Fred A Kummerow is a 98-year-old emeritus professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois, and he has been studying heart disease for a long, long time:
There have been no fundamental advances in coronary heart disease since the meeting that Dr Page had in Cleveland in 1955, where he invited 103 lipid chemists to a symposium focusing on the role of lipids in heart disease, as he related in his book, The Chemistry of Lipids as Related to Atherosclerosis. In this meeting, it was established that high levels of cholesterol in the plasma were responsible for the development of atherosclerosis. Testing for cholesterol levels such as LDL, HDL and other lipid levels was established in 1961 by the American Heart Association.
Based on the misconception that cholesterol was the main cause of heart disease, pharmaceutical companies started developing drugs to lower the levels of cholesterol in patients with hyperglycemia. By the end of 1980s, doctors started prescribing statins and in my view, the biggest setback in heart disease treatment has been the overuse of statins for the treatment of high cholesterol. Statins work by reducing the 2 g of cholesterol per day produced by cells in the liver and can cause adverse effects in the body such as raised levels of liver enzymes and muscle issues such as rhabdomyolysis.
Sales of statin medications nearly tripled when the National Cholesterol Education Program revised its guidelines to recommend statins as a prophylactic for many heart issues. Although the Education Board cited randomized trials to back statin treatment for primary prevention of occlusive cardiovascular disease, a description in a paper from The Lancet states “not one of the studies provides such evidence”.
Atherosclerosis in modern humans is based on the biochemistry of three of the five phospholipids in the cell membranes of the coronary arteries:
My findings indicate fried foods, powdered egg yolk, excess vegetable oils, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and cigarette smoke as the greatest culprits in heart disease. Fried foods and powdered food substitutes are dietary sources of oxysterols, which alter the phospholipid membranes of our arteries in ways that increase the deposition of calcium, a key hallmark of atherosclerosis. Consumption of excess polyunsaturated fats stimulates the formation of oxysterols within the human body. Cigarette smoke and trans fats from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils interfere with fatty acid metabolism, leading to the interruption of blood flow, a major contributor to heart attacks and sudden death. In my opinion, many of these factors have been largely ignored by the medical establishment, which has focused instead on using drugs to lower cholesterol levels.
This is good: “My best dietary advice is to eat a balanced diet with a differing protein source every day, avoid all trans fats and don’t drink soda pop.” The rest is kind of quacky and screwy in a way that sounds impressive to laypeople but doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. That is, he packs ideas that are recognizably true, and even reflect the newer findings of other researchers, in with a lot of his own gobbledy-gook. Not that that causes and treatments of CVD should be considered established in any way and not subject to continual challenge and investigation. Apropos eggs, here‘s some research I find interesting.