Statin therapy has many effects on the body and these can be seen on this page. If one strips away all of the hype that the marketeers have used, one is left with the simple idea that statins reduce the amount of cholesterol that is available to the body.
Current medical practice appears to think that this is a good thing to do and it is helpful to try to understand why this is the current thinking in medical practice. One big name to be found at the forefront of the thinking that high cholesterol = 'bad' and low cholesterol = 'good', was that of Ancel Keys. He lived to be almost 100 years old and was convinced that dietary cholesterol intake was causing heart disease.
It is worth the effort of trying to read his academic papers in their original form, to try to understand the thought processes he had used. Written words on a piece of paper can often assume an authority that they don't really have and all we have to go on is what we see written down.
A little scepticism is a healthy thing and if we apply it to the work of Ancel Keys, we can then read what was really written. This is not to say that he was not an eminent scientist. It should also not suggest that he was neither intelligent nor genuinely concerned for people with heart disease. It is just to highlight the fact that anyone can be mistaken.
In the quest for relaying accurate information, it will be useful if Talking Statins quotes some passages from a paper entitled 'Human Atherosclerosis and the Diet'[1] which was written by Ancel Keys and published in 1952 in 'Circulation', which was the journal of the American Heart Association. All direct quotations appear in a light blue colour, between quotation marks, "like this".
To avoid falling foul of copyright legislation, the quotations used by Talking Statins are small and are offered by way of assisting the reader with this simple review of this particular work of Ancel Keys. It is suggested that following the link to the relevant web page and reading the original document, will help the visitor to understand the issues under discussion.
The paper was written as a discussion "about the possible effects of diet on the development of human atherosclerosis". Ancel Keys stated, in this paper, that atherosclerosis in humans was centred on five items. These items were listed as...
(1) Calorie excess and the resulting obesity
(2) Cholesterol in the diet
(3) Animal fats in the diet
(4) Total fats in the diet
(5) Dietary supply of substances with a lipotropic action (help to accelerate the breakdown of fats in the body)
Keys had acknowledged, in this paper, that the data concerning lipotropic substances was "either questionable or negative in regard to an effect on atherosclerosis", (hardening or 'furring' of the arteries that reduces the space that the blood has to flow through) and therefore, he had excluded lipotropic substances from the discussion.
Keys stated that "There are abundant actuarial data which show there is an elevated incidence of fatal atherosclerosis in obese or overweight people". Presumably Keys must have examined that data and then gone on to interpret the findings because there was no reference, in the paper, to support that particular assertion.
Another assertion, from Keys, that appeared to stand independently of any reference was this... "routine necropsy (post-mortem) studies indicate a direct relationship between between the atherosclerotic changes in the arteries, including the deposition of cholesterol and lipids, and relative fatness of the whole body".
It has to be said that these two assertions are rather a lot to take on trust, that is, without any proof. The first assertion is not clear but gives the general impression that, after death, obese people show an increase in fatal atherosclerosis. Did this mean that people of normal weight were less likely to have fatal atherosclerosis than obese people? If not; what was Keys's point, in making the distinction for obese or overweight people? Where was the evidence for such a position?
The second assertion suggests that Keys was swimming out of his depth. He does not dissect the direct relationships that he discussed. A close examination of his words reveals that the statement is built on the word 'indicate' which is a word that is full of uncertainty. Somehow the rest of the baggage has been thrown in with atherosclerotic changes and we are supposed to believe that this proposition must extend to include body fatness and the deposition of lipid and cholesterol.
Without the benefit of adequately referenced papers, one could be forgiven for wondering where the evidence for such sweeping assertions had come from. if there was evidence, then why were the papers, that showed that evidential proof, not included with the reference list for this discussion paper?
[1] Human Atherosclerosis and the Diet
