Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D.

One of the most surprising facts about cholesterol is that there is no relationship between the blood cholesterol level and the degree of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) in the vessels.

If a high cholesterol really did promote atherosclerosis, then people with a high cholesterol should evidently be more plaque buildup than people with a low cholesterol

But it isn´t so.

The pathologist Dr. Kurt Landé and the biochemist Dr. Warren Sperry at the Department of Forensic Medicine of New York University were the first to study that question.

The year was 1936.

To their surprise, they found absolutely no correlation between the amount of cholesterol in the blood and the degree of atherosclerosis in the arteries of a large number of individuals who had died violently.

Drs. Landé and Sperry are never mentioned by the proponents of the diet-heart idea, or they misquote them and claim that they found a connection, or they ignore their results by arguing that cholesterol values in the dead are not identical with those in living people.

That problem was solved by Dr. J. C. Paterson from London, Canada and his team.

For many years they followed about 800 war veterans.

Over the years, Dr. Paterson and his coworkers regularly analyzed blood samples from these veterans.

Because they restricted their study to veterans who had died between the ages of sixty and seventy, the scientists were informed about the cholesterol level over a large part of the time when atherosclerosis normally develops.

Dr. Paterson and his colleagues did not find any connection either between the degree of atherosclerosis and the blood cholesterol level; those who had had a low cholesterol were just as atherosclerotic when they died as those who had had a high cholesterol.

Similar studies have been performed in India, Poland, Guatemala, and in the USA, all with the same result: no correlation between the level of cholesterol in the blood stream and the amount of atherosclerosis in the vessels.

But a correlation has been found in a few studies.

One of these was the famous study from Framingham, Massachusetts. The correlation found by the Framingham investigators was minimal, however.

In statistical terms, the correlation coefficient there was only 0.36.

Such a low coefficient indicates a desperately weak relationship between variables, in this case, of course, between cholesterol and atherosclerosis.

Usually, scientists demand a much higher correlation coefficient before they conclude that there is a biologically important relationship between two variables.

The very low correlation coefficient was arrived at after much study.

First, many of the townspeople of Framingham had their cholesterol tested several times over a period of several years.

Then, Dr. Manning Feinleib of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, led a team of coworkers in studying the coronary vessels of those who had died.

The researchers were eager to learn which of the many factors they had studied was most important in the development of atherosclerosis in these dead people from Framingham.

Was it blood cholesterol or the number of cigarettes smoked, or something else?

After carefully describing the atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries of the dead people, Dr. Feinleib and his associates quickly assumed that the cholesterol level of the blood best predicted the degree of atherosclerosis.

Neither age nor weight nor blood pressure nor any other factor was as good as blood cholesterol. But again, the correlation coefficient between cholesterol and atherosclerosis was a mere 0.36.

The written report of the study offered no diagrams and no information about the cholesterol and atherosclerosis of each of the individuals whose bodies had been examined.

And the report did not discuss the very low correlation coefficient; it didn't even comment upon that matter.

Dr. Grisanti's Comments: If you are serious about learning the facts on cholesterol, I urge you to purchase Dr. Ravnskov's book Cholesterol Myth