Australian Saturated Fat & Cholesterol Documentary (FULL 2 PARTS)

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

For four decades, saturated fat and cholesterol were thought to be the culprits in heart disease, linked with artery-clogging. However, recent views challenge this, suggesting their negative perception stems from outdated marketing rather than science. Experts now debate the influence of the food industry and question if the cholesterol theory is the biggest medical myth. Cholesterol is essential for life, and the role of sugar and inflammation is being reconsidered in heart diseases. Additionally, the documentary critiques the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, reflecting on their side effects and questioning their necessity for healthy individuals.

Highlights

Saturated fat and cholesterol might have been unfairly blamed for heart diseases due to biased early studies. 🎥
Medical professionals are calling it a myth that’s survived way past its expiration date. 🌟
Marketing and industry have driven the fear of fats more than actual science. 📢
Statins, common drugs to lower cholesterol, might not benefit everyone and have some serious side effects. 🚨
The documentary encourages rethinking modern dietary guidelines that have been in place for decades. 📑
It's suggested that sugar, not fat, might be the real threat to heart health. 💣
Exercise and maintaining a balanced diet are emphasized as keys to preventing heart disease. 👟🥦

Key Takeaways

Saturated fat and cholesterol have been demonized for years without solid scientific backing. It’s time to rethink that! 🍔
Medical experts now question the long-held belief that these fats cause heart disease. It may be the biggest medical myth ever! 🔍
Cholesterol is crucial for our health, not the enemy, unless oxidized. It plays important roles in our brain, nerves, and hormone production. 🧠
Growing evidence suggests that sugar and inflammation, rather than saturated fat, could be the real culprits in heart diseases. 🍬💥
The food industry and marketing campaigns have deeply influenced public perception about heart health, often not based on science. 📺
Criticism is growing against statin drugs used to lower cholesterol due to their side effects and debated necessity. 💊
A healthy lifestyle with balanced nutrition and exercise could do more for heart health than medication. 🏃‍♂️🍏

Overview

For years, saturated fats and cholesterol have been the 'bad guys' in heart health discussions, but some experts now argue that these beliefs are based more on outdated marketing than scientific evidence. The documentary explores how these fats were villainized and why it might be time to reconsider their place in our diets.

The documentary also delves into how the big food industry and media have shaped public perception of cholesterol and saturated fats. It dives into the historical context behind these misconceptions and questions the scientific validity of the studies and beliefs that have dominated for the last few decades.

In addition, the documentary questions the widespread prescription of statin drugs aimed at lowering cholesterol. It notes disputes about their efficacy and highlights potential side effects, suggesting that lifestyle changes might be more beneficial for overall heart health compared to medication.

Chapters

00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to Myths about Saturated Fat and Cholesterol For over 40 years, dietary fat and cholesterol have been blamed for heart disease, frequently described with the term 'artery clogging saturated fats.' However, some medical experts are beginning to question and challenge this long-standing medical paradigm.
03:00 - 13:00: Ancel Keys' Influence and Criticism The chapter titled 'Ancel Keys' Influence and Criticism' addresses the widespread misconception about saturated fat and cholesterol, arguing that their demonization in dietary advice is misguided. It suggests that the association of these fats with health risks, dubbed the 'cholesterol theory,' is not scientifically substantiated but rather sustained by marketing interests from the food industry. This theory has significantly shaped dietary habits, despite lacking solid scientific backing, and persists as an outdated hypothesis that continues to influence public perception.
13:00 - 23:00: Controversies Surrounding Cholesterol and Heart Disease In this chapter, the author explores the notion that we have been misled about the relationship between saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease. It is suggested that this may be considered one of the biggest myths in medical history. The chapter examines how the food industry has influenced perceptions of heart health, exemplified through TV advertisements. The reader is invited to follow the journey of how these beliefs became widespread.
23:00 - 38:00: The Role of Statins in Cholesterol Management The chapter discusses the pervasive fear of cholesterol in the public, largely fueled by media campaigns and health authorities. It highlights how the food industry has responded with numerous 'cholesterol-free' products. The narrative sets the stage for discussing the role of statins in cholesterol management against this backdrop of fear and advertising.
38:00 - 55:00: Influence of Pharmaceutical Companies on Health Recommendations The chapter delves into the influence of pharmaceutical companies on health recommendations, specifically focusing on the guidelines provided for reducing saturated fat and cholesterol to lower the risk of heart disease. It highlights a growing challenge to this conventional medical wisdom, led by professionals like California-based nutritionist Dr. Johnny Bowden, who, upon reviewing data, suggests a need to reconsider these established health guidelines.
55:00 - 57:30: Discussion on Dietary Recommendations and Conclusion The chapter discusses the misconceptions around dietary recommendations concerning saturated fat and cholesterol. It challenges the validity of the science that originally informed these guidelines, suggesting that early studies were poorly conducted and biased. The chapter emphasizes that many healthcare professionals may not be aware of these issues, highlighting Dr. Ernest Curtis's astonishment at how medicine has perpetuated these inaccuracies.

Australian Saturated Fat & Cholesterol Documentary (FULL 2 PARTS) Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 for the last four decades dietary fat and cholesterol have been the villains in heart disease you very seldom see the word saturated fat in the public press when they're not associated with artery clogging so it's it's like it's all one term artery clogging saturated fats but now some medical experts are coming forward to challenge this medical Paradigm I think it's a huge
00:30 - 01:00 misconception that saturated fat and cholesterol of the demons in the diet and it is 100% wrong saturated fat has been vilified for years because of the cholesterol Theory a multi-billion dollar food industry has fueled our phobia of fat and cholesterol and dramatically influenced our diet that's not science that's marketing it's lived past its expiration date and it's one of these hypotheses that it just won't die
01:00 - 01:30 have we all been conned in this episode I'll follow the road which led us to believe that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease and reveal why it's been touted as the biggest myth in medical history ecle to the food industry has shaped our ideas about heart health with TV ads like this one so join me in the
01:30 - 02:00 uncle Toby's oats cholesterol challenge lowering our cholesterol has been a running theme with the food industry people have this fear of cholesterol because they've been bombarded with it so much uh in the media that it's bad and it's going to cause heart disease that's why all these things are emblazoned with cholesterol free these advertising campaigns are at the behest of our Peak Health authorities the national Heart
02:00 - 02:30 Foundation guidelines are pretty clear we're told to reduce our saturated fat and cholesterol levels in order to reduce our risk of heart disease but many doctors are now suggesting we need to radically rethink this approach one of those doctors challenging this medical Dogma is California based nutritionist Dr Johnny Bowden when you look at the data it's very clear every that we have been told
02:30 - 03:00 about saturated fat and cholesterol is a bold-faced lie it's just not so but isn't there good science behind this if you look at the science that actually the dietary guidelines were based on it the early stuff was so badly done and so filled with confirmation bias it would never even pass mustard today and unfortunately most doctors don't know this Dr Ernest Curtis is astonished at how medicine has gilded the Li on
03:00 - 03:30 cholesterol during medical school I was taught the same thing everybody else was the importance of cholesterol and so forth and I saw no reason to doubt it but once I got into the Cardiology field itself I was seeing people with heart attacks that had cholesterol all over the place high cholesterol low cholesterol metal it didn't seem didn't seem to matter and at first I thought well okay these are probabilities so there'll be exceptions but it turned out that after a while I was seeing far are too many exceptions so that motivated me
03:30 - 04:00 to go back and look at the origins of these theories and quite frankly given the certainty with which we were taught this it surprised me to find out how poor the evidence was a virtually non-existent cardiologist Dr Steven Sinatra said he routinely ordered patients to lower their cholesterol with medications but now admits he was wrong I used to be the postaboy ftic drug companies and when I was chief of
04:00 - 04:30 Cardiology I used to write for statins all the time I really believed in a cholesterol theory of heart disease I first became skeptical of the cholesterol theory in like the mid 80s I was doing coronary angiograms and you know you place a tube in a groin it goes up into the heart and you can see if this blockage is there so sometimes I would do the angiogram on a person with a high cholesterol thinking I was going to find a lot of disease and I many times I didn't find disease and a Converse was true you know I I would do somebody with a low cholesterol and expecting not to find disease and I
04:30 - 05:00 found disease so I was starting to think maybe I don't have this right maybe cholesterol is not the enemy we think it [Music] is we've become so paranoid about cholesterol we've actually forgotten it's essential for life it's a major component of brain and nerve tissue and Central for the production of hormones in fact it's so important that virtually
05:00 - 05:30 every single cell in the body makes it aside from people with a genetic condition like familial hyper cholesterolemia diet has long been the focus of how we can lower our cholesterol the idea that saturated fat clogs your arteries by raising cholesterol first gain Traction in the ' 50s American Nutri nutritionist anel
05:30 - 06:00 Keys became intrigued with the soaring rates of heart disease after World War II the facts are simple you know the chief killer of Americans is cardiovascular disease he compared the rates of heart disease and fat consumption in six countries it was almost a perfect correlation the more fat people ate the higher the rates of heart disease except there was just one problem keys withheld data for 16 other countries later when researchers plotted
06:00 - 06:30 all 22 countries the correlation wasn't so [Music] perfect Dr Michael eids is critical of the way anel Keys excluded countries that didn't fit his hypothesis he more or less cherry-picked countries you could show just the opposite you could show that the more saturated fat people ate the less heart disease they had if you TR pick the right countries Dr Eid says that even if fat consumption Trends
06:30 - 07:00 in the same direction as heart disease it doesn't prove anything just because there's a correlation doesn't mean that there's causation it's like people who are fat have big belts but that doesn't mean that if you go and buy a smaller belt you won't be fat I mean that's not causation you know that's what these observational studies show it's just a correlation the classic study by Anil Keys is a textbook example of fudgy the data to get the result that you want out
07:00 - 07:30 of a study and unfortunately there's a lot of that that goes on science writer Gary tals says it's all very well to have a theory but in science you have to prove it and they tried and over the next 15 years researchers did uh trial after trial and there were probably a half a dozen of them between 1960 and 1975 all refused or failed to confirm
07:30 - 08:00 the idea that you could live longer by either reducing the saturated fat in your diet or reducing the total fat in your diet the American Heart Association was also reluctant to lend Credence to Key's Theory but then he managed to score a position on the association's advisory panel where he pushed for the acceptance of his ideas and it wasn't long before they had a change of heart instead of the data not being good enough enough to claim that dietary fat
08:00 - 08:30 was a cause of heart disease They concluded that the data were good enough and therefore all Americans over the age of two should go on lowfat diets as the idea gained widespread acceptance with the public science was left to catch up two ambitious trials costing over $250 million involving hundreds of thousands of patients both failed to prove that lowering saturated fat could reduce your risk of dying from
08:30 - 09:00 a heart [Music] attack the way the authorities responded to this was to claim that they must have done the study wrong instead of saying hey look eating a low-fat diet doesn't apparently do anything for people or certainly not women instead they respond by putting out press releases saying look we don't know why this trial failed to confirm our hypothesis but it doesn't mean that the advice we've been giving you is wrong and it doesn't mean that the hypothesis a dietary fat causes
09:00 - 09:30 heart diseases wrong the national Heart Foundation of Australia defends these failures saying that nutrition trials are just too complex when you ask that question of do dietary fats increase heart disease you're um sort of trying to negate all the other risk factors that in fact actually also cause heart disease so to imagine creating a study that would prove that conclusively it's virtually impossible so if they can't prove it on
09:30 - 10:00 what basis have they decided that saturated fat is bad for us eat too much fatty food and you risk a high level of blood cholesterol building up in your arteries eat sensibly met analyses have in fact actually shown that you know we can say with convincing evidence that uh intake of saturated fats leads to an increase in blood cholesterol an extensive review of the literature showed the data was highly inconsistent in fact there were many long-term studies that refute the idea
10:00 - 10:30 that saturated fat raises cholesterol so I approached the national Heart Foundation for further Evidence they said the data was complex they cited one study which showed only certain types of saturated fat could raise bad cholesterol but it also raised good cholesterol in the end they concluded we agree we are limited by the evidence base available at this time study called the interart study I asked Australia's leading lipid expert what he thought so should we be giving
10:30 - 11:00 people dietary advice if there is such poor adherence and the studies aren't available I think there are uh some very telling pieces of evidence which have been used to establish the the importance of avoiding saturated fat if saturated fat is completely benign if it's actually beneficial where's the evidence in support of that where's the evidence of an alternative cause and we are particularly Keen to get some dietry advice because otherwise what do we offer people
11:00 - 11:30 but Dr Curtis disagrees with giving people dietary advice when he believes the evidence is insufficient he says diet has very little influence on your blood cholesterol in the long term the reason for that is that your body manufactures 80 to 90% of your cholesterol really very little of it comes from the diet most people seem to have a genetically preset level for the cholesterol in their body and and it may be in a rain but uh they're generally going to seek
11:30 - 12:00 to stay within that range so if somebody cuts all the cholesterol out of their diet their body will simply start making a little bit more to bring it back up into the range in the 60s British physician John yudkin challenged Key's Theory claiming that sugar was the culprit in heart disease not saturated fat but Keys was politically powerful ful and publicly
12:00 - 12:30 discredited yudin's Theory by the early 1970s anel Keys was ridiculing John yudkin and his theory and papers and just on the basis of that sort of personality and political struggle the nutrition Community embraced this idea that saturated fat was the problem working through dietary cholesterol and began to think of the idea that Sugar could cause heart disease is akin to quackery and yudkin was eventually ridiculed Keys won the diet War helped
12:30 - 13:00 by his rise to Fame after appearing on the cover of Time Magazine this widespread publicity meant that Key's Theory went from weak hypothesis to Medical Dogma it would turn out to be one of the most significant events in the history of postwar medicine the consequences of this study would reverberate over the next several decades to influence public opinion government policy and the way doctors practice medicine
13:00 - 13:30 today the most influential and respected investigation into the potential causes of heart disease was carried out here in the town of Framingham Massachusetts it began in 1948 and is still going on today it's the longest observational study of its kind involving over 5,000 residents
13:30 - 14:00 the Framingham data pointed out very early that certain habits or what you did like cigarette smoking or emotional stress did point in the direction of heart disease but then something happened somebody these Framingham residents were living longer than others when researchers went to look at the data 30 years later they found that after a certain age it didn't matter what your cholesterol level was cholesterol did correlate with heart
14:00 - 14:30 disease but that disappeared by the time you reached your late 40s after the age of 47 high cholesterol is probably protective the people who had the highest cholesterol lived the longest much to the amazement of a lot of the researchers people who ate the most cholesterol ate the most fat actually weighed the lesson were the most active one of the framing ham researchers became so dismayed with the results he wrote a scathing review of the whole diet heart hypothesis saying
14:30 - 15:00 that people had been misled by the greatest scientific deception of our times the notion that animal fat causes heart disease hundreds of Articles refuting the cholesterol hypothesis have been published in the world's leading medical journals but they rarely get noticed by mainstream media what you do in bad science is you ignore any evidence that's contrary to your beliefs your
15:00 - 15:30 hypothesis and you only focus on the evidence that supports [Music] it in 1977 the US government stepped in Senator George mcgaven an advocate of anel Key's Theory headed a Committee hearing to end the debate once and for all and they are the ones that really have put us in the nutritional mess that we're in now because based on virtually zero science they decided that a low-fat
15:30 - 16:00 diet was the best thing for us all eminent scientists at the time disagreed with the report that's why I have pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the American public but their pleas fell on deaf ears well I I would only argue that Senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does are waiting until every last shred of uh evidence is in news reports began
16:00 - 16:30 pedaling the same message and many say it was this article in Time magazine that put the final nail in the coffin for saturated fat and cholesterol this led to the creation of the food pyramid which formed the basis of our dietary advice in the following four decades it advised us to eat less saturated fat mainly found in meat and
16:30 - 17:00 dairy recommending a diet rich in carbohydrate foods like breads grains and cereals MGO himself was from Big wheat growing state so it didn't hurt him politically that uh people moved away from uh foods of animal origin into Breads and and pastas there is one diet that stands out from the rest the Leon diet heart study which touted the benefits of a
17:00 - 17:30 Mediterranean diet remarkably after several years those on the Mediterranean diet had a whopping 76% less deaths from heart attacks so why did the Mediterranean diet gets such a spectacular result when all the others had failed I'll explain why later but one of the most interesting things to come from that study went virtually unnoticed here's the part that nobody talks about so you think that in the group that had the
17:30 - 18:00 double digit reduction in heart disease the cholesterol levels must have plummeted right the cholesterol levels didn't budge both groups had the same cholesterol levels except one group just stopped dying so so much for the relationship between cholesterol and the risk for heart disease this is the average amount of saturated fat a person consumes in a month atherosclerosis begins when plaes build up in the arteries the saturated fact clug this pipe imagine what it's doing to yours
18:00 - 18:30 but contrary to popular belief neither saturated fat or cholesterol deposit on the artery wall like sludge in a pipe nobody knows what begins the process but damage on the artery wall causes inflammation the body responds by recruiting cells to fix the problem tissue cells called macres clean up the debris which consists of things
18:30 - 19:00 like bacteria calcium and cholesterol a fibrous cap grows over the plaque trying to conceal the inflammation if the cap bursts the plaque's contents are released and a clot May block the artery after which a heart attack ensues Dr Curtis has a theory on what initiates the damage that begins AOS sclerosis arteries are constantly
19:00 - 19:30 branching off one from another and at these Branch points is a very common place to find these plaques the study of fluid dynamics shows this is where the artery experiences the most stress from the tremendous pulsatile force of blood csing through the artery at high pressure veins don't endure the same pressure as arteries so they never develop plaes the veins that simply return the used up blood to the heart to
19:30 - 20:00 get reoxygenated and not under the same stress and veins don't develop atherosclerosis unless you put them in a situation where they have to function as arteries and this may happen when surgeons use veins in heart bypass surgery now that portion of the vein is receiving the same arterial pressures those coronary bypass grass and veins
20:00 - 20:30 here will develop atherosclerosis very quickly it is never seen in their native state but because cholesterol is found in the plaques it's often blamed for causing it if you go in and you do autopsies of people who have had coronary artery disease and you cut open the coronary arteries they're filled with cholesterol so it's not a big leap to say gosh I shouldn't eat that because it's going
20:30 - 21:00 to go right into there but that's not the way it works Dr Sinatra says blaming cholesterol for causing plaes is like blaming firemen for causing fires just because they're always at the scene colesterol is really not the villain I mean we we we need it to live the problem is is cholesterol is involved in a repair process look cholesterols found out the scene of the crime it's not the perpetrator and where I said now as a cardiologist practicing Cardiology for
21:00 - 21:30 over four decades it's very low down on my list of risk factors cholesterol is a waxy substance that doesn't dissolve in the blood so it has to be fed around by proteins mainly LDL and HDL LDL is said to deliver cholesterol to the tissues hence it's bad and HDL is said to remove cholesterol from plaes hence it's good you know small needles are good but when Dr Sinatra has his annual blood test he says he's not that concerned about
21:30 - 22:00 cholesterol what about the bad cholesterol you call it the LDL bed cholesterol well you know I don't really call it bad unless it's oxidized remember if it's oxidized then it's inflammatory so cholesterol is not bad only if it's oxidized exactly if the cholesterol is oxidized if there's free radical stress involved and it's oxidized that's inflammatory and that sets the Cascade for inflammation well the inflammatory theory of heart
22:00 - 22:30 disease I think is accepted more and more now I think the general cardiovascular Community is still focusing on cholesterol they need to focus more on inflammation and that's where you know emotional stress but sugar sugar is really the full when it comes to cardiovascular disease you see we placed all this emphasis on cholesterol we've taken it off sugar and that's the problem then you're getting more ins responses and we know that insulin is
22:30 - 23:00 the number one indicator for inducing what we call inflammation of blood vessels sugar is far more damaging to the heart than fat ever was and we're beginning to see this now so this focus on cholesterol has been incredibly destructive because we haven't looked at these real promoters of heart disease inflammation oxidative damage sugar in the diet and number one with a bullet stress Dr grenal says the theories are untested but plausible these are still
23:00 - 23:30 hypothetical uh uh questions that uh need to be answered about why does high blood pressure cause damage to the artery walls I mean these are all fantastic ideas and how fantastic would be if we uh we found that uh there were simple ways of preventing heart disease by lowering our body's inflammatory response and also its enthusiasm to in this hypothesis to heal itself or to heal holes in the arteries so it's also plausible that maybe cholesterol isn't the driving factor in this process it's
23:30 - 24:00 a contributor Dr Sullivan does concede that an aspect of the food pyramid was a mistake he says replacing fats with carbohydrates didn't help the rising obesity problem if you replace fat with carbohydrate uh you will probably uh be a little bit more inclined to be hungry your insulin levels will be a bit higher you'll have higher levels of of triglyceride higher levels of glucose
24:00 - 24:30 and less of your good cholesterol to avert problems we certainly probably gave some advice which was a good way to avert one pathway but people then track down another pathway and that's what's led to the revision of dietary guidelines the more recent advice is to replace saturated fat with unsaturated fats in order to lower the risk of heart disease for example swapping butter with margarine it's very hard to find any positives about butter in terms of its
24:30 - 25:00 uh impact on cardiovascular disease but this advice still receives its fair share of opposition margarine is a perfect example of the stupidest nutritional swap out in history we have this trans fat Laden crappy manufactured product that we were eating because we were so phobic about saturated fat and cholesterol to switch to polyunsaturated fats with the vegetable oils that's horrific advice the polyunsaturated fats the vegetable oils these Omega six oils are inflammatory CU they're very prone
25:00 - 25:30 to oxidation have we been given the wrong advice we've absolutely been given the wrong advice people became afraid of saturated fats so they said okay we've got to do something to replace the saturated fats and so let's do it with vegetable oils well vegetable oils don't have the same cooking qualities that saturated fats do all unsaturated fats have a lot of double Bonds in them and double bonds are prone to free radical attack it becomes a rancid fat and it becomes
25:30 - 26:00 really bad for you and saturated fats on the other hand have no double bonds that's why they're incredibly stable that's why they're great for cooking that's why they're great for frying and that's why they don't really perpetuate free radical Cascades in the body because they're inert fats they're mainly just prote Dr eids says butter and coconut are not harmful to your health and recommends those fats over the Omega 6 vegetable oils when vegetable oils are used to
26:00 - 26:30 manufacture margarine they undergo a process called partial hydrogenation which results in the formation of industrial trans fats and everybody agrees they're bad for you it's important to look for products that have them removed although Australia doesn't have mandatory labeling of them junk food for example is riddled with industrial trans fats the Omega 3s another type of polyunsaturated fat found in fish for
26:30 - 27:00 example are thought to counter the inflammatory effects of amga 6es the two of them are kind of like the accelerator and a brake pedal in a car and if they're in Balance uh things operate smoothly I mean you don't want too much anti-inflammatory you don't want too much pro-inflammatory because of the Advent of vegetable oils we now have tons of Omega 6 fats and really very little omega-3 fats this is thought to be why the
27:00 - 27:30 Mediterranean diet was so successful it was higher in omega-3 fats not to mention it was low in refined carbohydrates like sugar and rich in antioxidants the Heart Foundation still suggests uh that a diet that substitutes saturated fats for polyunsaturated fats is one that is healthier for your heart pursue it but opposition to this advant is still palpable it took decades to really
27:30 - 28:00 entrench this myth it's probably going to take a few more decades to get us out of this myth but to vilify saturated fats um I think is one of the worst things the medical profession has done I'd love to see the medical establishment saying whoops we were wrong that's not going to happen frankly that generation's going to have to die off and perhaps a generation coming up can can do better
28:00 - 28:30 we created this new disease called hyper cholesterolemia and if we created this new disease we got to create drugs to neutralize it so are there corporations and billions of dollars and and and money behind this absolutely we've been told that medications to lower cholesterol will save lives we repeatedly hear from patients that
28:30 - 29:00 their doctors tell them if you don't take this you will die over 40 million people worldwide take drugs to lower their cholesterol but now there's evidence that the majority of them won't benefit none of those people are less likely to die I speak to doctors accusing the drug companies of distorting the evidence about the Drug's side effects of course they're going to try to minimize the aders events cuz that will increase the sales of their drugs in its effect it's certainly
29:00 - 29:30 scientific fraud and in its effect it's organized crime so how do these drugs work and are they really safe I've come to the United States to investigate how drugs to lower cholesterol came to be the most widely prescribed drugs in the history of Medicine the80s saw the debut of a new weapon in the battle against heart
29:30 - 30:00 disease a novel class of drugs called stattin that lowered cholesterol like no other medication before them they were heralded as Nirvana the next great thing because all of a sudden now you're getting 30 to 40% reduction with statins which was huge and this was great news to the people who were pushing the cholesterol Theory because they said aha now we don't have to settle for these piddling little amounts anymore we can
30:00 - 30:30 really show how important cholesterol is by knocking it way down medical information comes along that says you may need to get in the US influential tv ads like this use popular actors to boast the enormous potential of these drugs Crestor along with diet can lower bad cholesterol by up to 52% but the reality is lowering your cholesterol with medication doesn't guarantee you won't have a heart the marketing concentrates on the fact
30:30 - 31:00 that you can lower your cholesterol as if that was the end in itself which it is not cholesterol is just a lab number you know who cares about low cholesterol unless it actually translate into a benefit to patients over the decades drug companies have had an enormous vested interest in Staten drugs it's most profitable group of drugs in the history of the world something like 15 to 25 billion with a B dollarss per year spent on these drugs that's higher than
31:00 - 31:30 the gross national product of many countries around the world lipor is the best selling drug in history so in terms of costs total sales of Lipitor have been in the range of $140 billion since it came on the market in [Music] 1996 stattin work by disabling a critical state step early in the formation of
31:30 - 32:00 cholesterol there's a pathway that produces cholesterol in the body you can think of it like a tree so we have decided collectively that one of the branches of this tree is bad meaning cholesterol so we've decided that the best way to get rid of that branch is to cut the tree off at the root statins inhibit this enzyme which is also required for essential molecules like co-enzyme Q10 nutritionist Dr Johnny Bowden says CoQ10
32:00 - 32:30 is essential for optimal heart muscle function this is partly we believe why so many side effects have to do with lack of energy um muscle pain because coenzyme q1 is so vital so what's the irony of giving people a drug to reduce something that probably doesn't even have that much to do with heart disease that also reduces one of the molecules that's most necessary for heart health how insane is that it's assumed that cholesterol is a toxic substance in your
32:30 - 33:00 body and getting it as low as you can is a good thing well cholesterol is the organic molecule that's most common in your brain by weight it's in every cell wall it's the precursor of many of the hormones in our bodies it's an enormously complex molecule and to think that you can radically pull this out of the body and not have consequences is just it's ridiculous it's such bad science it's been about 30 years since stattin
33:00 - 33:30 were first introduced as the new blockbuster drug in heart disease and millions of people around the world are being prescribed these medications but many are concerned that the benefits of these drugs have been grossly exaggerated Professor Rita redberg is a world-renowned cardiologist she says barring a genetic condition the only people who live longer by taking a Statin of those that have already had a heart attack or
33:30 - 34:00 stroke valves working great that's good and of them only a very small number will benefit one or two people in a 100 will benefit from taking a stun and what people don't understand is that means the other 98 will get no benefit at all that it's not going to reduce their chance of dying but this hasn't limited their use these drugs are now being widely prescribed to relatively healthy people
34:00 - 34:30 those without diagnosed heart disease and Dr redberg warns most of them won't benefit for healthy people even people that have a lot of risk factors so they might have high blood pressure they might smoke they might have diabetes the data is not there to suggest that those people are better off taking a stand no I don't think it's a wonder drug what your chance of a heart attack but Dr David Sullivan disagrees he says all risk factors should be considered equally including
34:30 - 35:00 cholesterol if you want to mount these arguments about not treating the cholesterol you've got to take the responsibility of saying it's not necessary to treat these other risk factors either I would certainly encourage people who are considering cessation of treatment for perceived side effects and so forth to discuss it with their doctor in 2012 there was an interesting turn of events the CT collaboration a high regarded group of researchers reanalyzed all of the old data with
35:00 - 35:30 different methods and concluded that Statin were effective for The Wider population the report was subject to harsh criticism but it's still the data that many cardiologists turn to the media jumped on board and reported that everyone over the age of 50 should be taking a Statin to reduce their risk of heart disease even if you had normal cholest but professor redberg says there's a
35:30 - 36:00 downside none of those people are less likely to die so you can take a stattin for many many years and you're just as likely to die as if you had not taken a stattin unless you've already been diagnosed with heart disease then taking a Statin won't help you live longer it may reduce your risk of a cardiovascular event but it may also increase your risk of developing something else like like diabetes either way taking a Statin
36:00 - 36:30 won't extend your lifespan do Abramson says cardiologists are so focused on how these drugs prevent blood vessel disease they often Overlook the other problems caused by Statin people are more than their cardiovascular system and what we really want to do is improve people's overall health longevity and their risk of serious illness if you look at overall health we haven't done anything for them now do people want to take a Statin to
36:30 - 37:00 trade one cardiovascular event for some other very serious illness in other words no net benefit and expose thems to the risk of harm from the statins do you want to do that I think it's a bad deal if somebody has a particular fear of heart disease and says look I don't care if I get diabetes I I don't care if I have muscle symptoms I don't care if I can't exercise the way I want to exercise I do not want to have
37:00 - 37:30 heart disease fine take a Statin but understand that that's why you're taking a Statin not because it's going to improve your overall health cardiologist Dr Ernest Curtis says the absolute benefit of Statin is so minor that it's unlikely to be because of their ability to lower cholesterol he says Statin probably work through other mechanisms it seems very likely that the amount of reduction that they saw with the Statin agents could
37:30 - 38:00 easily be due to its effect on the blood clotting and possibly even the anti-inflammatory effect and have nothing to do with the cholesterol Dr galum has scrutinized the data and she's even more skeptical about the value of these drugs especially in women right now the evidence has not supported benefit to women even if they have heart disease in terms of mortality and all cause morbidity it has not shown benefit to elderly even if they have heart disease in fact in the fors trial
38:00 - 38:30 there is a 12% increase in mortality in the women in that group who were assigned to Statin rather than Placebo so the evidence really doesn't support that the benefit is the same for women and for men and on top of that women are at higher risk of complications from Statin should women take cholesterol lowering medication in general no now there may be exceptions medicine actually does have an element of art and of women are from a family with severe familial hyperlipidemia where a lot of
38:30 - 39:00 people are dying from heart disease in their 30s and 40s that's a group where I would say there is an art there are now calls for patients to give written consent before taking a Statin if you do plan to give Statin to women to elderly to people at low risk they should sign a consent form saying they understand that they're receiving a drug that will not extend their life but will only shift the cause of death I think patients have a right to
39:00 - 39:30 know that before they agreed to take on a medication the national Heart Foundation of Australia agrees that people are being prescribed stattin unnecessarily I would agree that there are people in in Australia Today who have been treated for cholesterol where their cardiovascular risk is not high and you would have to question whether they should in fact actually be on that a report estimated around 75% of people taking Statin are in the low to moderate
39:30 - 40:00 risk category and according to these researchers that means up to 30 million people are taking a drug that won't offer them the benefit of living any longer my doctor pointed out that my cholesterol levels were high and I should take some sort of medication to reduce the cholesterol level there was nothing wrong with Edward's health apart from his high cholesterol he took his doctor's advice
40:00 - 40:30 and began taking a Statin after about 2 weeks I was having a difficult time walking in the daytime and at night I had trouble sleeping my legs achd I was definitely experiencing a memory loss uh I I didn't feel as that I could recall things as clearly as I did before I was Tak this St Statin have a long list of side
40:30 - 41:00 effects like muscle weakness memory loss and in rare cases a potentially fatal condition called rabdo myisis where muscles break down and cause kidney failure Edwood decided to stop taking his medication I start feeling better after about 3 weeks to maybe a month afterwards how long did it take for you to get 100% Improvement 100% better took from the time I stopped taking the statins took 6
41:00 - 41:30 months they feel like they're in a fog they can't get out of their chair side effects that go away when they've stopped their stuns and I patients come in and tell me they'd rather be dead than keep taking the stun some of them tell us that their doctors fire them as patients if they discontinue their STS which I really wonder about the ethics of some of the people that we hear from also say that their doctor didn't believe them their problem couldn't be due to statins and based on how patients perceive it Badger or bully them into
41:30 - 42:00 resuming or continuing the medication that's not an acceptable way for medicine as a system to be run but Dr Sullivan says it's possible that patients talk themselves into having side effects in alerting patients to uh some undesirable possibilities and in fact maybe even through the power of suggestion lead them to believe that they're experiencing those particular issues uh which they would then blame on
42:00 - 42:30 the drug when in fact it might be uh arising from other factors their imagination um look I'd be reluctant to I I think a lot of these things aren't imagined I think there are days when you can feel more of a mus muscle ache than than others and it can be age it can be all sorts of other things Dr galum makes a stunning accusation about why she believes some doctors in the US push their patients to take statins I think they often intentionally
42:30 - 43:00 hide those risks because there are often physician incentives that benefit the physician for having more patients on Statin so it pits physician self-interest against patient benefit this particular woman contacted me and she had left the practice that she was at because they insisted that at least I believe it was 80% of her patients Beyond Statin this has actually been written up in media as something that is actually
43:00 - 43:30 considered legal and acceptable I can't see any way in which that's acceptable I'm literally the only researcher I know who studies this class of D who has a policy not to take money from industry stattin are meant to be lifelong medications but Dr Curtis says we don't know about the long-term side effects the studies that have been done have generally been just a few years in ation the long-term effects may not show up for many years uh it may take many
43:30 - 44:00 years for a cancer that develops to make itself manifest uh because cholesterol is so important in the brain uh could it contribute to dementia when someone gets older if you lower their cholesterol we don't know again how would we be able to tie that to the drug so all of these concerns about the unknown long-term side effects are very serious in my opinion Harvard Dr John Abramson is an expert in
44:00 - 44:30 litigation involving drug companies he says when not being told the whole truth about the dangers of these drugs we're told over and over again that statins are extremely safe and when you look at the results of the clinical trials you would conclude that they are safe the problem is that the clinical trials are not designed to pick up all the side effects the CTT collaboration for example use mostly Drug Company data and Report very low levels of Muscle side
44:30 - 45:00 effects from Statin but when you look at the side effects in the general population it's a 100 times higher are the trials lying no I just don't think they ask the right questions why didn't they ask the right questions it's not in the interest of the drug companies to ask the right questions so it's creating the impression that the drugs are safe another complication with clinical trials is that drug companies don't
45:00 - 45:30 recruit volunteers that reflect the typical patient on statins problem with the study design is is that we exclude people with chronic disease or um other comob abilities we exclude people who are very old or very young uh and we'll certainly exclude people with other types of risk factors that or diseases that may interfere with the U metabolism of the drug so we often get a skewed picture of what the side effect profile is the fraction of people with problems in my sort of real world on multiple
45:30 - 46:00 medications at set our Clinic is far higher and I would say in that sample it really seems on the order of a third of patients that develop problems there are a lot of ways that one can manipulate data in a trial trials do what they call a wash out period and what that means is before they choose the people that are going to be in the trial they give everybody the drug and the people that have side
46:00 - 46:30 effects get excluded from the trial and they say that so people aren't uncomfortable when they're in the trial but of course it takes out all the people that have side effects and that's very commonly done in drug trials so the side effects would be grossly underestimated yes it would definitely grossly underestimate the number of people that have side effects they're not as safe as they've made out to be no in its effect it's certain scientific fraud and in its effect it's organized crime um it's always difficult to allege
46:30 - 47:00 intent but it is clear that manipulation of evidence subjects many people to treatments that those people should never have been subjected to I think there is criminal activity that goes on and I think when drug companies act in ways that misrepresent information that leads to harm they ought to be held responsible just like
47:00 - 47:30 any other individual or organization that conducts itself in a way that leads to harming other people drug companies have a history of illegal activity this is just a sample of the billions of dollars in fines they incur for things like fraud and bribery in any given year in the80s when President Reagan came into office and slashed funding to the National Institutes of Health it
47:30 - 48:00 left a gaping hole for Private Industry to move in nowadays around 85% of Trials are funded by drug companies a review concluded that if a drug company paid for a trial it was 24% more likely to report the drug was effective and 87% less likely to report the drug side effects there's a sense that science is
48:00 - 48:30 science so it doesn't matter who pays for it and yet because the research is privatized the fundamental purpose for which it's conducted has changed it's not to improve the Public's Health it's to fulfill the fiduciary obligations of the sponsors and create an opportunity to maximize profits instead of improve the Public's Health some might say that that's a rather cynical view of how science Works to say it's cynical that commercial sponsorship of science taints
48:30 - 49:00 the science is just totally naive it's it's silly business is in business their job is to make money we ought to be clear in our public discourse that to say we've got a bias in commercially sponsored research is neither cynical nor paranoid nor impolite it's a fact so let's just accept it as a fact and stop being being naive at our own expense but if big farmer doesn't pay it
49:00 - 49:30 will have to be the taxpayer a drug now costs about $2 billion to develop the success rate of drugs is very low you know is the public Pur going to be willing to shill out in advance for $2 billion for a drug which it doesn't know the likely outcome [Music] of arguably the biggest ethical issue in science is that drug companies with with hold unflattering results so in the end what we're presented with is a
49:30 - 50:00 distortion of the data two of the three major drug companies declined to comment astrazenica denied these allegations stating that all their trials are publicly available but in 2010 the drug maker reportedly paid a half a billion dollars to settle a class action after being accused of BU carrying information about the increased risk of diabetes seen with their widely
50:00 - 50:30 prescribed antis psychotic drug squel I spend a lot of time as a an expert in uh pharmaceutical litigation and one thing you learn is that you can't possibly know what's going on with that drug unless you have access to the corporate hard drives if you want to know the truth about a drug you need to have subpoena power or in litigation to discovery that gets you into those corporate hard drives because without
50:30 - 51:00 getting into the corporate hard drives it's impossible to know what the real benefits and the real risks of those drugs are even the definition of high cholesterol keeps changing in 2004 a US panel of experts decided to lower the threshold of cholesterol which sparked outrage among many doctors more and more people think they have high cholesterol even though they don't have high cholesterol by changing the definition
51:00 - 51:30 it meant that Millions more people became eligible for stattin and these thresholds were adopted by many countries around the world has this been on the basis of any scientific data absolutely not absolutely not no evidence whatsoever just the theory that less is better you're creating more patience you're creating more people who now have something to worry about where they didn't have anything
51:30 - 52:00 before but Dr Sullivan insists this was a good decision I think what we actually started off with was maybe appropriately conservative targets which uh were really um not in the patient best interest so the likely outcome is a further reduction in targets more cholesterol lowering yep I think that's absolutely uh to be expected the decision to lower the threshold of cholesterol was a controversial one an investigation into the matter revealed
52:00 - 52:30 eight out of nine panel members had a direct conflict of interest after declaring Financial ties to the companies that manufactured statens we don't have independent reviewers evaluating the data and making independent recommendations you might ask am I accusing these people of selling their opinion because they're getting paid by the drug companies no I'm not I'm not accusing anybody of bad faith but the people the drug companies
52:30 - 53:00 choose to pay are people who Advocate the use of their drugs and have standing and presence and and and reputation that will enhance the sales of their drugs so do drug companies seek out doctors to be their mouthpieces drug companies clearly seek out what's called key opinion leaders these are people with a national reputation who can create the street knowledge for practicing Physicians that this is the way things
53:00 - 53:30 should be done there is ample published literature showing that doctors who receive money from drug companies have more favorable attitudes and prescribing habits towards that drug there's no question that doctors are influenced by drug companies I hate to say it but drug reps showing up in nice suits and fancy women's clothes without much medical education play a significant role in what doctors think
53:30 - 54:00 now there's no reason for doctors to be getting their information from drug reps my goodness the drug reps job is to increase the sales of the drugs they represent doctors need to take some responsibility they need to do their best to get independent knowledge and they need to put political pressure on their governments to get the clinical trial data unsealed so they can know what the clinical trials really showed many doctors feel obliged to follow the guidelines even if they don't agree with
54:00 - 54:30 them they have to worry about malpractice suits if they don't follow the guidelines an opposing attorney could make them look very bad in court by saying well doctor do you think you're smarter than this National group of recognized experts and this is a factor that's impelling doctors to follow the guidelines the push to lower chest role in The Wider population continues a group of doctors published
54:30 - 55:00 an article claiming that statins could counter the effects of eating a burger they suggested that statins be handed out as free condiments just like ketchup because it gives people that false reassurance that it's okay if you eat this food that is not good for your health because then you're going to take this pill that's going to make it okay and that's very attractive but it is a fallacy it's just not true and it's still bad for your health to eat
55:00 - 55:30 processed foods eat trans fats and have a regular diet of fast food hamburgers and the absurdity doesn't stop there here in the US it was even suggested that statins be put in the public water supply I think this idea of handing out statins willy-nilly to everybody is totally irresponsible you're talking about a drug with potentially toxic side effect and a drug whose quote beneficial effect is extremely small and whose benefit can
55:30 - 56:00 be achieved with much less toxic drugs and even with some non-drug treatments we're missing the message that Health rarely comes out of a bottle exercise and a Mediterranean style diet is the best way to prevent heart disease I think virtually everybody agrees with that now it's very clear that when you look at the effects of exercise they're far more powerful than statins moderate
56:00 - 56:30 exercise exercising the equivalent of 2 hours of brisk walking a week adds about 2 years to your life compared to not exercising that much two years now for statins for low-risk people no benefit in longevity so do you want to exercise which is going to add 2 years to your life or do you want to take a pill that's not going to lengthen your life and has the risk of side effects it's
56:30 - 57:00 craziness until the science of clinical trials can break free from commercial interest then decisions about our health rest in the hands of big business the views expressed in this episode of catalyst are not intended as medical advice please consult with your doctor regarding your
57:00 - 57:30 medications