Cholesterol and Heart Health, Addressing the Controversy

[teo123]

@brimstoneSalad

Yeah I noticed!

No saturated fat should be separate as it is a huge topic and separate from cholesterol and there are many paths of skepticism to take on SFAs.

I'll get to an article of SFAs this week.

To me it seems like the best response to somebody claiming saturated fats don't lead to atherosclerosis is something along the lines of Why wouldn't they cause atherosclerosis when they clearly raise the cholesterol?. The response you will get is, most likely, Well, they raise both your LDL and HDL, and it's more important that your HDL isn't too low than that your LDL isn't too high.. Then you can respond with something like Well, if there is any truth to HDL protecting against heart disease, how it is that studies repeatedly fail to prove omega-3-acids protect against them? Omega-3-acids convert LDL to HDL. If there was any truth to HDL protecting against heart disease, we would expect flax to be a superfood. The fact that studies repeatedly fail to show they protect against heart disease strongly suggests HDL doesn't actually protect against heart disease.. It usually shuts people up.
Once I tried with Why do you trust those lunatics who claim saturated fat doesn't cause heart attacks any more than you trust the lunatics who claim sugar doesn't cause type-2-diabetes?, however, in my experience, people who deny saturated fat leads to heart disease also tend to doubt sugar leads to type-2-diabetes.

[ExoticParallel]

Yeah essentialy the pathway I like to go with those skeptical on the lipid hypothesis, is to get them to first accept that higher LDL causes cvd, then it's simply a matter of like you say, showing how SFAs increase it.

I assume you could actually write out two arguments in prop logic too to show this.

[ExoticParallel]

Also the better way to show test whether HDL is protective, is a randomized controlled placebo trial where HDL is raised with a drug while keeping LDL consistent. When we do that, HDL didn't prevent heart disease.

The consensus right now is essentially to focus on getting LDL levels down, not just increase HDL..