Dr. Douglass on Cholesterol Education Month

An "awareness month" nobody's aware of - thankfully

Did you know that September is National Cholesterol Education Month? Well, it is.

And just for your information, it's also National Head Lice Prevention Month, Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month (I'm not making this up, I swear), National Chicken Month, Humor in the Workplace Month, National "Please Your Mate" Month - and week one of September is Be Nice to New Jersey Week. But I digress...

We were talking about cholesterol education.

Personally, I didn't know until relatively recently that September is designated as National Cholesterol Education Month. I suspect the vast majority of Americans don't know it, either. And thank goodness they don't. The ones who founded and promote the "awareness month" - the NIH-affiliated National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute - wouldn't know proper cholesterol management advice if it came to them carved on stone tablets.

Yes, a quick search of the NHLBI Web site reveals the same tired, outdated cholesterol management advice the misguided mainstream's been spewing for years: A low saturated fat and low-cholesterol diet, lots of exercise, and blah, blah, blah. And for those with what they consider "high" cholesterol (anything over 200 or so), prescription drugs are the solution, of course.

Haven't they read the latest findings? Don't they read my newsletter?

According to a 2004 study conducted by scientists at the State University of New York and reported in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, healthy, non-exercising adults who followed an ultra low-fat diet (19% of total calories) saw their levels of blood HDL - the "good" cholesterol that prevents heart disease - drop significantly. When these same subjects were then placed on 3 weeks worth of a high-fat diet (50% of calories from fat), their healthy HDL zoomed upward...

But WITHOUT raising LDL beyond levels they maintained on their normal diets.

Hmmm. Less dietary fat and cholesterol, less heart-healthy HDL. More fat, more HDL, with no difference in LDL. So what's this mean? Keep reading...

HDL: Hoodwink, Deceit, and Lies

Since it doesn't jive with the "facts" issued to them by drug companies, the simple correlation between low-fat diets and low HDL must be unfathomable to mainstream and government-affiliated sources like the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. To their way of thinking, who'd know MORE about cholesterol than the makers of cholesterol drugs, the best-selling prescription medications in the world?

After all, they're the ones paying the bills with their corporate and sales tax revenues!

But this newest State University of New York study isn't the only one plainly showing this relationship. Evidence of the dietary fat/HDL link has been around for years, though you wouldn't know it from reading the paper, watching TV "health minutes," or listening to most doctors. Heck, I've been saying (and writing) this exact thing since before the dawn of the Disco age.

Bottom line: If you really want to make sure your heart's as healthy as it can be, consume plenty of fats from sources as close to natural as you can get. Meats, cheeses, heavy cream, butter, and most importantly - eggs. This will help maintain the high HDL levels your ticker needs. Also, don't buy into the mainstream's mania over cholesterol numbers or "ratios" of HDL to LDL...

And for Pete's sake, avoid nutrition-free starches, breads, pasta, and sugar-saturated sodas and desserts. They're what's driving the need for what SHOULD be Cholesterol Education Month - 30 solid days of meats and fatty foods, with HDL tests given before and after.

Not that we'll ever get this. It would rock the drug-biz revenue machine too badly.

Raising awareness of the hearty truth,

William Campbell Douglass II, MD