A sample preview of slides for my presentation is linked here.
Publications on which the talk is based are free to download here.
Category Archives: General
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The Bio-chemical Science pages of Glyn Wainwright, Publisher, Independent Reader of Research and Honorary Recording Engineer for Leeds Symphony Orchestra<
Anecdote: A diabetic clinician told me she had noticed that when patients had good control of their hba1c (an indicator of sugar-damage in blood ) their ‘cholesterol’ score also improved.
Every molecule of cholesterol in the body is known to be identical to every other.
The Good/Bad labeling of cholesterol is extremely unscientific and unhelpful, and that is a matter of scientific fact.
How were intelligent, well educated, medical professionals persuaded to popularise this ‘Good ‘ cholesterol versus ’Bad’ cholesterol idea?
The unscientific phrase ‘Bad Cholesterol’ is a misleading description of damage to the ’lipid transport system ‘, whose basic function was described by the Nobel Prize winners James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof. (Awarded “for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells”.
The lipid transport system is used by the body to deliver essential supplies of fat, cholesterol, and other fat-soluble nutrients.
The lipid transport system is able to repair and recycle, but can be progressively overwhelmed by the damage accumulated over several decades.
This damage to the lipid system is caused by oxidation and glycation: the result of excessive consumption of refined sugars (in particular High Fructose syrups).
It is not ‘bad cholesterol’ but sugar-damage to the proteins that make the lipids available to the organs of our body.
Unconsumed ‘damaged’ ldl in the blood is an indicator of trouble because the organs are being starved of vital fats cholesterol and fat-soluble nutrients.
‘Bad Medicine’ prevents the liver and all other organs from making essential cholesterol indirectly stop the supply of lipids to the blood.
Cholesterol lowering medications have a variety of very broad variety of adverse-effects, all attributable to organs being starved of fat, cholesterol and fat-soluble nutrients.
The ‘bad medicine’s do not tackle the cause of damage to the ldl – lipids supply.
The primary cause of this ldl damage is the oxidation and glycation of the ldl’s components.
The main dietary and lifestyle causes of ldl damage are over-consumption of refined sugars and inactivity.
The reactive sugars like fructose, found in manufactured corn syrups are particularly troublesome, because they directly attach to ldl-protein mechanisms causing a mal-function which starves the organs.
Important protective and anti-oxidant functions rely on Cholesterol and CoQ10 – both of which are reduced anti-cholesterol medications.
The unscientific use of the incorrect description ‘Bad Cholesterol’ has held back medicine for over 40 years and it is time to look at the evidence in more detail:-
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Defending drug revenues, dogma and orthodoxy really hurts us.
Cholesterol is vital – lowering it is crazy – ldl is raised by sugar!
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From Dr Richrd Lehman’s bmj blog..
Eat meat, eat fruit, eat salt, drink wine! Try stopping me. But is this the dietary advice that your practice nurse gives to your patients with high-risk type 2 diabetes patients with microalbuminuria? It jolly well should be, according to this follow-up study of the ONTARGET trial, which focussed on chronic kidney disease progression. “Sodium intake was not associated with CKD. Moderate alcohol intake reduced the risk of CKD
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An excellent summary of the erroneous demonisation of saturated fat and cholesterol. Medical dogma and orthodoxy lose out to facts and better studies. Please take the time to watch this.
Catalyst: Heart of the Matter Part 1 – Dietary Villains – ABC TV Science
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Well done Dr Aseem Malhotra and thanks Zoe Harcombe for the link
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Sweden has become the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice.
Some quotes from Prof. Nyström translated into English from Dr. Eenfeldt:
Butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight. And there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
On Monday, SBU, the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment, dropped a bombshell. After a two-year long inquiry, reviewing 16,000 studies, the report “Dietary Treatment for Obesity” upends the conventional dietary guidelines for obese or diabetic people.
For a long time, the health care system has given the public advice to avoid fat, saturated fat in particular, and calories. A low-carb diet (LCHF – Low Carb High Fat, is actually a Swedish “invention”) has been dismissed as harmful, a humbug and as being a fad diet lacking any scientific basis.
Instead, the health care system has urged diabetics to eat a lot of fruit (=sugar) and low-fat products with considerable amounts of sugar or artificial sweeteners, the latter a dangerous trigger for the sugar-addicted person.
This report turns the current concepts upside down and advocates a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, as the most effective weapon against obesity.
The expert committee consisted of ten physicians, and several of them were skeptics to low-carbohydrate diets at the beginning of the investigation.
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Nobelprize.org, The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize
Congratulation to Rothman, Schekman and Südhof for their Nobel Prize recognising an amazing set of discoveries about machinery regulating vesicle traffic.
What is now remarkable about the mechanism is the role of Cholesterol in facilitating the wrapping and release machinery. In 2008 Xia et al. established that it only took a 10% fall in membrane cholesterol to bring the whole process of vesicle release to a stop. (doi: 10.1210/en.2008-0161)
Cholesterol was so ubiquitous, and very erroneously thought to be a causative agent in disease, its vital roles in vesicle formation and release were overlooked. Now that the vesicles are a hot topic I hope to see cholesterol recognised for its role in all this vesicle traffic.
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From Dr Stephanie Seneff’s Blog Pages
The skin produces cholesterol sulfate in large quantities when it is exposed to sunlight. Our theory suggests that the skin actually synthesizes sulfate from sulfide, capturing energy from sunlight in the form of the sulfate molecule, thus acting as a solar-powered battery. The sulfate is then shipped to all the cells of the body, carried on the back of the cholesterol molecule.
Evidence of the benefits of sun exposure to the heart is compelling, as evidenced by a study conducted to investigate the relationship between geography and cardiovascular disease (Grimes et al., 1996). Through population statistics, the study showed a consistent and striking inverse linear relationship between cardiovascular deaths and estimated sunlight exposure, taking into account percentage of sunny days as well as latitude and altitude effects. For instance, the cardiovascular-related death rate for men between the ages of 55 and 64 was 761 in Belfast, Ireland but only 175 in Toulouse, France.
Cholesterol sulfate is very versatile. It is water soluble so it can travel freely in the blood stream, and it enters cell membranes ten times as readily as cholesterol, so it can easily resupply cholesterol to cells. The skeletal and heart muscle cells make good use of the sulfate as well, converting it back to sulfide, and synthesizing ATP in the process, thus recovering the energy from sunlight. This decreases the burden on the mitochondria to produce energy. The oxygen released from the sulfate molecule is a safe source of oxygen for the citric oxide cycle in the mitochondria.
So, in my view, the best way to avoid heart disease is to assure an abundance of an alternative supply of cholesterol sulfate. First of all, this means eating foods that are rich in both cholesterol and sulfur. Eggs are an optimal food, as they are well supplied with both of these nutrients. But secondly, this means making sure you get plenty of sun exposure to the skin. This idea flies in the face of the advice from medical experts in the United States to avoid the sun for fear of skin cancer. I believe that the excessive use of sunscreen has contributed significantly, along with excess fructose consumption, to the current epidemic in heart disease. And the natural tan that develops upon sun exposure offers far better protection from skin cancer than the chemicals in sunscreens.
Liz & Glyn Wainwright 