Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk?

Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by gmarx on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @04:49PM (#8726037)

Look at the literature and try to find convincing evidence that high cholesterol causes heart disease. I've never seen it. They keep looking for new fractions of cholesterol that will finally show significance but they never question their Bayesian prior assumption. Many drugs lower cholesterol and show now reduction in mortality. Statins (last I read) were alone in this. The logical conclusion is that statins do not achieve this effect through cholesterol reduction.

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Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by IndianAstronaut on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @05:46PM (#8726380)

This makes me wonder if eggs should be considered a health food instead of a health hazard. Anecdotal, but if I eat 4 eggs(~300) calories, I am full for the same period of time as eating ~600-1000 calories of something else.

But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they?

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Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by Evgeny on Wednesday December 10, 2014 @08:37AM (#8729052)

But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they?

No, they are not. There's plenty written on both sides of the argument, though.

Just today came across a surprisingly well-referenced article on nutrition myths. It covers cholesterol, saturated fat and eggs (in top position) among others.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-most-destructive-nutri...

Here is another well-referenced source

http://examine.com/faq/are-eggs-healthy.html

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Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by mindcrime on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @10:24PM (#8727522)

But considering the saturated fat and cholesterol in eggs, they have been considered harmful. Are they?

Good question. The author of Living Low Carb[1] argues that it's not "saturated fat" in general that's bad for you, but rather more specifically "trans-saturated fat", or saturated fat consumed along with simple carbs (sugar, etc). He also argues that most dietary cholesterol passes through your system unprocessed, and that serum cholesterol is largely driven by cholesterol manufactured by your liver.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Low-Carb-Controlled-Carbohydrat...

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Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by gmarx on Thursday December 11, 2014 @01:51PM (#8736420)

yep. Manufactured by your liver, on purpose. Cholesterol is necessary for animals to live. It comprises,for example (if memory serves) about 50% of animal cell membrane.

It's bizarre that people have been convinced this stuff is deadly poison.

Same thing for sodium chloride

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Re:Is Preventive Medicine Its Own Health Risk? by tiglionabbit on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @05:28PM (#8726287)

Yeah. I find it weird to see that [Cochrane shows statins prevent heart disease](http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_statins-for-the-...), despite the whole cholesterol debacle. It would be nice if we understood this situation better.

We know now that only some types of LDL are dangerous, but how often are people given an LDL particle count?

According to Michael Pollan, the whole Fat/Cholesterol thing started when the government found some weak evidence that beef is bad for you, but they blamed it on cholesterol so as not to single out a particular industry. But is beef even bad for you? Or is it something in how hamburger meat is processed? Or what?

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