR 22,95 book on heart disease that took me several years to research and write was just an exercise in making easy money:
https://anthonycolpo.com/?p=79
What a tool.
One day, I hope to meet at least one of these idiots who accuse me of being in it for the money, so I can take the opportunity to shove both of my books firmly up their keester. Maybe the newly transplanted books will bring them all the prestige and lavish wealth I’ve yet to receive. All I seem to get is whiny little dickwads like Pee Pee publicly accusing me of being a fringe charlatan.
Oh, excuse me for a minute folks, that’s my butler knocking at my office door:
“Hey Harold, what’s up?”
“Keith Richards is on the phone sir, he wants to know if you’re still interested in his Bugatti Veyron?”
“Tell him yeah, but my last offer stands firm. I won’t pay a cent over 1.4 million bucks.”
“Very good, sir.”
You want the truth, Plant Positive? OK, here it is:
If you wish to achieve even modest financial success, DO NOT TELL THE TRUTH. DO NOT WRITE BOOKS TELLING THE TRUTH. DO NOT START A WEBSITE THAT TELLS THE TRUTH. DO NOT PUBLISH MATERIAL THAT CAN ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE BETTER THEIR LIVES AND HEALTH.
People don’t give a rat’s ass about the truth. They want their feeble little minds to be entertained and distracted from the things that really matter. Give the population tits, booze, drugs, celebrity gossip, NASCAR, football and cricket, and a bunch of fabricated enemies to rally against, and they’ll pretty much do whatever you want them too.
But whatever the hell you do, don’t stick your neck out and call bullshit on the scams and dogmas that pervade our easily-led, instant gratification-seeking society. You’ll make bugger-all money, but win yourself lots of new enemies.
Seriously, if I could go back in time to the moment where I got the bright idea to write a book, I’d slap myself across the face, ask myself what the hell I was thinking, and go apply for a second job at McDonalds. Counting up all the hours of research, writing, fact-checking, editing, and all the bullshit involved with self-publishing, I’m pretty certain I would have come out ahead financially if I chose to flip burgers instead.
If there’s anyone out there contemplating writing a book honestly exposing the facts about diet or health, or government corruption, or big business deceit, thinking they will achieve fair monetary remuneration and public gratitude for their efforts, then here’s my honest advice:
Don’t do it.
Here’s what you need to do instead: Become an outlaw biker or join a street gang or underworld faction in your local city. Get a bunch of tattoos, get high on drugs and shoot a bunch of people, then after a few years of being a total curse on society, go ahead and write your “memoirs”. You’ll get a book publishing deal without even trying. They’ll probably even make a movie about you, based on your best-selling book (I Killed the Cabbage: The Life and Times of Vegetable Standover Man Pee Pee “Bones” Broccolini). People will kiss up to you like you’re royalty and you’ll make off like a bandit…again.
If knives, guns and prison terms are a little too hardcore for your sensibilities, or years of an emaciating vegan diet have made you patently unsuitable for such a lifestyle, then there’s a less violent way, but it does involve becoming a fat little porker. Yep, become sedentary and eat a bunch of high-calorie crap, gain weight until you need to wear a girdle to hold your bulbous gut in, then write a fat loss book that resolves around some scientifically invalid, hare-brained gimmick. “WTF...a fat loss book by a fat guy…who'd wanna buy that?!”, I hear you asking. Hey, I never said humans make sense, all I know is it worked for Atkins, Taubes, Eades, Dr Phil and a bunch of others! Follow in their footsteps and you’ll probably make off like the guys in Oceans Eleven.
And ladies, you’ve got it easy. All you have to do is completely abandon any sense of self-respect you might have. Seize every opportunity to garner publicity by acting like a shameless skank, and be sure to post a porn video on the Internet of yourself getting worked over by some similarly shameless goofball. People will love it! Young women will want to be just like you, which in turn will open a plethora of lucrative new marketing opportunities! As your pièce de résistance, when you are fortunate enough to meet a guy who for reasons unknown still wants to marry you, despite your sleazy past and the fact that he could do a damn sight better, go ahead and tie the knot – just make sure you untie it only 72 days later! Hey, this “Release Your Inner Ho!” approach worked just fine for Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Madonna…why not you?
Talent and integrity…bah, who needs it?
Clever PR and appealing to the lowest common denominator is what makes you money, Pee Pee. If you don’t believe me, write to Uffe Ravnskov, perhaps the best known cholesterol debunker, and ask him how much money he’s made “apologizing” for saturated fat and cholesterol. Oh wait a minute, you’ve got a thing about the Swedes, so let me save you the trouble and give you the answer straight up: BUGGER ALL. He does it because he really believes the cholesterol theory is a harmful and misleading sham. And so do I.
Oops, hang on Pee Pee, my butler is at the door again:
“What’s up Harold?”
“It’s Sheik Abdul Akbar Tahini on the phone sir, he still wants you to marry his oldest daughter and has now raised his dowry offer to seven oil fields, $75 million cash, plus 100 thoroughbred camels, sir.”
“Tell him that’s a very generous offer Harold, but I really am spoken for. Plus I already own a bunch of oil fields that I was able to buy with the proceeds of The Great Cholesterol Con! By the way, ask him if he wants to sell his Veyron, I’m sick of tooling around with Richards.”
“Very good, sir.”
Now back to my snide little critic, the courageously anonymous Plant Positive. Oh mighty Pee Pee, may I ask you this: If the pittance I’ve earned from writing about the cholesterol sham qualifies me as a charlatan with a vested professional interest, what about the drug companies that make billions each year from cholesterol-lowering drugs? Have you ever considered that maybe they have a vested interest in keeping this unscientific sham alive? What about the panels that set the lipid guidelines that you so blindly worship? Have you ever stopped to look at the financial ties of these people at the end of the published lipid guideline updates? Have you ever stopped to consider that their extensive financial ties to the manufacturers of cholesterol-lowering drugs might skew their impartiality, you know, just a little?
Above (top): Cholesterol drugs ("lipid regulators") are the number one selling class of drugs in the US.
Above (bottom): Sales data for Lipitor, the world's best-selling cholesterol drug.
What about the so-called ‘non-profit’ organizations like the American Heart Association that make hundreds of millions of dollars each year promoting the cholesterol sham? Are you okay with the fact that over the years companies who produce sugar-laden shit have been able to buy the AHA’s approval? Yes, buy. The AHA Heart Check does not come for free my friend, it can only be displayed on items whose manufacturers have paid $7500 each (quantity discounts available!). The AHA-approved list contains some rather unusual choices. For example, it is replete with products high in cereal fibre which have never been shown to be heart healthy; as I have explained elsewhere, clinical trials have actually shown cereal fibre to increase CHD mortality and colorectal cancer incidence. Popcorn, pancake mix, crackers, high-GI fruit juices, and processed meats are some of the other “heart healthy” items to be found on the AHA list.
But then again, you only have to meet the following criteria to gain a “standard certification” from the AHA:
- 3g or less fat
- 1g sat fat
- Less than 0.5 g trans fat
- 20 mg or less cholesterol
- 480 mg or less sodium
- 10% or more of the Daily Value of 1 of 6 nutrients: fibre, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium
You’ll note that Chiquita bananas are the only AHA-approved bananas on the list. Is there something inherently unhealthy about bananas from other growers, Pee Pee? Nope. The simple fact is that no other banana consortium has struck a deal to pay the AHA money each year to endorse their produce.
But that’s OK Pee Pee, you ignore the blatant commercial nature of the AHA’s endorsement scheme.And you ignorethe billions of dollars that have been made by the pathology industry as a result of performing useless cholesterol tests.
That’s right, you ignore them, because all the above-mentioned have no vested professional interest in pushing their agendas at all, no sirree. You see, it’s me, Anthony Colpo, with my self-published modest-selling book The Great Cholesterol Con, that is the true exploiter of the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Yep, little old me is actually the Goliath in this fight, while the multi-trillion dollar cholesterol behemoth is actually the David, the poor little underdog that doesn’t get a fair hearing because my book, which most doctors and journalists have never heard of, is completely crowding out their humanitarian message.
Pee Pee the Hypocrite
Pee Pee, if you are such a devoted defender of the truth and such a fierce exposer of people who publish bullshit for monetary reward, why don’t you attack T. Colin Campbell, whose best-selling book The China Study has repeatedly and clearly been shown to contain one mistruth after another?
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
https://anthonycolpo.com/?p=129
Oh wait, The China Study is a book filled with plant-based diet (read: vegan) dogma...and you’re a plant-based dogmatist yourself…silly me.
Pee Pee is a Fraud
Pee Pee is a liar. A complete, shameless, dogmatic liar.
Here’s why.
His attack on me is pretty much limited to one study, which I wrote about here:
https://anthonycolpo.com/?p=68
Note the minimal time and space I devote to the study: A grand total of 2 short paragraphs. Contrary to what Pee Pee claims, nowhere do I claim this study is "proof" of anything. In fact, I've written ad nauseum, in my books and on this site, that epidemiological studies can never be considered to prove anything, that association is not causation. I simply gave the Holmberg study a brief mention and factually reported the findings with little fanfare. But listening to Pee Pee, you'd think the Holmberg study is the centrepiece of my case against the lipid hypothesis.
What a shonk!
Believe me folks, I've written a hell of a lot more than 2 paragraphs when it comes to the lipid hypothesis. But before we talk more about that, let's return to the Holmberg paper. Pee Pee dismisses it as a “fringe study”. He belittles the lead author of this study because no-one else but her has cited the study in their papers. From these statements, we get some revealing insights into PP’s idiotic mindset:
- If you believe something that not many other people believe, in PP’s worldview, you must be a “fringe” lunatic.
- If what you say is true, then lots of other people will believe it too and cite your work. If they don’t, then hey, it can’t be true!
You know, there was once a time when almost everyone in the world believed the Earth was flat. If you pointed out otherwise, you were ridiculed as a “fringe” lunatic. Today, if you believe the Earth is flat, you are regarded as a fringe lunatic. In a sane, intelligent, rational world, people like Pee Pee would be immediately identified as fringe lunatics and sentenced to life imprisonment in Soyberia, a lonely, barren vegan shithole thousands of miles away from the nearest Internet connection.
Whether the Holmberg paper has been cited by 1000, 25, or zero other researchers is utterly irrelevant. What matters is the actual content of the paper.
The paper found that daily fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with a lower risk of heart disease, but only when accompanied by high fat dairy consumption. Pee Pee claims this is a “strange” result. But why? Higher fat diets and higher fat meals have repeatedly been shown to improve nutrient absorption, including that of the vitamins, mineral, and carotenes found in plant foods. Is it really a stretch to believe that maybe the higher dairy fat content was improving absorption of heart healthy nutrients? And supplying extra amounts of important nutrients, like omega-3 fats and vitamin A, directly? (see refs 1-14) The only way we would know for sure is to conduct a clinical trial; more on that in a moment.
First, I want to talk a little more about epidemiological studies. Pee Pee claims not to like epidemiological studies, because they are prone to confounders. That’s absolutely true. But what he fails to mention is that his beloved anti-cholesterol/anti-fat beliefs were born from, and remain reliant upon, epidemiological evidence.
It was Ancel Keys’ shamelessly biased Six and Seven Countries studies – epidemiological studies – that really got the anti-saturate, anti-cholesterol ball rolling(15,16). Never mind that the countries involved in his studies were handpicked to support his idiotic agenda. At the time of his Six Countries charade, data on fat intake and mortality was actually available for 22 countries. When a pair of non-biased researchers subsequently plotted the data for all 22 countries on a graph, instead of just six, guess what happened to Keys’ strong, positive, linear association between fat intake and mortality?
It disappeared quicker than the soy sausages at a Pee Pee picnic(17).
But despite his disdain for epidemiological data, Pee Pee is happy to wank on about it when he thinks that doing so supports his case. What Pee Pee doesn’t do is impartially present the evidence in its entirety. Because if he did, his argument would quickly turn to dust.
Pee Pee claims the participants of the Holmberg study were not “a very healthy bunch” and asks if you think it’s a good idea to base your lipid-lowering decisions on this single study. Let me answer for you: No, it’s not a good idea to ever base your health decisions off a single study, when you have dozens of others to also consider. Dozens of other studies, by the way, that are completely ignored by the almighty Pee Pee.
In The Great Cholesterol Con – which, being my definitive and all-encompassing book on the topic of cholesterol and CHD, Pee Pee should have mentioned but didn’t, instead preferring to focus on a single blog post – I present the data for over two dozen prospective studies examining the relationship between saturated fat intake and CHD mortality.
Of twenty-six prospective studies examining the relationship between dietary fat intake and CHD published between 1963 and 2005, involving a collective total of over 268,000 subjects who were followed for periods ranging from four to twenty- three years, and after making allowances for potential confounding factors, individuals who went on to develop fatal and/or non-fatal CHD had eaten 'significantly' higher amounts of saturated fat in only four of these studies, and 'significantly' less in another. In the remainder, there were no differences in saturated fat consumption between those who developed and/or died from CHD compared to those who did not.
That was the data current as of mid-2006. Since then, there has been more related research published. Like the Holmberg study, which Pee Pee doesn’t like because it involves Swedish farmers in their sixties and is also non-supportive of the cholesterol theory. There have been a number of meta-analyses and reviews since then that have concluded saturated fat has bugger all association with heart disease. The studies involved in these reviews encompassed a wide variety of populations and age groups. Most had nary a Swedish farmer in sight. Incredibly, I discuss two of these in the same post right above the Swedish farmers study that Pee Pee wanks on about, but he makes absolutely no mention of them!
Here’s what I wrote:
“A couple of weeks back I shared with readers a WHO and FAO-sanctioned review showing that saturated fat and total fat intake were not associated with cardiovascular disease. Hot on the heels of that report comes a similar paper, appearing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also concluding that saturated fat shows no association with heart disease or stroke.
Researchers from Harvard University and the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute pooled the data from twenty-one prospective epidemiologic studies examining the association of dietary saturated fat with coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cardiovascular disease (CVD; CHD inclusive of stroke) risk.
During 5–23 years’ follow-up of 347,747 subjects, 11,006 developed CHD or stroke. Intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD. The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 for CHD, 0.81 for stroke, and 1.00 for CVD. In other words, those who ate the highest amounts of saturated fat had no greater risk of CVD than those who ate the lowest. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.”
Pee Pee of course, being the shameless hypocrite that he is, completely ignores this.
But that’s hardly where Pee Pee’s selective citation ends. The “blog post” of mine that Pee Pee attacks was posted in July 2010. Pee Pee’s YouTube video was uploaded on Dec 1, 2011. That gave Pee Pee plenty of time to read and discuss another study I wrote about on my site on October 5, 2011.
You can read about it here:
https://anthonycolpo.com/?p=2341
To recap:
“Among women, serum cholesterol had an inverse association with all-cause mortality. Meaning that, as cholesterol went up, the risk of visiting that big Zara outlet in the sky went down. Compared with women whose cholesterol was under 5.0 mmol/l (193 mg/dl), those with a reading over 7.0 mmol/l (270 mg/dl) enjoyed a 28% relative risk reduction of dying. This risk was determined after adjusting for age, smoking and systolic blood pressure.
An almost identical relationship with cardiovascular disease (ie, CHD, heart failure, stroke) was observed. As cholesterol went up, risk of dying from cardiac arrest and stroke declined.
When coronary heart disease mortality was examined in isolation, the association with cholesterol appeared to follow a U-shaped curve. The lowest CHD risk was seen between 5.0-6.9 mmol/l, which hardly supports the simple-minded “lower is better” mentality that has come to dominate the CHD prevention arena.
And, at the end of the day, the most important figure of all is overall mortality. No matter what the cause of death, if you’re the last one left standing, then you achieved the best result. And among this sample of over 27,000 Norwegian women, the higher the cholesterol level, the more likely this result.”
And the male results were similar:
“Among the 24,000 or so chaps in HUNT 2, cholesterol showed a U-shaped curve in overall, cardiovascular and CHD mortality risk. The lowest risk for all these causes of death was seen in the 5.0-5.9 mmol/l category, which again hardly supports the reigning lower-is-better cholesterolmania. Compared to those with serum cholesterol under 5.0, those in the 5.0-5.9 category enjoyed 23%, 20% and 6% RR reductions in overall, CVD and CHD death, respectively.
As I discussed in The Great Cholesterol Con, this U-shaped association between cholesterol and overall/CVD mortality has been observed before in adult males.”
Again, what is the sneering Pee Pee’s comment on this uncomfortable contradiction to his garbage beliefs?
He has no comment. It doesn't support his garbage dogma, so he ignores it.
Pee Pee wanks on about “abuse of the J-Curve” by us “cholesterol confusionists”. Hey, Pee Pee; wakey wakey, hands off snakey! I didn’t create or “abuse” the J-Curve, my friend, I’m merely factually reporting what researchers found in a multitude of studies over which I had absolutely no influence whatsoever. And if you re-read the female results from the study discussed above, you’ll see that there was no J-curve when it came to CVD and overall mortality, but rather a simple linear association: as cholesterol went up, mortality went down.
But I guess Pee Pee just ‘forgot’ to mention that in his whiny little YouTube video…or maybe Pee Pee has misogynistic tendencies and doesn’t think women matter. Because study after study shows that cholesterol has little to no relationship to heart disease in women (the real reason for the extremely low rates of CHD in premenopausal women is their low bodily iron stores; in elderly males and females, elevated cholesterol is often associated with greater longevity). And while Pee Pee’s beloved statin drugs have shown limited usefulness in men, they do absolutely nothing to reduce mortality in women. But Pee Pee doesn’t give a hoot about any of that…no sirree, he evidently thinks women should shut up, learn their place, and eat a tasteless diet of low-fat shit and take their useless statin drugs like everyone else.
Good on ya, Pee Pee.
Pee Pee also wanks on about LDL levels…well, also freely available on my website since its inception is my peer reviewed paper “LDL: Bad Cholesterol, or Bad Science?” which Pee Pee could also have mentioned, but didn’t. Why? Because once again, it blows his idiotic theories out of the water.
To learn why the LDL = ‘Bad Cholesterol’ theory is utter garbage, click here:
http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/colpo.pdf
After you’ve read that, you may also like to read my rebuttal to a couple of Pee Pee-minded doctors who claim my LDL article was wrong:
http://www.jpands.org/vol11no1/correspondence.pdf
You see the pattern here? Pee Pee focuses on a microscopic portion of my writings, which he thinks can be belittled enough to support his case, and blissfully ignores everything else. Namely, the stuff that blows his bullshit claims out of the water.
Like most dogmatists, Pee Pee ignores the astronomical amount of contradictory evidence. This evidence is so copious I was able to fill a 450+ page book with it (and, believe me, I could have written much, much more…). But how much of this evidence does Pee Pee discuss in his garbage video? Absolutely none. He mentions a single study and writes me off as a “professional” “cholesterol confusionist”.
By the way, what the hell is a “confusionist”? Searching around on the Internet, this term seems to be most commonly employed as a misspelling of the ancient Chinese philosophy, Confucianism. The only actual definition I could find was a tongue-in-cheek one courtesy of Wikipedia parody site Uncyclopedia: “Confusionism is a Far Eastern religion that started out as an elaborate way to way to state the blindingly obvious before it developed into an after dinner game about following orders". What on Earth has this got to do with people who point out the cholesterol theory for the complete sham that it is?
Pee Pee doesn't just eat plants, he must smoke them too.
Pee Pee is full of Poo-Poo.
It’s now time to turn the accusatory spotlight back on Pee Pee, and see how his idiotic claims are a threat to human health. This anonymous sleazeball is more than willing to denigrate others who are genuinely trying to alert people to damaging health myths, but then turns around and vigorously defends one of the most damaging and fraudulent health myths of all time.
Make no mistake: The cholesterol theory is a complete fraud.
In Chapter 8 of The Great Cholesterol Con, I tabulate and discuss the results of the eighteen clinical trials conducted since 1955 that compared the effect of saturated fat reduced diets with diets higher in saturated fats. This is what I wrote in the conclusion of that chapter:
“If saturated fats caused even a portion of the damage for which they are frequently blamed, their negative effects should be readily and repeatedly demonstrable in these controlled clinical trials. However, after excluding the results of the poorly designed and sloppily-conducted northern European studies, it quickly becomes apparent that there does not exist a single tightly-controlled trial which shows that saturated fat restriction can save even a single life.
Some of these trials, in fact, suggest the exact opposite. The Rose et al, Anti-Coronary Club and Sydney Diet Heart studies all showed significant increases in overall mortality from replacing animal fats with omega-6-rich vegetable fats. The longest-running study focusing on saturated fat restriction (the Los Angeles Veterans study) showed a significant increase in cancer mortality among the intervention subjects--despite their lower rate of smoking!
The only well-conducted dietary intervention studies to have produced any real decrease in coronary and overall mortality are those that involved an increase in omega-3 intake, increased antioxidant-rich vegetable and fruit consumption, nutrient supplementation, restriction of highly-processed foods and/or weight loss.
It must also be pointed out that saturated fat restriction failed miserably to reduce CHD mortality even though it significantly reduced serum cholesterol levels in almost all of the intervention groups. Defenders of cholesterol lowering have complained that these trials could not have reduced serum cholesterol to a large enough degree. Not only does their argument reek of wanting to shift the goal posts after failing to score, it directly contradicts their cherished and oft-repeated dogma that a one percent reduction in serum cholesterol translates to a two percent reduction in CHD risk.
It also blatantly disregards the fact that in the successful trials--i.e. those involving interventions apart from saturated fat restriction--large reductions in mortality occurred even though there was little difference in HDL, LDL or total cholesterol levels between the treatment and control groups!
It must again be emphasized that the dietary intervention studies discussed in this chapter represent sixty years' worth of intensive research, the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds, and an enormous amount of time and effort. The reason this massive undertaking has failed miserably to find any causative role for highly saturated animal or tropical fats in the development of CHD should by now be obvious--there is none!"
Among the participants of the giant Women’s Health Initiative trial who had pre-existing cardiovascular disease, the relative risk of non-fatal and fatal CHD was increased by twenty-six percent among those following the reduced fat diet. Among the remainder of the participants who were free of CVD at baseline, there were no significant differences in CHD or stroke incidence, CHD or stroke mortality, or total mortality during an average 8.1 years of follow-up.
In other words, controlled clinical trials show that following low-fat and low-saturate diets will either make no difference to your CHD and overall mortality risk, and in some instances may actually increase it.
Here are a few more contradictions to the cholesterol theory that Pee Pee doesn’t want you to know about:
- In research involving fish oil, CHD mortality was significantly reduced even though LDL levels went up.
- Autopsy studies have shown a complete disconnect between cholesterol levels and extent of atherosclerosis. Researchers have observed individuals with very low cholesterol levels whose arteries were riddled with atherosclerosis, and individuals who had high cholesterol levels yet relatively disease-free arteries. Oops.
- Researchers have observed, and reported on, numerous populations who ate high saturated fat diets and/or had high cholesterol levels yet were free of heart disease (the Masai, Samburu, Tokelauans and Pukapukans, etc.). What these populations did do was avoid the chronic stresses of modern societies, eat a diet of natural whole foods, and get plenty of physical activity. But instead of examining these populations to see what valuable lessons they can teach us, Pee Pee simply pretends they never existed.
Pee Pee pooh-poohs the relationship between low cholesterol and increased mortality, rather ironic from someone who accuses others of “playing with your heart”. Good luck to all of you who believe Pee Pee – you’re going to need it. In 1987, the researchers heading the famous Framingham Study published a thirty-year follow-up paper, reporting on the incidence of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality. The researchers found that higher cholesterol levels were associated with increased mortality before the age of fifty, but after this age cholesterol levels in men and women showed no relationship with CVD or total mortality. The Framingham study is hardly alone in demonstrating that cholesterol is not a risk factor for older folks. Study upon study has repeatedly shown that higher cholesterol levels do not increase the risk of CHD, nor stroke, nor overall mortality, in seniors. In fact, several studies have found that higher cholesterol levels are predictive of increased survival and greater longevity in older age groups.
As I explain right at the start of TGCC – you know, the book that has allowed me to become the carefree billionaire playboy I am today, who uses hundred dollar bills to snort pharmaceutical-grade resveratrol then throw them out of my limousine window when I’m done – 95% of CHD deaths occur in those over 55, which means that only a small percentage of CHD deaths can claim to have even a statistical relationship with blood cholesterol.
If you are over fifty, and starting to become a little pissed by the idea that for years you’ve listened to people like Pee Pee and abstained from many of your favourite foods for no good reason, then wait – there’s more! The above-mentioned lack of association in older Framingham adults was for those whose cholesterol levels had remained constant. Those whose cholesterol levels had decreased during the study experienced an increase in both total and CVD mortality. Yep, an increase! Even the researchers had to admit; "There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years and mortality over the following 18 years…"
For every 1mg/dl per year drop in cholesterol levels during the first fourteen years of the Framingham study, there was a fourteen percent increase in cardiovascular death and an eleven percent increase in overall mortality during the subsequent eighteen years. The authors tried to dismiss this astounding revelation by claiming; "After age 50 years the association of mortality with cholesterol values is confounded by people whose cholesterol levels are falling--perhaps due to diseases pre-disposing to death". This unconvincing piece of doublespeak inferred that people over 50 were dying of diseases that also happened to lower their cholesterol levels. This is what Pee Pee would also like you to believe.
There are at least two factors that make such a proposition highly unlikely. Firstly, the considerable fourteen-year time lag employed by the researchers weighed heavily against the possibility of cholesterol reductions occurring due to the development of disease. Secondly, CVD mortality, which includes deaths from CHD and ischemic stroke - the very diseases that are supposedly caused by high cholesterol levels - increased to a greater degree than overall mortality!
Thus, the data from the Framingham Study, the longest-running project examining the connection between cholesterol and CHD, has shown that declining cholesterol does not increase longevity, but instead increases one's risk of death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease[18].
Pee Pee is a Little Mental – and it’s Probably His Low Cholesterol
Pee Pee dismisses outright the contention that low cholesterol could ever possibly cause a decline in mental function. And again, in true Pee Pee fashion, he pretty much ignores the multitude of evidence showing otherwise.
Numerous studies have shown that low cholesterol is associated with poorer cognitive function – as well as increased suicide, homicide and risk of death from other violent causes that may reflect an increased tendency towards aggression and impulsive behaviour. But association is not causation. What we need is actual controlled clinical trials that were designed to test whether low cholesterol, and/or low-fat diets can negatively affect mental function.
Contrary to what Pee Pee would have you believe, several such studies have already been conducted. No prizes for guessing why Pee Pee doesn’t mention them...
In one of these, healthy subjects were randomized to receive either a low-fat or standard diet for twelve weeks. Performance on a sustained attention task was significantly worse among those who reduced their cholesterol during the trial(19).
A 1992 double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that healthy young men randomized to receive the popular cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin (Mevacor) displayed significant deterioration in divided attention (the ability to simultaneously focus on multiple tasks and stimuli), vigilance (the ability to sustain attention) and global performance (a more general assessment of cognitive function). These changes were seen after only three weeks of treatment(20). As with visuomotor speed, the ability to maintain divided attention is essential for safe driving.
In 2000, Muldoon and his colleagues reported the results of a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that assessed cognitive function and psychological well-being in healthy adults randomly assigned to receive either lovastatin or a placebo. At the start and at the conclusion of the study, subjects were given a battery of tests assessing attention, psychomotor speed, mental flexibility, working memory, and memory retrieval. After six-months' month follow-up, the placebo group had improved significantly in all five domains of cognitive function, but the lovastatin group improved only on memory recall tests(21). When Muldoon and his team subsequently performed another study, this time using simvastatin, they obtained similar results. Failure to improve on cognitive tests was observed with both ten and forty milligram doses of simvastatin(22).
The ability of cholesterol-lowering treatments to impair reaction time and mental focus goes a long way towards explaining the well-documented increase in accident risk among individuals with low cholesterol levels(21).
In 1998, U.K. researchers reported the results of an experiment involving twenty healthy male and female volunteers. One group was placed on a 41% fat diet, while the other group consumed a 25% fat diet. After four weeks had passed, the groups were swapped around so that those originally on the low-fat diet were consuming the high-fat diet, and vice-versa. Throughout the study, all meals were prepared by the university conducting the study and supplied to the participants. Both diets were specially designed to be as palatable and similar in taste as possible.
At the beginning and end of each diet period, every subject underwent a battery of psychological assessments, including various mood state questionnaires and an interview by a psychiatrist who was blinded to the participant's dietary status. The study was tightly controlled and adherence to the diets appears to have been high. HDL cholesterol levels declined during the low-fat period, a typical response on low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets, indicating that subjects ate the foods as supplied.
What the researchers found was that, while ratings of anger-hostility slightly declined during the high-fat diet period, they significantly increased during the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet period. Similarly, ratings of depression declined slightly during the high-fat period, but increased during the low-fat period, mainly due to two of the low-fat subjects reporting significantly greater depression-dejection ratings. Levels of tension-anxiety declined during the high-fat period, but did not change during the four weeks of low-fat eating. As the researchers stated, the study participants were "a psychologically robust group who had never previously suffered from depression or anxiety, and who were not going through any 'stressful' events during the study." They further speculated that: "The alterations in mood observed in the present study may have been greater if subjects were feeling more stressed or were more susceptible to mental illness."(23)
When adult male monkeys were fed a 'luxury' diet (43% calories from fat) or a 'prudent' diet (30% calories from fat, and 85% less cholesterol than the luxury diet), researchers observed that the low-fat diet monkeys were more irritable and initiated more aggression than the luxury diet animals. The prudent diet resulted in lower total serum cholesterol levels, and while most health authorities would automatically assume this is a good thing, the researchers noted: "These results are consistent with studies linking relatively low serum cholesterol concentrations to violent or antisocial behavior in psychiatric and criminal populations and could be relevant to understanding the significant increase in violence-related mortality observed among people assigned to cholesterol-lowering treatment in clinical trials."(24)
These results are also consistent with studies that have shown a significant increase in the frequency and severity of depression amongst middle-aged and elderly men with low cholesterol levels when compared to those with higher levels(25,26).
When mortality data during 1993 was obtained for over eleven thousand participants in the 1970-1972 Nutrition Canada Survey, those with a total cholesterol level of less than 4.27 were more than six times as likely to commit suicide as subjects with a cholesterol reading greater than 5.77. These results were adjusted for age and sex, and persisted even after excluding the first five years of follow-up, those who were unemployed, and those who had been treated for depression(27).
When it comes to cholesterol, lower is not better. There is credible research showing it can be deadly. But by reporting this evidence, I’m allegedly “playing with your heart”. So you go ahead and ignore it. Listen to Pee Pee instead – he’s got your back!
Beware the Killer Pee Pee.
The problem with the reigning cholesterol dogma is that it has pretty much overtaken the entire coronary arena of modern medicine. In terms of CHD prevention and treatment, everything seems to revolve around lowering cholesterol.
History speaks for itself. This obsession with cholesterol has been a massive failure. Little dent has been made in the incidence of heart disease; it still rivals cancer as the main cause of death in modernized countries all around the world.
Clearly, it’s time to change course. The cholesterol theory isn’t delivering, and until modern medicine changes its focus to what does work, millions of people will continue to die unnecessarily from heart disease each year.
I want change. Pee Pee doesn’t. He thinks we should continue with the useless war on cholesterol. Sorry folks, but as disgusted as I get with my fellow humans sometimes (OK, a lot of the time), I couldn’t even begin to embrace such a genocidal viewpoint.
I wonder if Pee Pee even begins to give a damn about people like Mrs. Elnoisa Calabio, whose heart-breaking story was presented at an FDA public hearing in May 2000:
"On October 7, 1999, at the age of 48, registered nurse, wife and mother, Elnoisa Calabio, succumbed to the end stages of irreversible dermatomyositis and interstitial pulmonary fibrosis directly caused by her use of a prescribed cholesterol-lowering medication, simvastatin (Zocor). Mrs. Calabio had no substantial risk factors for heart disease. Her blood pressure was controlled. Her cholesterol was slightly high, but not considered dangerous. Tragically, in her last days she knew that the cholesterol lowering drug her doctor had recommended to extend her life was in fact the cause of her fatal illness."(69)
Mrs Calabio should never have been on statin drugs in the first place – they have never been shown to extend the life of females by a single day. But doctors have been so brainwashed by the bullshit cholesterol theory they go ahead and prescribe them to women every day, thus needlessly exposing them to all the potential side effects of these toxic drugs. But according to Pee Pee, I’m in the wrong for pointing all this out.
Screw you, Pee Pee.
I wonder what Pee Pee would have to say to Auckland, New Zealand resident Brian Barker. In April of 2002, Barker was a healthy and physically fit fifty-four year old who watched his diet and walked twenty-five kilometers each week. He did take some medication for mild hypertension, but otherwise showed no sign of any heart trouble. His younger brother, however, had not been so fortunate, having already endured a heart attack and triple bypass surgery.
As a result of his brother's premature heart problems, it had been suggested to Barker that he visit his doctor for a precautionary examination. His physician arranged an exercise stress test, which Brian passed with flying colors. His recovery after the treadmill session was excellent, and ultrasound images showed no sign of blockage to his arteries. Blood testing also showed his cholesterol to be within 'normal' limits at 200mg/dl. To any rational observer, Barker would hardly have seemed like a suitable candidate for powerful cholesterol-lowering drug therapy. However, despite his highly positive test results, Barker 's doctor decided that - "as an extra precaution" - he should start taking simvastatin on a daily basis. Barker dutifully obeyed and started taking twenty milligrams of the widely prescribed statin every night.
It was a decision that would turn his world upside down. On the morning of June 23, 2002, Barker sat eating his breakfast and reading the Sunday paper, just as he had done countless times before. It was after finishing his second piece of toast that he felt a sudden pain shoot through the base of his spine. He started shaking and began feeling extremely cold. His legs felt weak, his complexion turned gray, his speech became incoherent, and his eyes became glassy. His wife Heather wrapped him in a winter jacket, put a duvet around him, and turned the heater on, but Barker still continued to shake. Twenty minutes later, he got up and staggered towards the toilet, where he proceeded to vomit violently. Barker was about to discover that his health problems were as severe as they were sudden. Five days after becoming abruptly ill, the drained and dehydrated Kiwi was hospitalized with acute kidney failure. He was suffering from life-threatening rhabdomyolysis, courtesy of the simvastatin that had been prescribed "as an extra precaution" against heart disease.
What followed over the ensuing years was dialysis, continual muscle and joint pain, fatigue, nausea, traumatic nightmares, frequent and urgent urination, a raised PSA level, neuropathy, even an operation for the hiatus hernia caused by his continual vomiting. Cognitive difficulties made it impossible for Brian to continue his previous job. I met Brian and his wife Heather in Sydney five years ago, when Uffe Ravnskov visited Australia. Both Brian and Heather were nice folks, and I couldn't help but feel for Brian; the once healthy Kiwi now had to live with the kind of physical mannerisms and impaired speech typical of stroke victims.
Why?
Because his doctor was so brainwashed by the bullshit cholesterol theory he had no qualms whatsoever about prescribing a healthy, CHD-free man a toxic drug he simply did not need.
But again, when I do what I earnestly believe to be the right thing and point this out to the world, assholes like Pee Pee accuse me of being a fringe lunatic who only writes what I do because I have some professional vested interest in doing so.
How does it feel, Pee Pee? How does it feel to be so wedded to dogma that you’ll happily defend a rotten, invalid paradigm that KILLS PEOPLE? Are you proud of yourself?
Here’s my advice to you, Pee Pee. Please intensify your cholesterol-lowering efforts immediately. Take extremely large doses of statin drugs – the more the better! Take several statins at once – really pound those lipids down, mate! Supplement your statin use with red rice yeast extract, which has also been shown to cause rhabdomyolysis. Again, the more the merrier! Lather your food in margarines and polyunsaturated vegetable oils rich in cholesterol-lowering and cancer-causing linoleic acid. Encourage all your dogmatic asshole acquaintances to do the same. Maybe we can finally make some headway into cleaning up the gene pool.
Seriously, what is it about humans that makes them such jerk-offs in general? What is it about people that makes them virulently attack someone who’s telling them the truth, while rabidly defending someone who’s screwing them up the ass?
Whether it’s a Jimmy Moore or Angry Dick-type dimwit ridiculing me for calling BS on the fallacious low-carb metabolic advantage dogma that’s keeping them fabulously fat, or a screwball vegan angry at me for calling BS on the idiots who’ve suckered them into abandoning nature’s most nutrient-dense food, there are a lot of folks out there who really hate people who lay out the plain facts.
“Hey look, here’s a guy who’s done a lot of research about the falsity of the cholesterol hypothesis and who’s sharing it with others. You know what? I’ll make fun of him, and instead vigorously defend a theory promulgated by a pack of heartless assholes that make billions each year selling toxic and largely useless drugs and treatments. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!!”
What a joke…
Now if you’ll excuse me folks, I’ve got to go wash up in a bath full of Perrier, pick out my favourite R.Jewels Diamond Edition suit, fire up the Maserati, and head off to a $5,000-a-head dinner fundraiser for some charity I know nothing about…
Toodle-loo!
To read my reply to more recent lies from Plant Positive about yours truly, visit the link below:
https://anthonycolpo.com/?p=3444
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