Is High Cholesterol The Cause of Heart Disease?
An Interview with Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD.
November 2009
Part 3: Other risk factors for heart disease?
Q: Are there other risk factors that should be followed? Such as: C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, homocysteine, lipoprotein A. Any other factors?
UR: Such analyses may be helpful for doctors to put the right diagnosis in patients with a disease of unknown origin. But to check healthy people's blood to find deviations from normal is the freeway to unnecessary medication.
Q: Are there other alternative therapies besides statins that people might consider?
UR: There is no reason for healthy people to take drugs or anything else to prevent heart disease as long as we do not know the very cause. Don't forget that people who die from a myocardial infarction have on average lived just s long as other people. On my talks I use to ask people, who put the same question to me, if they know a better way of dying.
Q: What diet do you recommend people follow?
UR: I do not give medical advice to people I haven't seen and examined myself and as I am retired it means that I give no advice at all except to my family and nearest friends. I inform people by writing and lecturing. Then they have to decide themselves what to do.
Q: In 20 years, do you expect changes in how we view heart disease, its causes and treatments?
UR: I am confident that we will see a change in the next few years. There is a growing skepticism among medical scientists. What is happening in Sweden these days may hopefully inspire researchers in other countries to air their skepticism openly. Recently experts selected by WHO and FAO published a new report. Here the authors concluded that there was no satisfactory or reliable evidence to support the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease, or diabetes or obesity. A revolutionary change of direction, you may say. However, they did not change their recommendations.
Together with Kilmer McCully, the discoverer of the association between homocysteine and atherosclerosis, I have presented another hypothesis. We think it is much more likely because we are able to explain the many observations that do not fit with the present one. If anyone wants to read the full paper I shall send it on request.
Finally, I assume that much of what I have mentioned here may seem incredible, but all the facts including references to the scientific literature are available in my new book Fat And Cholesterol Are GOOD For You!
