For this I quit smoking & McDonald's? "Lowering cholesterol too much may raise risk of cancer"

Any day now, they will say that Marlboro's and Big Macs are healthy lol!

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WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Lowering cholesterol as much as possible may reduce the risk of heart disease, but with a price: taking it too low could raise the risk of cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday...

LaRosa said even if the statins did raise the risk of cancer, the overall risk was low and the risks of heart disease are far more immediate. "The truth of the matter is that we cannot live forever," he said in a telephone interview.

"Something is going to get us. If we don't die of heart disease, then we die of cancer or Alzheimer's. We don't want people to stop something that we know has benefits."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/hl_nm/cancer_cholesterol_dc

In Sleepers, he awoke to a future in which chocolate and french fries were health food. We've already got the chocolate. COME ON, FRENCH FRIES!

i know a man whose total, i mean TOTAL, cholesterol level was measured at 105

not remotely normal but he has no insurance and the doc just shrugged his shoulders and offered no advice

Though, this part of the article caught my eye:



The study apparently looked at people taking statins. So the question is, is it low cholesterol causing the problems or side affects from the drugs? Granted, I scanned the article quickly, but I didn't see anything about people who control their cholesterol with just diet and excercise.

i think the muscle weakness is a known side effect of the statin drugs themselves, not a symptom of abnormally low cholesterol

Its thanks to Lipitor maintaining my Dad's cholesterol at about 150 even after dieting and exercise didn't do it that he didn't die of an heart attack at age 56 like both his dad and his grandfather.
I know plenty of people in my family on statins. None have side effects. Obviously anything taken to extremes is bad. If someone was on high blood pressure medication but their bp dropped to a ridiculous number like 90/60 would you blame the meds if they passed out? No its the too low bp. Same thing with statins..you manage them to keep your cholesterol at a certain level. Cholesterol IS needed by the body, just not in the amounts many of us have, many because of genetics (at one point I was 110 lbs with cholesterol of 210--I would say mine is genetic)

but all drugs have side effects though not all people who take the drug have the same, if any, side effects and it often comes down to a risk/benefit decision.

I merely pointed out that, per the article, the study apparently only looked at individuals taking statins. As long as they aren't looking at people whose cholesterol is low due to diet and excercise or just the luck of the genetic dice (I have a friend who is obese and her choloesteral is 140 - with a perfect ratio) it's a little early to assume a lower cholesteral number always means an increased risk of cancer or Parkinson's.

why it's OK to rationalize that way but a sign of horrible personal weakness and disgusting lack of virtue to rationalize the other way.

Something has to kill us, and despite all the silly use of percentage increases in scaremongering about having more than 2lb of excess flesh, it might as well be beer and cheeseburgers instead of cancer and Alzheimers, since almost no group of overweight people has a meaningfully lower life expectancy any way (the only group that does have more than a few years difference is males with a BMI over 40 from before age 20 who never lost the weight - for everyione else it's, on average, the difference between dying at 77 and dying at 80, say. Dunno about you but if it's 77 years of beer and cheeseburgers or 80yrs of tofu and lettuce, I'll spot you three years anyday).

I don't eat right and my cholesterol stays in the low 160's. It's more genetics than anything else. I know people that eat hardly anything with cholesterol in it and theirs is in the 250's. Somebody once said "Name me any form of human activity, and I'll find you a group of doctors against it" If too much of A gives you disease B, too little A gives you disease C. There's always a trade-off.

your own health. For some people one risk is greater than another.

and that is probably due to some side effect of the drug, not the low cholesterol itself.

"This just in: Studies indicate that saliva, taken internally in small doses, over a period of years can cause cancer"

Gulp. Oops.

I haven't read the study itself, but I hope they controlled for the fact that cancer patients in general show wasting and malnutrition. One of the first signs of cancer may be weight loss. So it may be that they've found an association between low cholesterol and cancer, but it may not come about in the way they're postulating.

Nobody wants cancer. Nobody ever wants cancer. Heart disease can be managed; cancer is an invasive, abnormal parasitic growth that takes over your body and always kills you in the end.

When are people going to catch on to the fact that cutting nutrients out of their diet entirely will come back and bite them in the ass? As long as a nutrient, mineral, vitamin etc., is natural and not some man-made toxic crap like trans fats and laboratory dyes, then there is no reason to remove it from your diet. The key: Don't consume more than your body can metabolize, no matter what substance it is.

It's all about quality and a little moderation.