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They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters. The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain - where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used - and the incidence of serious heart disease.

New study reveals molecular mechanism promoting the breakdown of plaque by statinsIn a new study, NYU Langone Medical Center researchers have discovered how cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins promote the breakdown of plaque in the arteries... The findings support a large clinical study that recently showed patients taking high-doses of the cholesterol-lowering medications not only reduced their cholesterol levels but also reduced the amount of plaque in their arteries. However, until now researchers did not fully understand how statins could reduce atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fat and cholesterol that hardens into plaque in arteries, a major cause of mortality in Western...

Cutting back on salt may not be as beneficial for your heart as once thought, a new study suggests. While a diet low in salt reduces blood pressure, it increases the levels of cholesterol, fat and hormones in the blood that are known to increase the risk of heart disease, the study found. Overall, the good and bad consequences of a low-salt diet may cancel each other out, so the diet has relatively little effect on the development of disease, said study researcher Dr. Niels Graudal, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

Some studies indicate that the predictive properties of cholesterol might not be as straightforward as widely assumed. Our aim was to document the strength and validity of total cholesterol as a risk factor for mortality in a well-defined, general Norwegian population without known CVD at baseline. Methods  We assessed the association of total serum cholesterol with total mortality, as well as mortality from CVD and ischaemic heart disease (IHD), using Cox proportional hazard models. The study population comprises 52 087 Norwegians, aged 20-74, who participated in the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT 2, 1995-1997) and were followed-up on cause-specific mortality for 10...

New research demonstrates that a diet based around plants, nuts and high-fiber grains lowered "bad" cholesterol more than a low-saturated-fat diet that was also vegetarian, meaning that one's dietary changes could be an alternative to statin medications for many people saving persons from some devastating side effects of the medications. After six months, people on the low-saturated-fat diet saw a drop in LDL cholesterol of 8 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), on average, according to findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (excerpted)

I found my good friend dead on the floor on July 18, 2011. Life will never be the same. He had been in an automobile accident 9 days before, but the autopsy showed he had severe coronary disease with multiple blockages. The EMTs said he had been gone for 3-4 hours. Please don't let this happen to any of my FreeperFriends. He had no symptoms of heart trouble other than a little high cholesterol. Treatment with diet and exercise put the numbers back in good territory and he could pass a stress test better than I could. What he needed...

In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Xin-Xin Zheng reports that green tea reduces LDL and total cholesterol. This could explain the reasoning behind green teaÂ’s apparent reduction to the risk of heart disease. Xin-Xin Zheng and his colleagues from Peking Union Medical College pooled the results of 14 previous trials that looked at the consumption of green tea. The researchers divided participants up into one group that had either consumed green tea or taken green tea supplements for up to at least three months and another group which had been given placebos. In looking...

For Popeye, spinach was the key to extra muscle. For the mice in a new University of Iowa study, it was apples, or more precisely a waxy substance called ursolic acid that's found in apple peel. The UI study, published in the June 8 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that ursolic acid reduced muscle atrophy (also known as muscle wasting) and promoted muscle growth in mice. It also reduced fat, blood sugar levels, cholesterol and triglycerides in the animals. The findings suggest that the compound may be useful for treating muscle wasting and possibly metabolic disorders such as...

Scientists from the University of Warwick have discovered why a newly found form of cholesterol seems to be 'ultra-bad', leading to increased risk of heart disease. The discovery could lead to new treatments to prevent heart disease particularly in people with type 2 diabetes and the elderly. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), found that 'ultrabad' cholesterol, called MGmin-low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which is more common in people with type 2 diabetes and the elderly, appears to be 'stickier' than normal LDL. This makes it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries. When LDL attaches to...

Scientists package HDL with gene-silencing siRNA to target tumors, spare normal tissueHOUSTON - High-density lipoprotein's hauls excess cholesterol to the liver for disposal, but new research suggests "good cholesterol" can also act as a special delivery vehicle of destruction for cancer. Synthetic HDL nanoparticles loaded with small interfering RNA to silence cancer-promoting genes selectively shrunk or destroyed ovarian cancer tumors in mice, a research team led by scientists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of North Texas Health Science Center reports in the April edition of Neoplasia. "RNA interference has great therapeutic potential but...

Gov't Research Also Shows Them Much Higher in Vitamin D; Dietitian: Credit Healthier Animal Feed, in Part(CBS) If you like eggs, this is good news: A new government study finds they're actually 14 percent lower in cholesterol and 64 percent higher in vitamin D than previously thought. Registered Dietitian Cynthia Sass stopped by the "The Early Show" Tuesday to explain what this may mean for your health. What caused this change in cholesterol and vitamin D levels? Sass, the author of "Cinch!: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds, and Lose Inches," told "Early Show" co-anchor Chris Wragge the saying "You are what...

Yes, Wright saw, the drugs can be life-saving in patients who already have suffered heart attacks, somewhat reducing the chances of a recurrence that could lead to an early death. But Wright had a surprise when he looked at the data for the majority of patients, like Winn, who don't have heart disease. He found no benefit in people over the age of 65, no matter how much their cholesterol declines, and no benefit in women of any age. He did see a small reduction in the number of heart attacks for middle-aged men taking statins in clinical trials. But...

Can eating red onions lower your risk for heart attack and stroke? A new study suggests the answer to that question may be yes. At least if you're a hamster. Scientists in Hong Kong fed crushed onions to hamsters that had been on a high-cholesterol diet. After eight weeks, the little guys' levels of low-densitiy lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol fell by 20 percent, the Daily Mail reported. That's good news, because elevated LDL cholesterol levels are linked to cardiovascular disease. At the same time, there was no decline in the hamsters' levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol - the good...

The European Union has approved a new chewable form of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor for children 10 and up with high levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of blood fat, Pfizer said Tuesday. The approval includes children whose high blood fats are due to an inherited disease that causes extremely high cholesterol levels, familial hypercholesterolemia. New York-based Pfizer Inc. won U.S. approval for Lipitor use in children 10 to 17 with that condition in 2002. Lipitor is the world's top-selling drug, with 2009 sales of about $13 billion, but its U.S. patent expires at the end of November 2011....

A mathematical model suggests that aggressively pursuing low blood pressure and cholesterol levels may not benefit, and could even harm, some patients with diabetes, according to a report in the June 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Almost all treatment guidelines for patients with diabetes suggest aggressively treating high low-density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad" cholesterol) and blood pressure levels to reduce patients' risk of developing heart disease, according to background information in the article. "These recommendations, which are based on the average results of trials evaluating the relative benefits of intensive risk factor control,...

The amount of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream is partly regulated by the brain, a study in mice suggests. It counters assumptions that levels are solely controlled by what we eat and by cholesterol production in the liver. The US study in Nature Neuroscience found that a hunger hormone in the brain acts as the "remote control" for cholesterol travelling round the body.Too much cholesterol causes hardened fatty arteries, raising the risk of a heart attack. The research carried out by a US team at the University of Cincinnati found that increased levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin in mice...

Have you ever watched a movie that had a surprise ending, say, The Sixth Sense, for example, then watched it again? Once you know the ending, you see all kinds of things that make the ending obvious that you didn’t see the first time through. When you have a movie (or a novelistic) experience like this, it makes you appreciate the talent of the creative people who make the movie (or write the novel). If these folks had just sprung the surprise ending on you without cleverly concealing all the clues, you would feel cheated. It’s kind of the same...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Eating dairy foods could help protect your heart, new research from Sweden suggests. Dairy foods are a major source of saturated fat in the diet, which has been associated with heart disease. However, there's some evidence that dairy foods could actually benefit heart health, for example by lowering blood pressure or reducing cholesterol levels, Dr. Eva Warensjo of Uppsala University and her colleagues note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. To get a clearer sense of people's intake of fat from dairy and heart disease risk, Warensjo and her team measured blood levels of...

Based on the long-time claim by General Mills that its Cheerios cereal can lower cholesterol by 4 percent in just six weeks — when part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, of course — the Food and Drug Administration has admonished the giant breakfast cereal producer and said those claims mean the little round “o’s” of oats are to be considered a drug. Simply by indicating the cereal is intended for use as a cholesterol-lowering product, it now falls under the FDA regulations regarding drugs, and because it’s a “new” drug by definition — never mind that...

<p>The Atkins low-carb, high-fat diet is supposed to be simple, but it's raising complex medical and nutrition questions. Now two new studies show that those who follow the diet can lose significant amounts of weight, but other research is raising concerns about the safety of the program, linking it to an increased risk of kidney stones and bone loss.</p>

<p>With courage and care Dr. Ravnskov exposes the lack of experimental evidence for the diet-heart theory, which claims that eating less fat and cholesterol will prevent atheroslcerosis (hardening of the arteries) and myocardial infarctions (heart attacks). By examining original peer-reviewed literature, the author finds no support for the diet-heart theory. He gives examples of scientific fraud among efforts to support the theory, including the deliberate selective omission of data points, and the deliberate assignment of subjects in a clinical trial to treatment or to control groups by physicians with the subject's medical records in hand. He shows how the abstract or conclusions of a number of papers are at odds with the actual data in the papers. He demonstrates how the use of one statistical method in preference to another can give a false impression that there is an effect, where there is, in fact, none. He shows how the reporting of differences in fatality rates by per cent reduction (say, a 50% reduction in relative risk) is actually misleading when the actual death rates are quite small in both the treatment and control groups of subjects in diet or drug studies. For example, a treatment that changes the absolute survival rate over a multi-year period from 99.0% to 99.5% represents a 50% reduction in relative risk, from 1% to 0.5% absolute. This is often described in papers as a 50% reduction in death rate. However, when the difference is barely significant statistically, as was often the case, Ravnskov points out that there is no real reason to recommend adoption of the treatment, especially if there are serious side-effects.</p>

More research backing up the cholesterol-lowering benefits of eating nuts indicates that for most people, consuming two handfuls of nuts a day appears to work better than one. The findings apply to tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds, pistachios, macadamias, hazelnuts and peanuts. Although peanuts actually belong to the legume family, they are considered to have many of the same nutritional components as walnuts, almonds and other tree nuts. Researchers who examined the results of 25 previous studies on the health effects of nut consumption found a dose-related improvement in participants' blood-lipid levels. The results are published this week in...

(NaturalNews) The utter worthlessness of Big Pharma's cholesterol drugs was demonstrated recently by a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which showed that niacin (a low-cost B vitamin) out-performs Merck's drug Zetia for preventing the build-up of arterial plaque, a symptom of cardiovascular disease. As the study reveals, Zetia failed miserably. Patients taking niacin showed a "significant shrinkage" in artery wall thickness, while those on Zetia showed no such improvement. At the same time, the rate of "cardiovascular events" in the niacin group was only one-fifth that in the Zetia group, demonstrating that niacin is far more...

With the government’s blessing, a drug giant is about to expand the market for its blockbuster cholesterol medication Crestor to a new category of customers: as a preventive measure for millions of people who do not have cholesterol problems... --snip-- But critics said the claim of cutting heart disease risk in half — repeated in news reports nationwide — may have misled some doctors and consumers because the patients were so healthy that they had little risk to begin with. The rate of heart attacks, for example, was 0.37 percent, or 68 patients out of 8,901 who took a sugar...

A High-Fat Breakfast of Bacon and Eggs May Be The Healthiest Start To The Day, Report Shows A high-fat breakfast of bacon and eggs may be the healthiest start to the day, a new university report showed. 31 Mar 2010 For the first meal eaten after a night's sleep appears to programme the metabolism for the rest of the day, the researchers found. And the age-old maxim "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper" may in fact be the best advice to follow to prevent metabolic syndrome, according to a new University of...

Simvastatin is taken by around three million people in order to lower their cholesterol and reduce the risk of having a heart attack. However an analysis of clinical trial data in America has found that high doses can cause muscle damage and a rare condition which induces kidney problems and may be fatal. Patients were told not to stop taking simvastatin but advised to talk to their doctor if they have concerns. The American medicines regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, has issued a warning to patients to be alert to signs of problems when taking the 80mg daily dose...

Just days after his doctors expressed concerns about his rising cholesterol levels, President Obama dropped by a family-style restaurant for an authentic – but perhaps not so healthy – Southern style lunch in Savannah, Georgia. In between events, Obama paid a visit to Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room and made it clear he did not want to hear it from the press about his choice of lunch. “I don’t want any lectures about my cholesterol,” Obama said. “Don’t tell Michelle.”

WASHINGTON — Poll results, congressional head counts and federal deficits aren't the only numbers President Barack Obama has to worry about. Now, he's trying to walk off a marginally high cholesterol count.

Inhibitors of HMG-CoA reductase (statins) are widely used medications for reduction of cholesterol levels. Statin use significantly reduces risk of cardiovascular disease but has also been associated with lower risk of other diseases and conditions, including dementia. However, some reports suggest that statins also have detrimental effects on the brain......Our data suggest that simvastatin and pravastatin differentially affect expression of genes involved in neurodegeneration and that statin-dependent gene expression regulation is cell type specific (excerpted)

Researchers searching for a cure for obesity said on Thursday they have developed a drug that not only makes mice lose weight, but reverses diabetes and lowers their cholesterol, too. The drug, which they have dubbed fatostatin, stops the body from making fat, instead releasing the energy from food. They hope it may lead to a pill that would fight obesity, diabetes and cholesterol, all at once. Writing in the journal Chemistry and Biology, Salih Wakil of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Motonari Uesugi of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues said the drug interferes with a suite of...

When you put Democrats in charge, stupid things happen. Remember those words. Every few days you will see something on the news to remind you that they are true. Like Cheerios. The new Democrat-controlled Food and Drug Administration has decided that Cheerios are a drug and are under its control. That’s one of the dominant themes of Change You Can Believe In. Control. The government takes control, you lose control. The government gets more powerful, you get less free. Now it extends to breakfast cereal. Having taken over General Motors, now the Democrats want to take over General Mills. At...

WASHINGTON — A rare genetic abnormality found in people in an insular Amish community protects them from heart disease, a discovery that could lead to new drugs to prevent heart ailments, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. About 5 percent of Old Order Amish people in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County have only one working copy rather than the normal two of a gene that makes a protein that slows the breakdown of triglycerides, a type of fat that circulates in the blood, the researchers wrote in the journal Science. "People who have the mutation all have low triglycerides," said Toni Pollin of...

Healthy food can make an individual more susceptible to diseases, according to a new controversial book. In the book titled, 'Trick and Treat: How Healthy Eating Is Making Us Ill,' author Barry Groves claims that healthy eating can sometimes fail to keep an individual hale and hearty. "Most people are eating in a way that is unnatural to us as a species," the Telegraph quoted Barry, who holds a doctorate in nutritional science, as saying. "We're a carnivorous species - our gut is identical to that of a big cat. Yet we're encouraged to eat foods that have been padded...

MUNICH, GERMANY (AP) - Fish oil supplements may work slightly better than a popular cholesterol-reducing drug to help patients with chronic heart failure, according to new research released Sunday. Chronic heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump blood efficiently around the body.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)-If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight....

The nation’s pediatricians are recommending wider cholesterol screening for children and more aggressive use of cholesterol-lowering drugs starting as early as the age of 8 in hopes of preventing adult heart problems. The new guidelines were to be issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday. The push to aggressively screen and medicate for high cholesterol in children is certain to create controversy amid a continuing debate about the use of prescription drugs in children as well as the best approaches to ward off heart disease in adults. But proponents say there is growing evidence that the first signs...

Low Levels Of Good Cholesterol Linked To Memory Loss, Dementia Risk ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — Low levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) -- the "good" cholesterol -- in middle age may increase the risk of memory loss and lead to dementia later in life, researchers reported in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association. Observing 3,673 participants (26.8 percent women) from the Whitehall II study, researchers found that falling levels of HDL cholesterol were predictors of declining memory by age 60. Whitehall II, which began in 1985, is long-term health examination of more than 10,000 British...

Cholesterol genes 'protect heart' Cholesterol appears to play a key role in heart disease A third of the population have genes that could help them in the fight against heart disease, say scientists. A study of 147,000 patients suggests that certain types of the CETP gene might increase the levels of so-called "good" cholesterol. UK and Dutch research, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found a 5% cut in heart attacks for those with the key types. A UK geneticist said it could point to drugs which help many more people. What it does provide are...

Blood Cholesterol Levels Predict Risk Of Heart Disease Due To Hormone Therapy, Study Shows ScienceDaily (May 25, 2008) — A research study has found that a simple blood test may indicate whether post-menopausal hormone therapies present an elevated risk of a heart attack. The study, part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, was conducted in 40 centers nationwide and included 271 cases of coronary heart disease in the first four years of the trials of estrogen alone and of estrogen plus progestin. Paul F. Bray,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc said Monday it was voluntarily withdrawing advertising for its Lipitor cholesterol drug featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, because its ads led to "misimpressions." ads involving Jarvik had come under scrutiny, including from a House Committee as part of an investigation into celebrity endorsements of prescription medicines. Democratic lawmakers had voiced concern that Jarvik's qualifications were misrepresented in widely seen television commercials touting the blockbuster drug. They said he seemed to be dispensing medical advice even though he is not a practicing physician. On his Web site, Jarvik describes himself...

THE idea that cholesterol plays a key role in heart disease is so tightly woven into modern medical thinking that it is no longer considered open to question. This is the message that emerged all too clearly from the recent news that the drug Vytorin had fared no better in clinical trials than the statin therapy it was meant to supplant. Vytorin is a combination of cholesterol-lowering drugs, one called Zetia and the other a statin called Zocor. Because the two drugs lower LDL cholesterol by different mechanisms, the makers of Vytorin (Merck and Schering-Plough) assumed that their double-barreled therapy...

Correction Appended For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol. But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory — and the value of two widely used cholesterol-lowering medicines, Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin. Other new cholesterol-fighting drugs, including one that Merck hopes to begin selling this year, may also require closer scrutiny, they say. “The idea that...

Every day millions of people swallow Zetia and Vytorin in the hopes of reducing their risk of heart attacks and strokes, generating $5 billion a year in sales for Merck and Schering-Plough, which produce them. Do they work?Despite millions of prescriptions, no study has ever shown that these $3-a-day pills prevent heart attacks, strokes or deaths any better than just taking older drugs like Pfizer's (nyse: PFE - news - people ) Lipitor or Merck's (nyse: MRK - news - people ) off-patent Zocor, even though they're proven cholesterol fighters. That's why a two-year delay in a 720-person study aimed...

Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have found a way to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol and fatty acids that end up in the blood from food the body metabolizes, a key discovery that could lead to new drugs to treat and reverse the effects of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease related to obesity. In a series of recently published articles,* Dr. Richard Lehner and his colleagues report they successfully decreased the level of LDL (low-density lipids) – the so-called bad cholesterol – and triglycerides in the blood of mice and hamsters by manipulating a...

Surprise -- Cholesterol May Actually Pose Benefits, Study Shows ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2008) — If you’re worried about high cholesterol levels and keeping heart-healthy as you get older, don’t push aside bacon and eggs just yet. A new study says they might actually provide a benefit. Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. Lead investigator Steven Riechman, assistant professor of health and kinesiology, and Simon Sheather, head of the Department of Statistics, along with colleagues from The Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine,...

Oatmeal's Health Claims Reaffirmed, Study Suggests ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — A new scientific review of the most current research shows the link between eating oatmeal and cholesterol reduction to be stronger than when the FDA initially approved the health claim's appearance on food labels in 1997. Dr. James W. Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, co-authors "The Oatmeal-Cholesterol Connection: 10 Years Later" in the January/February 2008 issue of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Anderson presents a contemporary analysis to determine if newer studies are consistent with the original conclusion...

A substance derived from yeast is being tested in Israel as a potential oral treatment for diabetes and its complications. The substance -- glucose tolerance factor, or GTF -- offers promise of inhibiting oxidation processes that can result in strokes and heart attacks. GTF given at early stage of diabetes may prevent or delay renal complications as well as cataracts and retinal damage. "The research is now at the stage where the substance has been successfully tested on diabetic rats and was found to reduce sugar and lipids in the blood of the treated animals," research leader Nitsa Mirsky of...

American Heart Association meeting report ORLANDO, Nov. 7 — A cholesterol-lowering drug appears to disrupt sleep patterns of some patients, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007. “The findings are significant because sleep problems can affect quality of life and may have adverse health consequences, such as promoting weight gain and insulin resistance,” said Beatrice Golomb, M.D., lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and family and preventive medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. In the largest study of its kind, researchers compared two types of cholesterol-lowering...

Use of cholesterol and blood pressure medicines by young adults appears to be rising rapidly — at a faster pace than among senior citizens, according to an industry report being released Tuesday. Experts point to higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol problems among young people. Also, doctors are getting more aggressive with preventive treatments. "This is good news, that more people in this age range are taking these medicines," said Dr. Daniel W. Jones, president of the American Heart Association. Still, he said many more people should be on the drugs that lower cholesterol or blood...

On June 19, 1987, Ben & Jerry’s introduced Cherry Garcia, in honor of the man who played lead guitar for the Grateful Dead. The Food and Drug Administration struck back three months later, when it approved the first of a new family of statin drugs that curb cholesterol production in the human liver. A synthetic statin licensed a decade later would become the most lucrative drug in history. At its peak, Lipitor was streaming $14 billion a year into Pfizer’s coffers. Let’s not blame the victim: we don’t choose Cherry Garcia; it chooses us. Lipitor is a lifesaver for 600,000...