What Is A Healthy Cholesterol Level? Do Higher Levels Lead To Higher Death Rates?

Intro

and I’d like to introduce you to the people on this panel I am NOT gonna read BIOS because I read that did that for their individual lecture so just tell everyone who everyone is first person here is a brenda davis and brenda has spoken at our conference before her YouTube videos as some of the highest viewed videos that we have and she offers us um she’s fighting hard for us she reads all the data all the studies and puts it together so it’s easier for her so I’d like to welcome brenda davis

dr. kim williams the past president the american kardi College of Cardiology we

Dr Kim Williams

feel very fortunate to have a cardiologist who also is an expert in nutrition reads all the studies and is willing to spend his time this is not the most profitable way for a cardiologist to spend their time to come to the real truth about health the conference this is purely for you there’s no incentive other than someone who’s truly on your side and wants you to be aware of this information so thank you dr. Williams um dr. Gabriel Cousins um he has not only someone who reads the literature but he also has spent many many years at his Tree of Life rejuvenation Center in Arizona where people came to him he monitored them tested them and fed them a specific diet so when he talks about diabetes it’s not a theoretical thing it’s what happened year after year every single year for a very long period watching the real effects on people from eating his diet so he is someone with very specific and valuable knowledge and we’re very grateful that he’s been willing to see us so gave of dr. Gabriel Cousins and many of you are familiar with dr. joel Fuhrman he has spoken before he’s had the highest-rated video the highest viewed videos of any videos we’ve ever done um a lot of people relate I mean it seems like this should be thousands of doctors doing exactly what he’s doing saying the exact thing he’s saying so it he’s very unique but he shouldn’t be it seems like what his message should be the same thing that everyone says but we’re very fortunate to have someone that has been devoted to helping us get this information straight so dr. joel Fuhrman okay so I’d like to ask a

The difference of opinion

question that I know already there’s a difference of opinion and let’s start by saying that there’s been it’s been people in the kedo and the paleo community specifically I saw a Joe rogue Rogan podcast with dr. Joel Khan and Chris kraut chris Kresser Crowder presser and they were arguing whether saturated fat and cholesterol dietary saturated fat and cholesterol led to higher actual levels of dietary fat and cholesterol and whether that actually led to a higher rate of death and Chris kress who was saying um just because you eat cholesterol or saturated fat it doesn’t mean your blood cholesterol goes up and even if it did there were nine studies on longevity and there was no connection between cholesterol and death so I asked this question last weekend to Alan Goldhamer Michael clapper Brian Anna Marie Clemente and who was on the panel Michael clapper Pam popper and very clearly they was saying that higher cholesterol and higher saturated fat was correlating negatively with people’s longevity it was bad for them and there was a correlation so that was my thought and so anyway so the paleo people were saying that high cholesterol is not a problem and the whole food plant-based people were saying yes it is a problem and the studies show that um when I spoke to dr. cousins or I heard dr. cousins lecture yesterday I thought you were saying that cholesterol of 160 to 260 was actually better for depression preventing depression preventing suicide and I just want to clarify um where where everyone’s thoughts are on what is the appropriate level of cholesterol I was under the impression that a whole food plant-based diet is ideal and that leads to an under 150 level of cholesterol um if each of you could just Clara could try to help us clarify this so I can make sure we all understand this and if I asked it’s it’s the question funny please help me to make it straight okay I’ll dive in so my contribution to

Cardiovascular mortality and LDL cholesterol

this panel probably would be that we have an intense relationship between cardiovascular mortality and LDL cholesterol so we we’re all surprised at the European Society of Cardiology to find out that high levels of HDL cholesterol which we’ve been thinking for 40 years is protective turns out it actually is not protective that higher levels of HDL are associated with increased levels of heart attacks so then you have the attempts that we’ve had over the decades to increase HDL cholesterol very famous studies Tour satrapy bana Petra pip but Dow cetra pip niacin all of them failed to decrease cardiac events so at this point we would say that the HDL story is probably we may need to learn some more about it but right now it’s not something that we can use okay therefore if you imagine what happens to someone with a low LDL and a high HDL maybe they’re not as good as they should be and that what that really means is that any study that was done with total cholesterol only without regard to what the LDL was or the triglycerides it’s just adding some information but with it’s not going to clarify anything it probably more heat than light and so you can come to a lot of different conclusions and in fact we’re trying to get a little cardiology out of measuring the non HDL cholesterol or staying staying with what the LDL cholesterol is because that’s where we really know that for everyone millimole which is about 39 on your american scale milligrams per deciliter Seletar for every reduction of one millimole you get about a 22% decrease in cardiovascular events that’s data that comes from the trial astir I’ll try lists that’s a massive amount of data collected over numerous years with a variety of circumstances some statins some diets some Mendelian randomized trials which requires a one sentence explanation you can actually do a clinical trial based on people’s genome if you have their data and everyone has so-called sniffs single new tonight nucleotide mutations that will actually change their cholesterol and you can follow that what happens to them naturally and that’s so-called Mendelian randomized trials they all show the same thing so I would say that whatever people say about total cholesterol I don’t know what that means anymore but I know what it means it with LDL cholesterol lower is better well I’m

Diet and cholesterol

going to start with a few things sir so this 5g things really important I just handed a Levin page document it’s 5 G with the 20,000 satellites we’re talking about disrupting this human residence in the global electric circuit which all of life on the plan is attuned to this is not such a good thing right there is in the end of that all the organizations worldwide are they’re struggling against it and we actually do have a solution defeat them legally and lawfully which is use of UCC law which work with the smartphone’s so they have the document over there it’s on my website I I love you to read it because it’s got to be a worldwide effort to stop this from happening okay so in that context cuz that’s really a big problem we can talk a little bit about this and what you told me was really interesting actually really interesting so the diet I mentioned and then I’ve studied with clients over the years lots of clients but at least 120 in one series is that a 25 45 percent really 25 35 percent complex carbohydrates 25 to 45 percent only plant fat only 10 to 15 percent protein no the significance is which is really cool what you just said is that this diet the drop in LDLs who measured was about 70 points it was huge so people went from you know one close to 150 or more really down into down to 69 yeah so that’s exciting that just changes my discussion about it okay did everybody get that so and I’m gonna tell you something else to think about because in answering this question it’s really more complex but you point it out it just can’t say cholesterol and cholesterol it doesn’t work that way the body is homeostatic the liver makes 75% of that cholesterol if we take too much in they don’t make less we don’t think enough of make more where we’re going to is where the body wants to go to his homeostasis around 150 or something like that now I compared my study with dr. SS Dean’s and one other study and those two studies were 10% fat mine was as they said you know 25 45% all three diets lowered the cholesterol all three diets relatively speaking Lord that LDL but they all lower the cholesterol so now we’re saying what happened 10 percent did it 25 to 45 percent did it what’s going on here and I looked at it because it’s like you got to make sense of it and when I saw us what did they have in common no junk food okay no GMOs no white mark oh wow that’s shocking no white flour no white sugar okay and they’re good and it was all organic so what I saw and trying to make sense of it like okay you got a 10% now you got 25 to 45 percent according to Constitution is the real factor was people are eating in a healthy way which was bringing the whole body into homeostasis and lowering our healthy Asian went way Lord actually there’s there’s more to it but we were but they all went down that’s my point cholesterol total essence all went down I know that doesn’t matter anymore but in the moment it mattered okay so it’s kind of exciting to kind of move away from into a more holistic viewpoint is does it matter what the cholesterol okay now I’m getting back to the kind of the bigger question because you see we could talk all day on this right I’m tempted to do that but I won’t okay so what what I see is of course according to Constitution we’re going to need different levels but eating healthily is the most important thing there are lots of studies out there that show that high cholestoral could be a problem there’s even more showing it doesn’t matter you know if you’re between 160 and 2/6 you know what you heard for me Steve wasn’t bad the real problem is low cholesterol as a psychiatrist it’s like it’s a nightmare to think hey we have something if your cholesterol goes below 150 that’s gonna give you a 4 times higher rate of depression and if you eat the lowest level six times higher rate of suicide plus more accidents more violence more Parkinson and a greater cognitive decline now that concerns me that’s very hard data that we worry about versus hey as you pointed out the cholesteral thing optimum this way the cholesterol thing isn’t quite so clear now unless we look at LDL so that just changes everything in a way so so the real messages is kind of eating healthily as a way of bringing your all levels of your claustral to normal homeostatic levels that’s a kind of a kind of a way to think about it but as I say we got a huge drop it is that was a 46% drop in three weeks of the LDLs so if that’s the problem we have a solution with this kind of diet that’s 25 to 45 percent you know plant saturated fat so those are some thoughts to consider in this more complicated situation I hope that answers the question [Applause]

I could just add one or two things and

What we know

that is number one we know that as diets are higher in animal products both cancer rates and heart attack rates increase the proportion of animal products is a total suppression calories go up and the mechanisms via which animal products increase heart attack and cancer death is in all ways via increasing LDL cholesterol there’s other mechanisms which die at higher animal products increase causes of death so just looking at the cholesterol in a vacuum doesn’t tell us all the answer and and furthermore we also see the diets higher in nuts and seeds result in lower rates of cardiovascular death and lower rates of total mortality in more than eight different significant meta-analysis encompassing hundreds of thousands of lives and tens of thousands of deaths we always give studies more credence when they look at hard endpoints like death compared to soft endpoints like cholesterol levels so we know the diet that’s maximally protective and we’re all recommending similar diets so to speak and I’m also suggesting that there’s no evidence that focusing on the fat content and trying to arbitrarily get your fat content below a certain number is gonna benefit your heart or your cholesterol it’s the overall nutritional quality of the whole diet so we’re in agreement on that there’s there’s also a concern though which I did mention that on vegan diets certain genetic types who have lower rates of conversion enzymes don’t don’t make dat ala into DHA as efficiently in other types as other genetic types do and we did a study on 166 vegans I shouldn’t say we did a study I was not involved with that study as president and a nutritional Research Foundation our foundation funded the study but I wasn’t part of the study different scientists did the study and when they track the DHA levels of 166 vegans who were not supplementing with DHA a certain percent of those approximately 25 percent had a significant deficiency of DHA and it didn’t correlate with the type of fat they were eating if they have flax seeds if they walnuts if they weren’t eating oils it didn’t it showed that the conversion enzyme genetically in was more correlated with the amount of conversion from ala into DHA and we and those people would be more prone to depression and shrinkage of the brain so maybe a certain in certain types of individuals may be more susceptible to depression when they’re on as fat restricted diet that’s not supplemented with DHA and so we’re trying to make sure a vegan diet is safe for all people and being conservative and careful in making sure that people who are prone to not producing DHA don’t get into trouble on a vegan diet because it’s not about heart disease so much it’s about they’re not getting depressed and not develop dementia later in life due to severe DHA deficiencies so that may be the reason you’re seeing some people with low DHA increasing their risks of depression because those may be the people that are more that would have done better with more fish or if they were eating more their cholesterol might have been higher in the lock of the lower cholesterol in combination with a low level of DHA maybe on a vegan diet maybe increasing the risk of depression just something we should consider because we don’t have all the answers and when we have to make judgments we have to do it conservatively and make sure we’re not hurting people you know how they say first do no harm we have to be more careful in my experience and I think Brenda’s too is that a lot at the vegan community very often speaks as if we know they know everything and they and that there and they proclaim something that nobody has to worry about this and you get plenty of DHI in a vegan diet and you don’t think you know and there’s like they make blanket statements like all people and we just have to be a little more careful here

if I could just say that’s so right on everything you said is perfect I have a

DHA EPA

psychiatrist it’s like wow this is a problem DHA EPA if it so you’re going to have a much higher chance of depression my study suggests maybe 90% of the total u.s. population is deficient in DHA and EPA and I treat for example post pregnancy depression those are all women to get deficient in DHA because the baby needs the DHA and all you need to do is give DHA but and it goes away the the key here that I’ve gotten to a point on because so many people are deficient I’m really just giving DHA EPA as a supplement I use a plant-based one because of just what we’re saying this is like the b12 up some people are gonna be low some people aren’t but it it’s safer with the safe thing like DHA EPA to just give that to everybody in because what he’s saying it’s really really important really and and I would

Fish

add that it’s important for people to understand when we talk about DHA and EPA people often automatically think well that means I need to eat fish and it’s true that fish is the major source of EPA and DHA for a large part of the population but it’s important to understand that fish don’t actually make DHA and EPA it’s made by tiny plants in the ocean called microalgae and so what we can do is instead of raping the oceans and extracting the oils from fish we can actually culture the plants and extract the EPA and DHA from the plants and provide it as dr. cousin said and and dr. Fuhrman as us in a supplement form that that’s actually vegan and comes from plants and so it it’s just important to know that that you don’t absolutely have to have fish and then the other thing this is not really my area of expertise but one of the things that I wonder about the depression that you are seeing associated with low cholesterol levels the thing that comes to my mind right away is what about all of the populations if some of these longest lived healthiest people in the world that that have very low cholesterol levels and yet very low depression rates so is something going on with the individuals you’re seeing where there’s a metabolic abnormality that it’s combined with the DHA EPA thing they’re not as efficient at conversion because of their enzymes have been depressed because of bad diets over time so there may be some other factors because we do have populations where average cholesterol have been around a hundred or 120 and they’ve done very well live long lives and still super productive when they’re 90 or 100 years of age just a question because I’m seeing mostly European and American

Other factors

class these populations you’re talking about fit that description well there may be a genetic factor here that yes and so many of them are Asian populations many of them are South American populations and then if we think about the blue zone populations which includes some Europeans but also the Okinawans and such so it’s just I think it’s there there’s still a lot of there are still a lot of unanswered questions but and then the other thing that I want to bring up is just the whole saturated fat has been vindicated because a couple of resources that I think are worth you being aware of and one is the 2017 presidential report on fatty acids and heart disease and I’m sure yeah the American Heart Association presidential report Alice Lichtenstein and a very very very well qualified group exam the literature and it’s a very comprehensive very helpful report and it looks at everything so basically they I mean the evidence is overwhelming that saturated fat increases LDL cholesterol and LDL cholesterol increases risk of heart disease now if you replace one of the mistakes that was made and there were there were a couple of studies that came out that that indicated saturated fat was not an issue but what was actually found was that if you replace saturated fat with refined carbohydrate you’re at no advantage at all if you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat you were disc you reduce your risk about 25 percent if you replace it with monounsaturated fat you reduce your risk about 15 percent if you replace it with complex like I think they look specifically at whole grains you reduce your risk by 9 percent so that’s a replacing saturated fat and then the other thing to to be aware of is the that this study called the Chowdhury trial from 2014 which showed that saturated fat does not increase risk of heart disease one thing to know about that study is it was really riddled with errors and omissions and one of the things that was done in several of the studies that that that were part of that meta-analysis is they actually controlled for cholesterol so they controlled for the factor that causes you know that that can cause heart attacks which is just you can’t do that another thing is is that and I think this may be the most important thing is 19 out of the 20 studies that were included we’re comparing within populations people eating 11 percent saturated fat versus those eating 13 percent and or in a you know in Finland I think it was around 14 percent and they compared within populations but they didn’t compare between the populations if you looked at the people with the highest rates of heart disease in Finland they had over four times it was 4.4 times higher rates of heart disease than people who were eating the lowest saturated fat in Japan well there were no differences within the five or six percent of saturated fat in the Japanese but there sure were between and the only group that they actually looked at people consuming hugely different amounts of saturated fat was the epic Oxford trial which was included in that meta-analysis and in epic Oxford the people eating the least saturated fat had almost three times lower risk of heart disease than the people consuming the highest amounts of saturated fat and I actually contacted one of the authors of that study to ask her what’s up with this when it first came out you know what she told me she said when they first did the analysis if their study actually showed a 19 percent increased risk with higher saturated fat then they read they they reworked the analysis because they were rejected it was nothing new so the study was rejected they reworked the analysis took out some of their the studies they were using and and then got this this new finding that saturated fat didn’t matter and she said the one thing I would tell you is this study in no way shape or form changes anything about what we should be saying about saturated fat saturated fat increases LDL we know that from 50 years of clinical research we still need to be telling people to restrict saturated

I think Brenda’s bringing up a real important point they’ve even said now

Altered studies

about50percentofthestudieslikeintheNewEnglandJournalarealteredorbogusthatreallymakeslifehardokaybecauselikewhatareyougoingtotrustbutit’slikeanaccumulationofstudiesyouhavetolookatanybodyknowwhoinsoKeyes’sokaysoin1953Ancelkeysstudy22differentcountriesaboutthethemeofcholesterolheartdiseasesixofthosecountriesshowedthatpeoplehadahigherclasswhohadmoreheartdisease16showedtheotherheonlyputintosixandmadehisseemthatbroughtthesoulcholesterolthingonokayifhehadcombinedall22togetherandwouldhaveshownitdidn’treallymakeadifferencesowelifegetshardwhenyou’retryingtobeascientisttryingtofigureoutallthesethingswhenthepeopledoingtheresearcharealteringtheresearchtokindofmaketheirpointsoitisn’teasyatallanymoresothat’skindofacomplaintthat’scomingoutthatthescientistsaremakinglikeIdon’ttrustthissothanksforbringingthatupnotaneasytopicwhenweseealotofretractionsthesedaysiwouldsaythatfabricatingoralteringdataisprobablylesscommonthanstartingoffwithaparticularpointofvieworbiasfindingastudythatsupportsthatordoingoneandthengoingaheadandpublishingitit’ssocalledpositivepublicationbiasthatisifIthinksomethingisreallyimportantandIstudyitandIdon’tfinditthat’strueI’dsayohwellgoontothenextprojectthatnegativefindingnevergetspublishedsowedohaveflawsinthewaythatwedothingswe’retryingtomakeitbettertheyhavingclinicaltrialgovifwe’regoingtodoabigclinicaltrialIshouldsubmititeveryonecanlookatitandthenyearslaterwhenIhaven’tpublisheditsomebodycouldcallonthecarpetandsayheywhathappenedtothatstudywellitwasnegativeturnsoutthatitwasn’ttrueandsowearetryingtomakeitbetterwe’retryingtomakesurethatthere’sgooddisclosuresothattherelationshipswithindustryandfinancialincentivestosortofcometoaspecificconclusionareatleasttransparentandhopefullynotgoingtocontinuetoinfluencethewayscienceisdoneIdowanttomakeonepointthathasn’tcomeoutyetbecausewe’vetalkedaboutsomanythingsanditgoeswellabitbacktowhatdr.Furmanwassayingit’smorecomplexthanLDLevenlesssaturatedfatwe’vepointedatthosetwothingsforaverylongtimeforheartdiseasebutnowweknowinthelastfiveyearswehavesomanypublicationsofotherthingsthatcorrelatewiththedevelopmentofdiabetesstrokeheartattackdeaththatwereallyoughttobepayingattentiontoandsoI’mjustgonnathoseofyouwhoarelisteningtomorrowsorryforthepreviewbutIwouldsaythetoptwoandIdon’thavearandomizedtrialtotellyouwhichoneismoreimportantsoI’lllistthembothasatiefornumberonewouldbehemeironwhichyougetfromeatinganimalsbloodandtheotheronewouldbeTMAOtrimethylaminen-oxidethisreallyemphasizedbytheClevelandClinichopefullythatwillbeaserumtestthateveryonecangetthosetwoareverytoxicintermsofdevelopmentofplaqueanddevelopmentofrupturesandunstableplaquessoheartattackstrokedeathheartfailurecorrelatewithbothofthosetherearealsootheroneswe’veknownabouttheCreactiveproteinasamarkerofinflammationinterleukin1asamarkerofinflammationaswelligf-1whenyou’reeatinganimalproteinyou’regettingahormonethatactuallyincreasesdiabetesdeathaswellassstrokesandtheretheothertwothatmayturnouttobeverylargewe’veknownabouthavingeatingphosphorusinlargequantitieshurtingkidneyfunctionwhichthenproducescardiovasculardiseaseandthelastoneI’llmentionissouparesomethingthatstudiedalotofrushatEmoryandinBostonsoupareasitstandsforasolubleeurokinaseplantsmitigantactivatorreceptorthatactuallyisanothertestthatcanbedoneandyoucanfindthatifyoudoahealthylifestyleyoucandropthatlevelsowhygothroughallthosemarkersandpotentialriskfactorsbecausepeopledon’teatsaturatedfattheydon’tneedcholesteroltheyeatfoodandwhenthey’reeatingfoodthey’regettingavarietyofthingsandandwemaybelookingatLDLwhenit’sreallybeenthehemeirontheentiretimeandsoandyouknowI’mnotgonnayouknowvolunteertoeatthebloodoftheironyouknowtotrytofigureoutisitcholesterolcrystalseatingthosewouldbeworseandsoIthinkweshouldstickwiththethemethatthere’salotthatwedon’tknowthatmedicalknowledgedoubleseverytwoyearsI’msurethat’sgoingtocontinuetohappenandwewillhopefullyacoupleyearsfromnowIhavethisconferenceandsayhahawedidn’tknowthisbackthenbutnowweknowtheanswersit’sprobablyalloftheabovethoughIjustwanttosayIknowthisisnotthatimportantbutIjustfeelAncelKeysisbeenattackedunfairlyandhasbeenattackedunfairlyandthere’stwistingintheinterpretationbythepaleoandmeatbasedcommunitytomakeitlooklikehetwistedhisstudiesanddidthingswrongandIthinkthat’sunfairunjustifiedandincorrectthereasonheleftoutsomecountrieswhosethedatawasn’tsufficienttoincludethemanditiswithalotsorryandhewasnotaresearcherthatwastryingtotwistinformationandproducebadresearchsoIeventhoughhe’sdeadIjustfeelwedon’tweshouldn’tbesmearinghisname