Was reading somethings online about how there is no relationship between cholesterol and heart disease, especially about how the food you eat relates to the amount of cholesterol in your blood.
What caught my eye was this passage related to one study:
The diets of 16,349 men in Framingham, Puerto Rico, and Honolulu were examined, and the subjects were followed for an average of six years. Then the diets of those who had experienced heart attacks were compared with the diets of those who had not. There was no difference between the diets in amounts of cholesterol. There was also no difference in the two groups' consumption of saturated fats or total calories. And these similarities were found in all three geographic areas.
Only one dietary difference emerged. Alcohol consumption was 33 to 100 percent higher in those free of coronary heart disease. William P. Castelli, the current director of the Framingham study, found the likely reason for the effect of alcohol in a separate project: alcohol raises levels of HDL, or so-called good cholesterol. This discovery must have left diet researchers thoroughly frustrated. (Having spent years studying heart disease, they emerge with the advice "Have another drink.").
"If the cross-sectional correlations among Japanese men in Honolulu and San Francisco could be translated into intervention results, " Castelli wrote in The Lancet "a non-drinker who began drinking 5 oz. alcohol/week would accomplish as large a reduction of L.D.L. cholesterol as he could by the usually suggested lipid lowering diets."
He hastened to add that this was somewhat of a joke. He did not mean to prescribe drinking alcohol as a means of controlling one's cholesterol. But it does show a remarkable ability to do just that, especially compared to the results of the rest of the study.
What caught my eye was this passage related to one study:
The diets of 16,349 men in Framingham, Puerto Rico, and Honolulu were examined, and the subjects were followed for an average of six years. Then the diets of those who had experienced heart attacks were compared with the diets of those who had not. There was no difference between the diets in amounts of cholesterol. There was also no difference in the two groups' consumption of saturated fats or total calories. And these similarities were found in all three geographic areas.
Only one dietary difference emerged. Alcohol consumption was 33 to 100 percent higher in those free of coronary heart disease. William P. Castelli, the current director of the Framingham study, found the likely reason for the effect of alcohol in a separate project: alcohol raises levels of HDL, or so-called good cholesterol. This discovery must have left diet researchers thoroughly frustrated. (Having spent years studying heart disease, they emerge with the advice "Have another drink.").
"If the cross-sectional correlations among Japanese men in Honolulu and San Francisco could be translated into intervention results, " Castelli wrote in The Lancet "a non-drinker who began drinking 5 oz. alcohol/week would accomplish as large a reduction of L.D.L. cholesterol as he could by the usually suggested lipid lowering diets."
He hastened to add that this was somewhat of a joke. He did not mean to prescribe drinking alcohol as a means of controlling one's cholesterol. But it does show a remarkable ability to do just that, especially compared to the results of the rest of the study.
Happy April Fool's Day to you too!
