Active Low-Carber Forums - LDL-cholesterol: how low should you go?

Still more studies on LDL Cholesterol!
From Nina Teicholz's SubStack:

Quote:

LDL-cholesterol: how low should you go? The so-called “bad” LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) is considered by public health authorities to be a proven cause of heart disease, a view based on the fact that statins lower this type of cholesterol and also appear to reduce heart-disease risk. However, many studies stubbornly refuse to support the idea, i.e., they fail to show that very low levels of LDL-C are associated with a lower risk of heart disease, an observation most lately confirmed in a publication this week in the BMJ Open.

The authors reviewed data on nearly 178,000 patients aged 50–89 years and found that those who lived the longest had LDL cholesterol levels between 100 and189 mg/dL.

Why does this matter? The American Heart Association (AHA) says “lower is better” on LDL-C and recommends keeping LDL-C levels under 100 mg/dL for healthy people and 70 mg/dL for those who’ve had a heart attack or stroke. We have wondered about the AHA’s confidence in the benefits of these low numbers – lower than this BMJ Open study would suggest is healthy – particularly since LDL-C is not among the inputs for the AHA’s own heart disease risk calculator. Quite a few reasons exist to question the causative role of LDL-C in heart disease.

For a look at the skeptical viewpoint, see this 2018 review paper.

Review paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ful...tm_medium=email
David Diamond an author on both.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/14/...tm_medium=email