Health officials in the United States urge everyone over the age of 20 to have their cholesterol tested once every five years. Part of this test is your total cholesterol, or the sum of your blood"s cholesterol content, including HDL, LDLs, and VLDLs..
\nThe American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330.
\nIn addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
\nIn order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs. Now, with testing children"s cholesterol levels, they"re increasing their market even more.
\nI have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

• HDL/Cholesterol ratio
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• Triglyceride/HDL ratios
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HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent.
\nYou can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That percentage should be below 2.
\nKeep in mind, however, that these are still simply guidelines, and there"s a lot more that goes into your risk of heart disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol were brought into the picture.
\nThey give you a closer idea of what"s going on, but they still do not show you everything.
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Now that we"ve defined good and bad cholesterol, it has to be said that there is actually only one type of cholesterol. Ron Rosedale, MD, who is widely considered to be one of the leading anti-aging doctor in the United States, does an excellent job of explaining this concept:[ii]

"Notice please that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -' + '- fats combined with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" cholesterol.
\nCholesterol is just cholesterol.
\nIt combines with other fats and proteins to be carried through the bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not mix very well.
\nFatty substances therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of proteins and are far from being just cholesterol.
\nIn fact we now know there are many types of these fat and protein particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the so-called small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, because they can squeeze through the lining of the arteries and if they oxidize, otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause damage and inflammation.
\nThus, you might say that there is "good LDL" and "bad LDL."
\nAlso, some HDL particles are better than others. Knowing just your total cholesterol tells you very little. Even knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you very much."
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Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept.
\nIn the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people"s minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.

"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol.
\nThat will automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best friends.
\nWe would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one"s risk of dying. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."
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You probably are aware of the incredible influence of vitamin D on your health. If you aren"t, or need a refresher, you can visit my vitamin D page.
\nWhat most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D.
\nBottom line?
\nIf your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D.
\nAdditionally, it provides some intuitive feedback that if cholesterol were so dangerous, why would your body use it as precursor for vitamin D and virtually all of the steroid hormones in your body?
\nOther "evidence" that cholesterol is good for you?
\nConsider the role of "good" HDL cholesterol. Essentially, HDL takes cholesterol from your body"s tissues and arteries, and brings it back to your liver, where most of your cholesterol is produced. If the purpose of this was to eliminate cholesterol from your body, it would make sense that the cholesterol would be shuttled back to your kidneys or intestines so your body could remove it.
\nInstead, it goes back to your liver. Why?
\nBecause your liver is going to reuse it.

"It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale explains. "Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health."
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Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease � the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for.
\nWhat am I getting at?
\nWell, first consider the role of inflammation in your body. In many respects, it"s a good thing as it"s your body"s natural response to invaders it perceives as threats. If you get a cut for instance, the process of inflammation is what allows you to heal.
\nSpecifically during inflammation:

• Your blood vessels constrict to keep you from bleeding to death
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• Your blood becomes thicker so it can clot
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• Your immune system sends cells and chemicals to fight viruses, bacteria and other "bad guys" that could infect the area
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• Cells multiply to repair the damage
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Ultimately, the cut is healed and a protective scar may form over the area.
\nIf your arteries are damaged, a very similar process occurs inside of your body, except that a "scar" in your artery is known as plaque.
\nThis plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks.
\nNotice that cholesterol has yet to even enter the picture.
\nCholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary.
\nRemember that no cell can form without it.
\nSo if you have damaged cells that need to be replaced, your liver will be notified to make more cholesterol and release it into your bloodstream. This is a deliberate process that takes place in order for your body to produce new, healthy cells.
\nIt"s also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation.
\nThe test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.
\nGenerally speaking:

• A CRP level under 1 milligrams per liter of blood means you have a low risk for cardiovascular disease
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• 1 to 3 milligrams means your risk is intermediate
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• More than 3 milligrams is high risk
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Even conventional medicine is warming up to the idea that chronic inflammation can trigger heart attacks. But they stop short of seeing the big picture.
\nIn the eyes of conventional medicine, when they see increased cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream, they conclude that it -' + '- not the underlying damage to your arteries -' + '- is the cause of heart attacks.
\nWhich brings me to my next point.
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Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone so far as to call high cholesterol "an invented disease, a "problem" that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."[iii]
\nAnd this explanation is spot on.
\nIf you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair.
\nConventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage -' + '- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol.
\nAs Dr. Rosedale so rightly points out:2

"If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place.
\nIt would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -' + '- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation."
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I"ll discuss how to do this later in the report, but first let"s take a look at the dangers of low cholesterol -' + '- and how it came to be that cholesterol levels needed to be so low in the first place.
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All kinds of nasty things can happen to your body. Remember, every single one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive -' + '- including those in your brain. Perhaps this is why low cholesterol wreaks havoc on your psyche.
\nOne large study conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms.[iv]
\nThis may be because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a substance involved in the regulation of your mood. On a similar note, Canadian researchers found that those in the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration had more than six times the risk of committing suicide as did those in the highest quarter.[v]
\nDozens of studies also support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violent behavior, through this same pathway: lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression.[vi]
\nAnd one meta-analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer,[vii] while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson"s disease.
\nWhat cholesterol level is too low? Brace yourself.
\nProbably any level much under 150 -' + '- an optimum would be more like 200.
\nNow I know what you are thinking: "But my doctor tells me my cholesterol needs to be under 200 to be healthy." Well let me enlighten you about how these cholesterol recommendations came to be. And I warn you, it is not a pretty story.
\nThis is a significant issue. I have seen large numbers of people who have their cholesterol lowered below 150, and there is little question in my mind that it is causing far more harm than any benefit they are receiving by lowering their cholesterol this low.
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In 2004, the U.S. government"s National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels.
\nBefore 2004, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
\nKeep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.
\nFortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine[viii] found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws.
\nSeveral of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.
\nSo how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?
\nEight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.[ix]
\nThe same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States.
\nCoincidence? I think not.
\nNow, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends?
\nLowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.[x]
\nAnd to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.
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If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I"m saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don"t need drugs to lower your cholesterol.
\nTo put it another way, among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these drugs, as they had genetic challenges of familial hypercholesterolemia that required it..
\nContrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications -' + '- another vastly over-prescribed category -' + '- were first).[xi]
\nDisturbingly, as written in BusinessWeek early in 2008, "Some researchers have even suggested -' + '- half-jokingly -' + '- that the medications should be put in the water supply."[xii]
\nCount yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills.
\nStatin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that"s needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about this is that when you go tinkering around with the delicate workings of the human body, you risk throwing everything off kilter.
\nCase in point, "statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right," say Enig and Fallon.3
\nFor starters, statin drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure.
\nMuscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.[xiii]
\nBy the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -' + '- a condition that can cause kidney damage.
\nStatin drugs have also been linked to:

• An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)
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• Dizziness
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• Cognitive impairment, including memory loss[xiv]
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• A potential increased risk of cancer[xv]
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• Decreased function of the immune system[xvi]
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• Depression
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• Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)
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And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig"s disease.[xvii]
\nOther cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.
\nIMPORTANT NOTE
\nIf, for whatever reason, you or someone you know or love does not believe the information in this report and chooses to stay on statin drugs, then please make sure they at least take one to two Ubiquinols per day.
\nThis will help prevent all the side effects mentioned above.
\nUbiquinol is the reduced version of Coenzyme Q-10 and is far more effective if you are over 35-40 years old. It is the form of the supplement that actually works, and if you take CoQ-10 and your body can"t reduce it to uniquinol you are just fooling yourself and wasting your money.
\nYou can visit our ubiquinol information page for more details.
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With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it.
\nMost cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease?
\nHave you ever heard of the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to treat?
\nI didn"t think so. In fact, most doctors haven"t either. And herein lies the problem.
\nNNT answers the question: How many people have to take a particular drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack)?
\nFor example, if a drug had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack.
\nEasy enough, right?
\nWell, drug companies would rather that you not focus on NNT, because when you do, you get an entirely different picture of their "miracle" drugs. Take, for instance, Pfizer"s Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans.[xviii]
\nAccording to Lipitor"s own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?
\nWell, BusinessWeek actually did an excellent story on this very topic earlier this year,[xix] and they found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer"s own newspaper ad for Lipitor.
\nUpon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:

"That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."
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What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
\nThe NNT, in this case, is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they"ve just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing.
\nSo you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen.
\nOr in some cases, not hidden at all.
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