Sex, Lies & Cholesterol

Be honest.  Were you inspired to read this book because it has ‘sex’ in the title?  Sorry to disappoint, but this is not a book about sexuality.  We will deal with sex hormones, however, and the effect that cholesterol has on them.  I intend to show that cholesterol is absolutely necessary in many different body functions, including sex hormones and sexual function, and that we lower cholesterol to our own hurt.  

I know that’s a radical statement, but I also intend to back up that assertion with research.  Much of what you have been led to believe about cholesterol is absolutely false, as I will demonstrate, and I hope that what you get out of this book is to be more aware of the dangers of cholesterol drugs and that you should not be terrified of cholesterol, as cholesterol is actually beneficial.

In this book, we are going to be talking about the misconceptions and sometimes outright lies involved in what has been appropriately called “the cholesterol myth” by some authors.  As you learn how all this fits together in the world of modern medicine, I hope to lead you to an in-depth understanding of the true cause of heart disease and why it is the number one killer in America right now.  It’s a big issue in this country at this time. Heart disease has been the number one killer for twenty plus years and traditional western medicine has made little progress to date to actually fix or prevent the cause of it.

Orville Wright once said something very profound that we can apply to this discussion.  “If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”  So let’s look all the way back to circa 1900 for something accepted as true during that era. Heroin was then deemed a non-addictive substitute for morphine and was used as a cough suppressant for kids! Is that still considered true today?  Of course it isn’t.  Doctors don’t use heroin in hospitals anymore, because we know now that heroin is indeed an extremely addictive and hallucinogenic substance.  So we have dumped it and reverted back to using morphine in hospitals.

So we need to keep that in mind as we ponder what is “true.”  What we learn today via marketing is not necessarily the real truth; it’s marketing.  And the primary objective of marketing is profit.  Even what is considered the cutting edge of science today is most likely going to be antiquated tomorrow and pitched to the curb.  It’s always been that way.  We learn and progress and advance, hopefully.  In doing so we discard old ideas and practices that are proven wrong. 

As it pertains to the specific subject of this book, you are going to learn as you read this material that something similar is happening today with cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and many other drugs that are used as “treatment” for lifestyle diseases. As the truth is revealed, I believe we’re going to eventually look back laughing and say, “A statin drug for heart disease? Are you kidding me? That is nonsense!”

So that leads us to cholesterol. Why do we need cholesterol anyway?  Cholesterol by itself is a soft waxy substance, found among fats in the body. It is integrated into every tissue and is a component of every cell membrane. Humans have approximately one hundred trillion cells.  So if cholesterol is integrated into every cell, how important would you consider that to be?  Obviously, something which is that integral to every cell has to be important.  What does cholesterol do?  It is a precursor to the sex hormones DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. It is also a precursor to our stress hormones such as cortisol.

When under stress the body goes into a “fight or flight” mode for survival. For instance, if you are about to be mugged in a dark alley, you need to be ready to bolt and run or else muster the strength to face the attacker and fight.  Stress hormones give us the strength for either choice, but we need cholesterol in order to produce those chemicals, and if we don’t have cholesterol we can no longer withstand the various stressors of life because our survival mechanisms are affected.

Here’s another example of the importance of cholesterol.
Calcitriol is an active form of vitamin D3.   Vitamin D is becoming known as a super-nutrient because of all the biological activities in which it is involved.  Our bodies absolutely must be able to metabolize vitamin D properly in order to maintain health.  And do you know where vitamin D originates?  That’s right; it comes from cholesterol.   Vitamin D deficiency is a big issue in the scientific community right now because of how it relates to so many different diseases.  If vitamin D is made from cholesterol, and a person takes a statin drug to lower cholesterol, what do you think would happen to vitamin D production?  I would find it very interesting to know how many people who are taking statin drugs to lower cholesterol are vitamin D deficient.  Cholesterol is also integrated into the part of the nervous system known as the myelin sheaths, which help the brain communicate with the rest of the body. 

Is it starting to sink in now?  We have, in fact, been told lies about cholesterol, as the truth has been withheld about the many benefits that cholesterol has to the human body.  But why in the world would the truth be withheld about such an important health issue?  We’ll discuss the answer to that question as we proceed throughout the rest of the book.