Cholesterol Confusion Cleared up by Dr. Roizen!

Scott: Can you clear up cholesterol?  A lot of doctors have differing views on that and we have, you know, grown up hearing it's the bad guy.  Now there seems to be a shift.  Maybe it's not that bad.  Do we need to lower it?  Do we need statin drugs?  I mean, what is it's role and is it really bad?  

Dr. Michael Roizen: Most scientific data will show that if you have a cholesterol, an LDL, under 70, you are much less likely to have a heart attack than if you have one above 150.  Or even above 100.  So we believe that there is a benefit in the lowering of the LDL cholesterol just as there's an independent benefit, separate from that, in lowering triglycerides.  The values we seek in people who haven't had heart attacks if you will are an LDL less than 100 and a triglyceride less than 100.  We, on the other hand, there's a healthy form of cholesterol that seems to take the lousy and recycle it back to the liver.  Get rid of it from your blood vessels where it does damage and take it back to the liver where it gets used again and that's an HDL cholesterol of above 50.  But the HDL is tricky because it's actually the activity of the "H", how much it grabs on to the "L" rather than the absolute number.  So the HDL is not as simple as LDL where we know the quantity of LDL.  Getting it below 100 milligrams per deciliter is an important thing.  So people should not be confused, although LDL cholesterol is not the only factor in heart attacks, we've already gone over a whole bunch, right?  

Interviewer: Um-hmm.

Dr. Roizen: Blood pressure, blood sugar, inflammation, all things that in fact the Omega 7's help with.  The cholesterol lowering ability is important in other drug choices.  And I don't want to minimize the fact that that is still an important concept.