Story at a Glance:

•There is a widespread belief that elevated cholesterol is the “cause” of cardiovascular disease. However, a large body of evidence shows that there is no association between the two and the real data shows lower cholesterol significantly increases one’s risk of death.

•An alternative model (which the medical industry buried) proposes that the blood clots the body uses to heal arterial damage, once healed, create the characteristic atherosclerotic lesions associated with heart disease.

•The evidence for the blood clot model is much stronger than the cholesterol hypothesis and provides many critical insights for treating heart disease.

•The primary approach to treating heart disease is to prescribe cholesterol lowering statin drugs (to the point, nearly a trillion dollars have now been spent on them).

•Unfortunately, the benefits of these highly toxic drugs are minuscule (e.g., at best taking them for years extends your life by a few days) and the harms are vast (statins are one of the most common pharmaceuticals that severely injure patients).

•Multiple 2026 studies have further shown statins do not extend the lives of the healthy individuals they are primarily prescribed to, while a new wave of expensive patented cholesterol drugs is being approved simply for lowering cholesterol—many of which are being marketed to the same “statin intolerant” patients the industry insists are imagining their injuries.

•In this article we will explore the specific injuries caused by statin drugs, the forgotten causes of cardiovascular disease, and our preferred treatments for heart and vascular diseases.

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Within cardiology, I believe one of the most damaging falsehoods is that cholesterol causes heart disease and that taking statins (or their newer lucrative equivalents), which lower cholesterol, are the key to preventing heart disease. This is because, in addition to those “facts” being incorrect, statins are also some of the most dangerous and widely used pharmaceutical drugs on the market.

Cholesterol and Heart Disease

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In the 1960s and 1970s, a debate emerged over what caused heart disease. On one side, John Yudkin effectively argued that the sugar being added to our food by the processed food industry was the chief culprit. On the other side, Ancel Keys (who attacked Yudkin’s work) argued that it was due to saturated fat and cholesterol.

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Ancel Keys won, Yudkin’s work was largely dismissed, and Keys became nutritional dogma. A large part of Key’s victory was based on his study of seven countries (Italy, Greece, Former Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Finland, America, and Japan), which showed that as saturated fat consumption increased, heart disease increased in a linear fashion.

However, what many don’t know (as this study is still frequently cited) is that this result was simply a product of the countries Keys chose (e.g., one author illustrated that if Finland, Israel, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Sweden had been chosen, the opposite would have been found).

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Likewise, recently, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world published internal sugar industry documents. They showed the sugar industry had used bribes to make scientists place the blame for heart disease on fat so Yudkin’s work would not threaten the sugar industry. In turn, it is now generally accepted that Yudkin was right, but nonetheless, our medical guidelines are still largely based on Key’s work.

However, despite a significant amount of data that now shows lowering cholesterol is not associated with a reduction in heart disease (e.g., this study, this study, this study, this review, this review, and this review) the need to lower cholesterol is still a dogma within cardiology.

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Likewise, despite us endlessly being told to avoid saturated fats, the evidence does not show this prevents death.

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Statin Marketing

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In the case of statins, prior to their discovery, it was difficult to reliably lower cholesterol, but once they hit the market, research rapidly emerged stating that cholesterol was more and more dangerous, that lower and lower blood cholesterol levels were needed, and, hence that more and more people needed to be on statins.

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In tandem, a cancel culture has been created where anyone who challenges the use of Statins is immediately labeled as a “statin denier” accused of being a mass murderer and effectively canceled.

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In addition to doctors being forced to follow these guidelines, patients often are too. Doctors often retaliate against patients who do not take statins (similar to how unvaccinated patients were denied essential medical care during COVID-19). Employers sometimes require cholesterol numbers to meet a certain threshold for employment (although they never did anything on the scale of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates placed on workers around America). Similarly, life insurance policies often penalize those with “unsafe” cholesterol numbers.

Worse still (as the processed food industry intended by creating the war against cholesterol) even if we disagree with this dogma, its difficult to boycott it as the entire food supply has replaced healthy saturated fats (e.g., from animals or coconuts) with unhealthy vegetable oils. Fortunately, after decades of work, we’ve managed to bring enough attention to this subject (especially with RFK’s recent support for returning to saturated fats) that market pressure is at last emerging to make seed oil free foods become more widely available to consumers.

Statin Injuries

Statins in turn, are linked to a large number of complications that have been well-characterized (e.g., mechanistically) and described throughout the medical literature.^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

One group of side effects are those perceived by the patient (which often make them want to stop using the medications). These include:

• A high incidence of muscle pain^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}
• Fatigue^{1, 2} especially with exertion and exercise³
• Muscle inflammation (whose cause remains “unknown”)^{1, 2}
• Autoimmune muscle damage^{1, 2, 3, 4}
• Psychiatric and neurologic issues such as depression, confusion, aggression, and memory loss^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}
• Severe irritability¹
• Sleep Issues²
• Musculoskeletal disorders and injuries^{1, 2}
• Sudden (sensorineural) hearing loss¹
• Gastrointestinal distress¹

The other group are those not overtly noticed by the patient. These include:

• Type-2 diabetes,^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} particularly in women ^{6, 7, 8}
• Cancer^{1, 2, 3, 4}
• Liver dysfunction and failure^{1, 2}
• Cataracts^{1, 2}
• ALS-like conditions and other central motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease and cerebellar ataxia)^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
• Lupus-like syndrome¹
• Susceptibility to herpes zoster (shingles)^{1, 2, 3}
• Interstitial cystitis¹
• Polymyalgia rheumatica¹
• Kidney injury^{1, 2}
• Renal failure¹

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Cholesterol

•It is the precursor to many different hormones.

•The brain’s synapses (which, amongst other things, form memories) require cholesterol to function. Since cholesterol is too big to enter the brain, glial cells (support cells of the nervous system) synthesize it within the brain. Statins, unfortunately, inhibit glial cell production of cholesterol.

•Cognition, in turn, is highly dependent upon cholesterol. For example, one study found that minor cognitive impairment could be detected in 100% of statin users if sufficiently sensitive testing was done (which again illustrates how minor injuries are more common than severe ones). Likewise, a variety of more severe adverse effects on cognition are also observed such as amnesia, forgetfulness, confusion, disorientation, and increased senility.

In addition to cognitive impairment, numerous studies have found a significant association between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violence. Likewise, statin dementia is often characterized by aggression.

Finally, one of the most concerning side effects of statins is their tendency to cause ALS (a truly horrible rare disease—curiously also seen in association with the COVID-19 vaccines). This correlation is further supported by many reports of statin ALS improving once the statin is stopped.

Unfortunately, while statin cognitive decline frequently improves when the statin is stopped, in many cases, it instead persists.

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Some of the common energy-related side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency include:

•Mitochondrial damage

•Lack of Energy

•Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

•Congestive Heart Failure and Fluid Retention

•Shortness of Breath

•Gout

Some of the side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency weakening cell wall integrity include:

•Hepatitis (interestingly, Graveline noted that the enzyme threshold needed to diagnose statin-induced liver damage was significantly raised after this issue began being commonly reported following statin usage).

•Pancreatitis

•Rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue)

•Tendon and ligament inflammation and rupture.
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Two of the most common consequences of statins CoQ10 depletion are myopathy (muscle pain, tiredness, weakness, and cramps) and peripheral neuropathy (numbness, tingling, or burning sensations, particularly in hands and feet).

Although myopathy is the most commonly reported side effect of statin usage, much of it (e.g., myositis) goes undetected. This is because the symptoms are often not accompanied by blood work showing muscle enzyme elevations and can only be detected by biopsies (which are rarely done relative to blood work). In many cases, this condition is permanent (one expert in statin injury found it was permanent for 68% of her patients, while Graveline found it was for 25% of his). Sadly, in some cases, like statin neuropathies, the myopathies will continue to progress even if the statin is stopped.

One of the sadder things about statins is how aggressively they are pushed on diabetics (under the logic that since diabetics have an increased risk of heart disease, it is critical they take a statin to prevent them from having a heart attack). To highlight the absurdity of this, statins are well known to significantly increase your risk of diabetes (multiple studies have found this), which I suspect is again due to them impairing mitochondrial function.

Similarly, peripheral neuropathy is a condition diabetics are well known to be at a high risk of. In one study, it was found that the risk of neuropathy (i.e., burning pain with tingling or numbness of the extremities) was increased by 14 to 26 times (depending on the type) for long-term users of statins. Furthermore, other nerve issues, such as neurodegeneration, can be caused by statins.

Combinations of myopathy and neuropathy also occur in statin users, such as progressive pain, weakness, and incoordination throughout the body, alongside trouble rising from a seated position, unsteadiness, and a tendency to fall. Muscles are also observed to develop a distinctive weakened and mushy characteristic and gradually shrink.

Note: in addition to preventing adverse effects from statins, CoQ10 is also one of the more helpful supplements for preventing heart disease.

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Nuclear Factor-Kappa B

The small cardiovascular benefit observed from statins may not be because they reduce cholesterol but rather because they have anti-inflammatory properties (inflammation causes heart disease), as they inhibit NF-kB, a vital part of the immune system.

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In addition to this arguing that some of the benefit of statins “preventing heart attacks” is due to them causing a fatal cancer before you have time to have a natural heart attack . . .

“Cholesterol” Plaques

One of the cleverest campaigns I’ve seen within the medical industry is the widespread belief that heart disease is due to fat clogging the arteries much like they do for a drain pipe.

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Presently, we believe cholesterol somehow gets into a blood vessel and then damages it, leaving an atherosclerotic plaque. Kendrick in turn argued that a competing model (that the medical profession largely buried) provides a much better explanation of the actual causes of heart disease. It is as follows:

1. Blood vessels get damaged.
2. The body repairs those damage with clots.
3. As clots heal, they are pulled inside the blood vessel wall, and a new layer of endothelium (blood vessel lining) grows over them.
4. As this occurs multiple times in the same area, the damage (plaques) under the blood vessel becomes more abnormal.

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Via https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-great-cholesterol-lie-and-the