On Fri, 8 May 1998, Susan Carmack wrote:

> Hi Todd and everyone,
>
> I found a chapter called Crazy About Cholesterol: Medicine's Red Herring
in
> the book What Doctors DON'T Tell You by Lynne McTaggart ISBN 0-380-79607-4

Sounds interesting.  I think I have posted this before, but if
not -- there is an excellent web page on this topic, at
http://home2.swipnet.se/~w-25775/index.htm
The author, U. Ravnskov, is himself a well-published researcher
in this field.  He argues the red herring thesis quite
convincingly.

> Recently, new scientific evidence proves that cholesterol may not even be
> the main cause of heart disease. ....most heart patients have normal
> cholesterol levels."
> McTaggart goes on to quote from T. Bod Eaton, Ronald Schmid (Native
> Nutrition) , Price, Pottenger and Anne Marie Colbin (Food and Healing).

An interesting line of thinking, recently discussed on Paleodiet,
is that excessive iron buildup is what expedites the oxidation of
LDL cholesterol, making it dangerous.  The reasoning is quite
persuasive, including the following facts:

1.  Women, even with very "bad" cholesterol profiles, simply do
not incur the same risk of heart disease as men, until menopause.

2.  These women are apparently not protected by estrogen, because
women who have hysterectomies but whose ovaries are left intact
*do* incur a risk of heart disease comparable to men of the same
age.  Their estrogen levels have not changed, but they no longer
lose blood every month.

3.  Men who donate blood frequently have a reduced risk of heart
disease.

4.  People in poor countries who eat a lot of grain and legume
foods have low risk of heart disease.  The phytates in grains and
legumes block the absorption of iron and other minerals.  These
people also lose blood by internal bleeding caused by parasites.

Some time back, Muriel Hykes posted a message on this list making
essentially this same point, arguing that the true paleo
lifestyle was fairly rough, and between hunting and fighting the
men would have done a fair amount of bleeding.

Gary Ditta, in his Paleodiet post, also theorized that a result
of the transition to agrigulture and its iron-blocking foods
would be selection pressure in favor of even greater iron
absorption.  A sign of this may be the fact that hemachromatosis
(iron overload disease) is the most common inherited disease
among white males, and often goes undiagnosed.

This is an important possibility for anyone doing Neanderthin or
a similar diet rich in red meat and low in phytates, since such a
diet maximizes exposure to iron.  The "treatment" is simple
enough: donate a unit of blood 4 or more times a year (six is the
maximum allowed by the Red Cross).

Todd Moody
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