Word: cholesterols
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that when hypertensive patients were given the popular diuretic hydrochlorothiazide, their ability to metabolize the sugar glucose dropped 11% and their blood levels of cholesterol and fats rose 5% and 15%, respectively. The researchers stress, however, that there is no proof to date that diuretics have raised the actual incidence of diabetes or heart attacks...
Nothing is more appealing than a simple solution to a complex problem. That is why so many people have eagerly embraced the notion that eating right can prevent heart disease. Following the advice of the U.S. Government's National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), millions of Americans have lined up to get their cholesterol checked and have purged their refrigerators of fatty foods. Food manufacturers are pumping up sales simply by touting their products as "cholesterol free." Rarely has a health campaign so quickly become a national obsession...
...backlash may be in the offing. In the provocative new book Heart Failure, excerpted in the September issue of the Atlantic magazine, Thomas Moore, a Washington-based writer, contends that overzealous crusaders against cholesterol have exaggerated the benefits of low-fat diets. Moore, who spent four years reviewing the scientific literature on the subject, acknowledges that researchers have established a link between high cholesterol and increased risk of heart disease. He argues, however, that diet modification cannot do much to lower cholesterol, that reducing blood levels of the suspect substance has not been proved to prolong life and that cholesterol...
...England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Certainly, many people have an overly simplistic view of the relationship between diet and heart disease. Observes Dr. Allan Brett, an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School: "Some patients have been led to believe that lowering cholesterol is like magic: eat a bowl of oat bran, and you're cured. For most, that's not true...
None of Moore's arguments, however, disprove the basic contention that high- cholesterol diets are potentially hazardous. The evidence against cholesterol is stronger than he implies. If his readers go back to pouring on the gravy and spreading the butter, then the book will have done them a disservice...