Kendrick's Great Cholesterol Con

[Mitra]

I "had" to order a new yoga book from Amazon a couple of days ago, so I took the opportunity to get a copy of Dr Malcolm Kendrick's Great Cholesterol Con at the same time. Has anyone else read it?

It's a very entertaining read, and generally an easy read, although the sections explaining technical stuff like the various kinds of lipoproteins need fairly close attention - particularly if you're new to the subject. Overall, to veterans of Ravnskov and Colpo there probably won't be too much that surprises you in his views on cholesterol and heart disease - though, like each of the others, he makes the case in his own way. The gist of it is that cholesterol has precious little to do with heart disease, and statins only offer any benefit at all to men who already have heart disease, there's no benefit to women or to men who are "at risk."

What is different in this book is Kendrick's view that the cause of heart disease is stress. He makes his case quite convincingly, including the role of cortisol in favouring visceral rather than sub-cutaneous fat deposits, and in the development of metabolic syndrome. Somehow, though when you look at the rise of obesity, and the relationship between body fat levels and metabolic syndrome (diabetes, insulin resistance) I don't see stress as the whole picture - though I wouldn't deny its significance. I remember a section in the Colpo book (surely they could have used different titles :rolleyes:) on stress amongst various other factors that he considered. I'll have to go back and read it again.

Anyway, if you like to read about such matters, Kendrick's book is entertainingly written (one of the amazon.co.uk reviewers commented that they got more laughs from this than from Terry Pratchett's recent books ;) ), generally quotes from the articles he references, which is good for lazy readers like me, and is another good offering that probably won't be read by any of the policy makers who really need to be reading this stuff.

[mcsblues]

I'm looking forward to it as he does have an entertaining style. I'm interested in whether he acknowledges AC's book at all (Anthony can hardly be blamed for the title duplication) - surely he must have been aware of it, even if he hadn't read it (they are both THINCS and Red Flags contributors) - so choosing to ignore that is mystifying. I did ask AC a while back but he seems to have gone off the radar apart from his forum .. but it could be I don't have his current email I guess.

[Mitra]

I think maybe Kendrick had already done some of the writing when Colpo's book came out, but as you say, they move in the same circles, so it's a bit of a mystery why he duplicated the title. Unless the publishers did it, and didn't consult him.

I don't remember noticing any references to Colpo's book, though he does suggest theomnivore.com as a useful source of information - that's why I suspect a lot of it was written before Colpo's book came out (and the web-site was taken down).

[mcsblues]

Even more weird then - I did notice it was advertised on Amazon under at least two different titles - seems to be the way of these things Garry Taubes book likewise, and I seem to recall that PP wasn't the Eades' choice either.

[Mitra]

I did a Google search to see what else Malcolm Kendrick might have written, and found an email correspondence from 2002 in which he mentions having written a book on CHD, which was with his agent. So that would explain why there's no mention of Colpo's book in the text.

For those who haven't read any of Kendrick's writings, there's a collection of his essays on the Thincs site (http://www.thincs.org/Malcolm.index.htm) and one that seemed to drop off that list on What Protects the French from Heart Disease (http://thincs.org/Malcolm.French.htm) (the second half of which summarises his understanding of the causes of CHD). There's also an extract from the book (http://www.thincs.org/unpublic.Malcolm.htm).

[Dodger]

My understanding is that the publisher was the one who decided on the title for Malcolm's book.

Is there any reason to have either of the Great Cholesterol Con books if I have Ravnskov's book?

[Mitra]

I've been pleased that I bought both of them. They each add something slightly different. But I have a serious book habit :o .

One thing I always found lacking in Ravnskov's book was a discussion of what does cause heart disease as well as what doesn't. Both Colpo and Kendrick include their ideas on this. Colpo's book is bigger. It has masses of references - which, of course, are more recent than Ravnskov's. It covers the effects of elevated blood sugar, and all kinds of dietary issues (omega 3, antioxidants etc). And it makes recommendations for avoiding heart disease (basically low carb, lots of veggies, exercise, some supplements, not too much stress).

Kendrick doesn't include so many references (Colpo has thousands), having more of a tendency to tell you to go to pubmed and search for yourself. And he comes down pretty much on stress as the main culprit in CHD (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction or HPA axis dysfunction). He has descriptions of the process of atherosclerosis, explanations of the various types of lipoprotein, and that sort of thing.

Whether you think it's worth getting another book would depend on whether you value those extra things, and how much you like to read. And of course, each presents his case in a slightly different way, though some quotes are starting to look very familiar to me by now :).

If it's just extra paper on your bookshelves that you're trying to avoid, the Colpo book is available in electronic format (pdf pretty much unrestricted - you can search, print etc).

[bluejay111]

A good book to read about heart disease is "The Heart Revolution" by Kilmer McCully. A little different take on the subject.

[arc]

Colpo's book is definitely worth getting. It has a much broader scope then The Cholesterol Myths, as Mitra mentioned.

I would like to get Kendrick's book only because he is a very entertaining writer on a subject that I am interested in. I enjoy his essays that are posted on the THINCS site.

Anthony said on his forum that he and Malcolm have been in contact about the title of the book. As Dodger says, it was the publisher that chose the title of the book and they didn't care that there was already a similar book with that title out there, since they considered Anthony small potatoes.

[Mitra]

One of the news links (http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=602784) on the PP home page today struck me as right in line with Kendrick's arguments. Kendrick argues that type 2 diabetes isn't caused by body fat, and ridicules the way "overweight" gets redefined for different populations in order to maintain that excess body fat really is the cause. He argues (grossly simplified) that eating while under stress means that blood sugar reducing hormone (insulin) can't do its work because it's fighting with the blood sugar raising stress hormones (cortisol - and there may be others), and that's why type two is so often found in displaced/immigrant populations. Remember, he was writing well before this article, not in response to it.

"They simply don't have to get as obese as a European to get diabetes," Silink explained. Among non-Europeans, even a relatively modest increase in abdominal fat -- the so-called "spare tire" -- can trigger changes that lead to insulin insensitivity and diabetes.

"The risk of diabetes in a European starts rising after a body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) of about 25 or 26," the normal threshold for overweight, Silink said. "But for a person coming from Bangladesh or India, that risk curve starts after a BMI of just 22," he said.

A person who is 5-feet, 8-inches tall and weighs 145 pounds has a BMI of 22.

...

Urban stress is another factor driving the epidemic, as the world's poor seek employment in cities, Silink said. For reasons that remain unclear, "we know that simply moving from a rural environment to a city doubles your risk of diabetes without any change in body mass," he said. "And if you have to go to a 'mega-city' -- a population of over 10 million -- the risk probably rises fourfold."

[Songwriter]

I haven't read the book, sorry, but if heart disease is caused by stress... I remember reading years ago that some dismiss stress as a major factor because there are societies where stress is common, yet, heart disease is hardly present. Maybe they eat low carb, I dunno. If any ideas, advise.

I would certainly like to know what causes it because I got it. It's confusing as hell.

[Songwriter]

Just yesterday, a "blockbuster" announcement that I saw on a major news network tv news... stents don't save lives. "Statin therapy is just as good." (My quotes.) They were talking about some just-released study being a really big deal, that it would likely change cardiology in a big way but not before a huge fight due to the hospital infrastructure in place for CHD. Surmising that people (like me) would not have stents put in anymore, they would go with other changes, including agressive drug therapy. People with severe angina would get stents. I think that's what it said.

I don't trust the bastards. Who can you believe anymore.

I just searched for yesterday's news info but do not find it but did find this from 2004.

2004 article (http://www.dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=8249)

I just want to live! I'm going and doing normally but I sure want to do all I can. I went off Trichor on my own a few months ago. (My cholesterol was 175 when I had heart attack.)

[Mitra]

There's a video of Malcolm Kendrick (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i8SSCNaaDcE#GU5U2spHI_4) talking about the correlation (or lack of it) between cholesterol levels and heart disease rates in different countries on youtube. It's very short, and there won't be any new info for anyone who's read any of the books, but if you want to see the author in action, or if you haven't done any reading on cholesterol yet, you might be interested.

[Songwriter]

Why do the Aborigines people have such high rates of CHD? Does this happen AFTER they become modernized or just what is going on?

[Mitra]

In his book, Kendrick proposes the hypothesis that it's caused by stress:

Social dislocation need not be as clear-cut as ethnic cleansing. Australian Aboriginals, for example, have remained in Australia. However, their culture, their lifestyle, their status and their communities have been completely shredded. They now subsist at the bottom of the social heirarchy, with little sense of belonging. They have not physically left their country, but their community has been torn out from under them.

Dr Mike did a blog on Stress and the Heart (http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/?p=666), reporting on a study that supports this hypothesis.

[Dodger]

I would agree with societal stress. I lived in Australia for 15 months in the early 1970s and, based upon my personal observations, the aborigines were forced into a no win situation in with everything that they believed in was considered unacceptable. The very first aboriginal college graduate happened when I was there. It totally surprised me as there was no reason, other that discrimination, for that to have not occurred at least a hundred years earlier. I felt that if I was an aboriginal, I would have become an alcoholic, as they had no place in the Australian culture.