The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It [Paperback]

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2007

Statins are widely prescribed to lower blood cholesterol levels and claim to offer unparalleled protection against heart disease. Believed to be completely safe and capable of preventing a whole series of other conditions, they are the most profitable drug in the history of medicine. In this groundbreaking book, GP Malcolm Kendrick exposes the truth behind the hype. He will change the way we think about cholesterol forever. Rubbishing the diet-heart hypothesis, in which clinical trials 'prove' that high cholesterol causes heart disease and a high-fat diet leads to heart disease, Kendrick lambastes a powerful pharmaceutical industry and unquestioning medical profession, who, he claims, perpetuate the madcap concepts of 'good' and 'bad' cholesterol and cholesterol levels to convince millions of people to unnecessarily spend billions of pounds on statins. Clearly and comprehensively debunking assumptions on what constitute a healthy lifestyle and diet, "The Great Cholesterol Con" is the accessible, indispensable and absorbing case against statins and for a more common-sense approach to heart disease and general wellbeing. No more over-hyped miracle drugs; no more garlic, red wine, anti-oxidants, fruit or vegetables; even a vegetarian diet is rejected in this controversial yet authoritative critique of how we have been mislead over how food and drugs affect our coronary health. Here, for the first time, is the invaluable guide for anyone who though there was a miracle cure for heart disease, "The Great Cholesterol Con" is a fascinating breakthrough that will set dynamite under the whole area.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[The Great Cholesterol Con] will save you a lot of heartache—LITERALLY!"  —Examiner.com

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Dr Kendrick is a GP in Macclesfield. He writes for Pulse magazine in the UK, and redflagsweekly, an on-line health magazine based in Canada. He has written technical papers on insulin resistance, and multiple sclerosis. He developed the educational website for the European Society of Cardiology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: John Blake (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844543609
• ISBN-13: 978-1844543601
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

149 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can lowering cholesterol be worse than cholesterol?, December 6, 2007

By 

A reader (NYC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It (Paperback)

If you've somehow managed to sidestep the pressure to go on statins, this book will provide you with justification. Kendrick walks you, step by step, through your own physiology and bio-chemistry, and backs his contentions that cholesterol can not be the cause of heart disease by citing and summarizing published studies that bear this out. The book is technical but highly readable thanks to an easy conversational style (if your high school biology teacher had been Kendrick, you'd have understood everything and gotten an A). If you don't really care about arterial plaques and exactly how they're formed (and exactly how they're not) the take-away message is pretty much this: statins are ineffective for women, especially for women over 50 years old, and for anybody over 70 years old. Further, statistical studies may indicate that lowering cholesterol encourages cancer. Many of the points Kendrick makes here are also borne out in Gary Taubes' excellent "Good Calories, Bad Calories." Both of these books are recommended.

I also feel somewhat compelled to add this: While doctors will tell you they've rarely seen anyone with side effects from statins, among my own circle of middle-aged friends, I know 3 who've had serious problems with their livers, one who had some muscles permanently destroyed, one--a usually energetic tennis player-- who felt, for the few months he took statins, as though he had the flu, and could barely go to work-- and one who was left with ringing in the ears and a facial tic. All of these are listed as side effects of statins, as Kendrick points out.

74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another coffin nail for the fat/cholesterol theory of heart disease, January 19, 2008

By 

Paul Bergner "Editor, Medical Herbalism journal" (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It (Paperback)

It is remarkable that the fat-cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease gained such an established place in US medicine, culture, and popular consciousness, despite a lack of any -strong- evidence to support the theories (including that "bad cholesterol" causes heart disease) and despite sometimes stronger evidence against the theories. The emergence into broader understanding of insulin resistance around the year 2000 was a watershed in the demise of these two theories. I believe the last two months will be looked back on and viewed as the death of these hypotheses.
Perhaps most important, last week results were published that showed that a drug that lowered LDL ("bad") cholesterol not only did not prevent heart attacks, but may have increased them. The LDL went down, but not the heart attacks. This fairly well disproves the idea that even "bad" cholesterol is really that "bad" in the first place.
There has also been the appearance of two very well researched books on this topic:
Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
The Great Cholesterol Con by Malcolm Kendrick (not the same title from Colpo)
Both are impeccable in their science, both show that the fat/cholesterol theory has been, well, frankly, fraudulent from a scientific point of view. Kendrick was lead author of the 14 Countries Study. He took WHO data on fat consumption and heart disease in a large group of countries. From these he selected the seven countries with the lowest fat consumption, and the seven with the highest fat consumption, and compared the rates of heart disease in the two groups. Every one of the countries with the lowest level of fat consumption had a higher rate of heart disease than any of the countries with the highest fat consumption. Do a double take? Read that again.
Taubes goes as far back as 1846 reviewing the science on the cause and cure of obesity (=carbohydrate consumption). He doesn't miss a stitch.
Both books describe in detail the scientific errors, and false thinking, that led to the acceptance of both hypotheses as if they were Laws, and "settled science" rather than controversial, from s true scientific point of view, from start to finish. Both make good case studies of the methods of good and bad science.
Now we are all going to have to do psychotherapy to treat our obsessive-compulsive fat/cholesterol delusional phobias. But will anyone REALLY stop buying 2% milk instead of whole, or discarding those luscious fatty skin from their chicken breast? I suggest everyone read these two books as part of their psychotherapeutic process.

75 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, May 20, 2007

By 

Paul (Boston MA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It (Paperback)

Superb science/medical writing. I was already familiar with a lot of the story about cholesterol misinformation, but I still found it very useful to see the issues dissected one-by-one, with comprehensive references to the relevant research studies. The author is obviously extremely well-read in this area, far beyond the main dietary studies. His final chapter about stress and heart-disease is a must-read for anyone interested in these topics, and the fact that he had been so thorough in the earlier part of the book makes me take his speculations seriously. It comes with a good dose of quirky British (actually Scottish) humor, which I enjoyed a lot.