THE HEALTH ARTICLE

The Cholesterol Buzz

The health field is really humming and, if you listen closely, everyone seems to be talking about cholesterol. Nowadays, everyone seems to be declaring all-out war on the substance. The rally to lower cholesterol levels and eliminate it from our diets has taken on the fire and brimstone, reminiscent of a turn-of-the-century religious debate.

Practically every medical, government, and health organization in the country has jumped on the band wagon. And, if you’ll notice, all of this always seems to coincide with the release and the FDA’s approval of some miraculous new anticholesterol drugs. The timing is almost uncanny.

Normally, an outpouring concern of this magnitude would come on the heels of some new breath-taking research. Has medical research finally discovered that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease? Hardly. It appears instead that the breakthrough concerning cholesterol has more to do with the development of new drugs to get rid of it than it does with it being the primary cause of our number-one killer—heart disease.

Make no mistake, I’m all for stopping heart attacks, which kill more than 500,000 people in this countr95