Is High Cholesterol Really The Cause Of Heart Attacks?

Once in a great while a new discovery comes along that refutes what you have been told by experts, including your trusted family physician, for years. When this happens the natural reaction is to say “No way! Why have they been telling us this? What and who can you believe?”

For more than 20 years we have had it drummed into our heads that high cholesterol causes heart attacks. If cholesterol is the villain then why do half of all heart attacks happen to people with normal or low cholesterol—and two out of three occur without major artery blockages? You can have cholesterol below 200, LDLs under 100 and clean-as-a whistle arteries—yet still have dangerous “silent” plaque deposits growing day-by-day inside artery walls.

Cholesterol has gotten a bad rap. An increasing number of researchers are coming to the conclusion that the primary cause of heart disease and many other chronic diseases is not too much bad cholesterol but inflammation. It is this smoldering inflammation that causes the cholesterol in our arteries to turn rancid and clog our arteries.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone, best selling author of The Wrinkle Cure and the Perricone Prescription has spent decades studying the connection between inflammation, aging and disease. He relates his difference of opinion with his professors in medical school. “By the time I entered medical school, I had already served in the army and had been the director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Perhaps it was those few extra years in the ‘real world’ that made me less accepting of conventional wisdom. I was always eager to shake things up, to challenge traditional thinking.

I noticed that every time I saw skin cancer under the microscope, inflammation was present at the cellular level. I questioned my professors, and their explanation was that the body mounts an immune response to try to fight the cancer, resulting in inflammation. I asked if an inflammatory response could be triggering or promoting cancer but medical students quickly learn that topics like this are not open for debate. I knew what I saw and never let it go. Whenever I looked at a disease under a microscope—everything from arthritis to heart disease—inflammation was always a component.”

Perricone’s research focused on finding the causes of this inflammation and how to stop it. What he discovered might surprise you as it did me.

Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour (as a sweet-o-holic it pains me greatly to write this) are very inflammatory—and there is also strong evidence that they are one of the underlying causes of weight gain…not dietary fat.

Can we stop this inflammation? The answer is a resounding yes. The omega-3 fatty acids found in cold-water fish such as Salmon help your body to make more anti-inflammatory warriors to quench the fire. Vegetables and fruit are packed with inflammation-fighting antioxidants. Flax seed or flax oil are excellent

A blood test can tell you how much inflammation is in your blood by measuring levels of a molecule called C-reactive protein. No less than 11 studies have now shown that people with high levels of CRP are at greater risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, says Paul Ridker, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

President Bush has his blood checked for C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in the blood, and so should you.