15/04/2026
This graphic (and accompanying text) should make you stop and think. High cholesterol is just not that big a deal when it comes to heart disease. Certainly not compared to other things. Leaving aside smoking, all the issues in orange and red are essentially the same thing: insulin resistance and high insulin levels (hyperinsulinemia) - IR/HI.
High blood pressure goes hand in hand with IR/HI which is the thing that makes you overweight and leads to developing type two diabetes (T2D). Taking a pill to bring your blood pressure down does not change your IR/HI. Taking another pill (or an injection) to bring your elevated blood sugar down does not change your IR/HI (injected insulin actually makes it worse). Taking a pill to bring your cholesterol down has been linked to increasing the likelihood of developing diabetes (and does nothing to reduce your IR/HI)!
The primary thing that drives IR/HI is eating carbohydrates (not just sweet sugars, but starches too). No medicine in the world can counter the effect of carbohydrates on your body. No amount of exercise will counter this effect in the long-term either (former Olympic rowing champions, life-long marathon runners and current Ironman triathletes have all developed T2D). The only thing that works is reducing carbohydrate consumption to a level that your body can handle and, for some of us, that means virtually none at all.
Taking medication to counteract too much carbohydrate food is like adding menthol to ci******es to make you breathe more easily while doing nothing to reduce your risk of developing lung disease.
The post I shared is American so it recommends certain blood tests that are harder to get in the UK. But there is a simple test we can all do at home: measure your waist and height. Ideally you want your waist measurement (taken around your bellybutton) to be less than half your height. If your waist is increasing over time your health is heading in the wrong direction. This measurement matters far more than your weight on the scales.
The human body is supposed to have stored fat. Being really lean is not particularly healthy. We should all be able to pinch an inch (because fat stored under the skin is not particularly unhealthy). But if you are gaining fat - especially if it is around your waistline - then that is an indication that you probably have elevated insulin. Insulin is the primary fat storage hormone and when insulin is high your body can't access stored fat so people end up overweight, lacking in energy and genuinely hungry.
Please stop worrying about cholesterol and focus on what really matters instead.
WHY IS YOUR DOCTOR OBSESSED WITH LDL?
Your doctor obsesses over your LDL cholesterol. Here's what JAMA Cardiology says actually predicts heart disease:
• Diabetes -> 10x risk
• Metabolic syndrome -> 6x risk
• Severe obesity -> 4.7x risk
• Smoking -> 4x
• Hypertension -> 4x
Now look at what your doctor is focused on:
• LDL cholesterol -> 1.4x
• Total cholesterol -> 1.0x
Read that again. Total cholesterol has essentially ZERO predictive power for heart disease in younger adults. (Dugani et al., JAMA Cardiology, 2021)
Metabolic factors have hazard ratios of 4–10x.
The lipid markers that drive $15 billion in statin prescriptions? 1.0–1.5x. They're treating the wrong thing. They've ALWAYS been treating the wrong thing.
Your doctor never tested your fasting insulin. Never calculated your Trig/HDL ratio. Never ordered a CAC score. But they sure as hell tested your LDL and wrote you a statin script. That's not medicine. That's marketing.
Ask your doctor for these tests at your next visit:
- Fasting insulin (not just glucose)
- HbA1c
- hsCRP (inflammation)
- Trig/HDL ratio
- ApoB
- HOMA-IR
Print this. Bring it. Demand the full picture.
The truth heals. Don't accept to be plugged on useless statins just because LDL and total cholesterol are high. Those are useless parameters which day nothing much about what is going on.
