Cholesterol-lowering drugs form one of the largest business segments of the global pharmaceutical industry. This entire multibillion dollar business is built on fear – the fear that cholesterol supposedly causes heart attacks. While the “cholesterol scare” has become a gold mine for drug companies, the economic burden of this business is ultimately carried by us, the people.

Health professionals, political decision takers, and hundreds of millions of patients worldwide therefore have the right to know: What are the proven facts – and what is the fiction promoted by the pharmaceutical investment business with patented cholesterol-lowering drugs?

Unmasking the cholesterol myth

An analysis of the scientific facts about the role of cholesterol in the body reveals three important aspects that have essentially been withheld from patients:

Cholesterol is a molecule that is essential for life. It is a structural constituent of the walls of billions of cells in the body and the precursor of many biological molecules, including hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. If the blood vessel walls are structurally intact there is no scientific evidence that cholesterol, even in moderately elevated concentrations, damages them or causes atherosclerotic plaques and heart attacks. In test animals, for cholesterol to have a damaging effect on otherwise intact blood vessel walls (i.e. for it to cause plaques), it must be artificially increased to levels essentially never observed in humans.

In other words, contrary to what patients have been told, there is no scientific evidence that cholesterol – even at moderately elevated levels – can damage an otherwise intact blood vessel wall.

The cholesterol dogma is at odds with key phenomena in cardiology

The following phenomena of cardiology fundamentally question the cholesterol-lowering dogma: