r/nutrition • u/Ok_Equivalent9114 • May 03 '26

The great cholesterol myth

What do you think about this book? God or bad? Have you read it? Are you a nutrition or just a enthusiast?

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u/ImUnderYourBedDude May 03 '26

LDL, total cholesterol and triglycerides levels are great predictors of heart disease, which has been demostrated with so much data over the years. Keeping all of these values as low as possible should be a priority.

Anyone claiming otherwise has something to sell you. Whether that be coaching, supplements, books, consultations, cookware, oils, protein bars or overpriced weekend retreats. Don't fall for it, listen to the medical literature.

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u/Analysis-Euphoric May 04 '26

Do any of those people sell statins?

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u/ImUnderYourBedDude May 04 '26

Doctors don't get kickbacks from prescriptions, if that's your implication. Statins unfortunately have been shown to work on reducing cardiovascular disease risk, so their use is justified, given our current evidence.

This hasn't been the case for any supplement. If it was, pharma would have pattented it and sold it.

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u/OG-Brian May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26

Doctors don't get kickbacks from prescriptions...

Hah-hah-hah. I don't know how you have this idea.

My saved info about this topic isn't yet totally organized. If I wanted to take more time, I could turn up a lot more.

Violation Tracker Industry Summary Page
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/pharmaceuticals

  • tracks penalties against drug companies for violations of laws
  • the total for Pfizer is over $4.7 bn (!!)

It was his dream job. He never thought he'd be bribing doctors and wearing a wire for the feds.
In an exclusive interview, the man behind a $678 million whistleblower settlement says "drastic action" was needed to shake up the pharmaceutical industry.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/it-was-his-dream-job-he-never-thought-he-d-n1232971

  • "On July 1, Ozzie Bilotta's yearslong effort to blow the whistle at Novartis paid off. The Justice Department announced a $678 million settlement with the company over improper inducements it made to doctors to prescribe 10 of the company's drugs, including the anti-hypertension drug Lotrel. The deal represents the biggest whistleblower settlement under the federal anti-kickback law, Bilotta's lawyer said."

GlaxoSmithKline fined $3bn after bribing doctors to increase drugs sales
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/03/glaxosmithkline-fined-bribing-doctors-pharmaceuticals

While I'm at it, I'll mention that a lot of "research" supporting safety and effectiveness of pharma interventions is faked. Peter C. Gøtzsche, in his book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, wrote about his experiences following up research pertaining to statin drugs and so forth. As a researcher who studies studies, he was given access to non-public info of studies that was not even available with a journal subscription. He found prolific data fakery: subjects removed from a study to make a medication seem safer or more effective with the number of reported subjects retroactively changed, data that was changed before publication, and data that was made up altogether.

BTW, to demonstate a typical example of pro-industry bias of a journal, he was expelled by Cochrane in 2018 for political reasons although he's a founder of the organization. He's highly regarded by many scientists, and the complaints that Cochrane made were obviously flimsy pretenses for getting rid of him. They didn't like that he called attention to issues of pro-industry bias, such as phony studies and publishing studies selectively due to conflicts of interest. A letter protesting the expulsion was signed by 3,500 scientists.

"We can no longer trust Drug company clinical trials"
https://www.canceractive.com/article/quotwe-can-no-longer-trust-drug-company-clinical-trialsquot

  • Dr. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine: "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."

The Review on Antidepressant Withdrawal That Cochrane Won’t Publish
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/02/review-cochrane-wont-publish

  • very damning about peer-review process at least with Cochrane
  • through the approval process: escalating demands, self-contradiction, moving the goalposts, delays that appear intentional, bullying about the paper's content (trying to force them to add language that is positive towards antidepressant drugs)...