By Dom Nozzi
A friend of mine told me that it was “…very concerning…that your fat-consuming and total meat diet contributes to your unhealthy blood. Do you have any plans to change your diet so you will have less cholesterol consumption? I will be interested to hear. You know, statins are less than perfect. They may lower your cholesterol but they are very hard on the rest of your body.”
I thanked her for her concern. I agree, I told her, that this diagnosis is extremely troubling.
But based on the very large number of books I’ve read about diet and heart health over the past few years, I told her that I very strongly disagree with her thought that my condition is due to a high-fat carnivore diet.
As an aside, my doctor is in complete agreement with me. He is even more sure than I am that such a diet does NOT contribute to elevated cholesterol (the low-fat bill of goods that Ansel Keyes sold us 60 years ago that huge numbers of people are still buying, despite overwhelming evidence).
Consider the following:
*Heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and strokes (the “diseases of civilization”) were almost unheard of for nearly all of human history – particularly when humans were hunter/gatherers eating almost no veggies and almost all meat.
*Over those past 60 years after Keyes propagated the tragic falsehood that meat and dietary fat (especially saturated fat) cause heart disease, there has been a significant drop in meat consumption and a big increase in fruit and veggie consumption – ie, carbohydrates (not to mention a big jump in “low-fat” or “fat-free” foods that have all made themselves low-fat or fat-free by having sugar added to them – yogurt, for example).
The outcome? We now have a societal (worldwide?) epidemic in diabetes, heart attacks/disease, obesity, dementia, arthritis, and cancer.
Why the big increase in these health woes?
A massive jump in the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar, and a massive drop in consumption of fat and meat. There is very good evidence that when the human species opted to significantly increase its fat and meat consumption, the human brain grew significantly, which is why we have so substantially advanced.
For the first time ever in human history, the youngest generation is not expected to live as long as their parents. A HUGE percentage of kids today are obese and have diabetes.
The American Heart Association has been extremely stubborn over the past number of decades in refusing to accept that dietary fats do not contribute to heart disease, despite a large and growing body of evidence. But in 2016, they FINALLY admitted that saturated fat is not a problem (which is incredibly embarrassing and criminal, since their decades of screaming that saturated fats are a heart problem is an important reason why Americans started consuming a huge amount of sugar and carbohydrates, and trans fats like margarine, which led to a big jump in obesity, heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. Oops.
My doctor told me that three landmark studies since 2010 show conclusively: (1) Saturated fats don’t cause heart disease; (2) Red meats (even processed) don’t increase cancer risk or heart disease or stroke; and (3) the vegan diet is unhealthy. The first study was a NIH Meta-analysis of saturated fat in 2021. The second was a European meta-analysis on red meat and processed meat involving over 200 individual studies performed in the past 2-3 years. There is no study on veganism, but the Canadian and German dietary associations have declared it unhealthy for humans since it does not provide all of the essential vitamins and nutrients that a human needs.
I bitterly resent the fact that like millions of others, I “drank the koolaide” on the bogus claim that the key to dietary health is a low-fat/vegetarian diet. I bought that lie for 40 years. That 40 years resulted in my consuming a huge amount of carbohydrates (which are quickly converted to sugar in my body). That led to my damaging my arteries and heart (sugar is, by far, the number one reason arteries are damaged) and gaining 35 pounds over my equilibrium weight. Not to mention clouding my thinking, harming my memory, and likely adding many other as-of-yet unknown health woes to my future (such as dementia).
My LDLs have been elevated above the safe threshold of 100 for many of my years of testing going back to at least 1987 (which is a strong indicator that I have a genetic defect). From 1987 through 2017, my diet was almost entirely low-fat and nearly vegan. If high-fat, meat-based diets cause elevated LDLs and low-fat vegan reduced LDLs, why would I have had high LDLs during that 30-year period of eating low-fat vegan?
In sum, the only plans I have for changing my diet are to eat fewer vegetables, fruit, or low-fat/fat-free “food products.”
I strongly agree that statins are not a “cure” or that they are “perfect.” In fact, I have seen a lot of people on the Internet pointing out what they claim are serious negative side effects of statins (muscle pain, sexual dysfunction, dementia). That led me to see if there was any way at all for me to avoid taking statins. I have always believed that statins and many other medications are a band-aid that do not get at the root of the problem.
A friend of mine here in Greenville, however, is the director of stroke management at a hospital in Greenville. He takes the same statin that I do, and tells me that statins are putting cardiologists out of business because the statins are so effective in reducing heart “events,” and he has not been experiencing negative side effects.
In addition, it seems to me that like most people with heart issues, I will need to take statins for the rest of my life. This is particularly true because of my genetic defect that prevents my body from reducing LDLs. If I stop statins, my LDLs are sure to quickly go up (due to the genetic defect).
I would LOVE to not have to take statins, and asked my doc about the negative side effects of statins – hoping he would point out that there were non-statin options for me. Again, I’m with you on statins not being a “perfect” solution. But I now believe they are a necessary evil.
And an important reason I need statins, ironically, is my decades of a low-fat, low-meat diet.
Standing Against Mob Rule 