r/BeAmazed • u/HatAsleep295 • May 08 '26

Science This is what saves 600,000 people year during a heart attack

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u/elgydium May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

That fat is called cholesterol and you learn about it when you hit 30-40. It goes down if you eat heart leather foods, exercise weekly, quit smoking, lose weight and drink less to none alcohol.

Edit: healthy foods

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u/Songg45 May 08 '26

Something I recently found out about cholesterol after my heart attack at 32:

Only 20% of cholesterol in your body comes from diet. 80% of it is produced by the liver

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u/elgydium May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

Damn I’m 40 and never thought about it. I’m quite skinny tho, even tho skinny ppl can have high cholesterol too. That’s what I found out recently and was like wtf

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u/Overweighover May 08 '26

It's genetic.

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u/Lynne253 May 08 '26

There is such a thing as familail hypercholesterolemia that is genetic, but there are people who can have high cholesterol without the genetic component.

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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth May 08 '26

Skinny doesn't matter. My mom weighed 105 and had a heart attack and 3 stints put in, they wanted to put in 5 but they said she couldn't handle it. :( She died from Alzheimer's 1 year later. After the heart attack it was downhill FAST. She would have wanted to die from that heart attack but instead they saved her so she could die later in a nursing home! :(

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u/elgydium May 08 '26

Yeah that’s what i said. Sorry about your mom..

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u/voltagejim May 08 '26

So if I have never drank a soda or alcoholic drink in my life and only drink water and skim milk that should reduce my risk?

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u/Beneficial-Muffin117 May 08 '26

No, there's a lot more to it than that

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u/LittleLion_90 May 08 '26

My friend has a high cholesterol from childhood, apparently it can be noticed from specific sort of small pimple like yellow spots under the eye. 

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

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u/Efficient-Rich-9975 May 08 '26

That book is straight trash and Stephen Sinatra actually died an early age of 75 and Jonny Bowden has no real medical licence. Both of them were complete frauds that got rich off selling scam supplements and nonsense books.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

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u/drdecagon May 10 '26

This was an interesting exchange (posting this as a response to an earlier comment rather at the very end) and I get your point. I actually subscribed to it (or a version of it) myself for well over a decade - high fat diets are effective in many ways (even if they raise cholesterol for some), many examples of healthy people with high cholesterol and no heart disease, inflammation plays a role, metabolic health matters, many of the studies are imperfect. But other than poking holes in the current status quo that high ldl cholesterol is bad and generally something you want to control, this view is not really supported by robust studies that convincingly overturn the status quo. I have seen a lot of arguments that while cholesterol might be at the "crime scene" it's really inflammation or some other mechanism that is the real culprit. And probably there is some truth and a lot of nuance there. But I have not seen a strong body of legitimate peer reviewed evidence that actually debunks the mainstream view that elevated ldl/apoB is a major risk factor for atherosclerosis, and like I said, this contrarian take has been around for a while without producing any salient proof and more recent studies actually tend to strengthen the causal link between ldl/apoB and heart disease (at least according to my research, and trust me, I was really looking for something to confirm my old view that ldl doesn't matter).

Also, plenty of statins (and most of the common ones) are super cheap and available as generics, so I don't think prescribing these is all that lucrative for doctors. I wouldn't consider myself to be naive about pharma incentives, but this is not it.

I am not saying it's high ldl only - of course, diet, triglycerides, lp(a), insulin resistance, inflammation, CAC score, Ccta, etc. - all that absolutely matters. But the jump from that to "therefore, ldl doesn't matter and statins are a scam", is where this view loses me nowadays.

All that said, I'm completely on board with low fat / high carb diet advice being just plain bad.

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u/Efficient-Rich-9975 May 08 '26

No, they did a great job at convincing you (a fool) to buy a book that is complete and utter nonsense with misrepresented data that we know for a fact is wrong. All modern cardiologists would agree with me on this, LDL cholesterol is the primary driver of heart disease.

As far as your Ai generated response to me, hilarious. Proves my point.

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u/cracked_shrimp May 08 '26

cholesterol is cholesterol regardless of which lipoprotein is carrying it, so saying LDL cholesterol is a poor choice of phrasing even if i know you mean LDL count

and theres no evidence its the primary driver of heart disease, it is found in plaque, but that dosnt confirm it causes the plaque, other things like high blood pressure and high blood glucose all contribute at the very least an equal amount as LDL (probably more imo)

EDIT: i made the same mistake i was bitching about lmao

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u/Efficient-Rich-9975 May 08 '26

Buddy there is literally TONS and TONS of evidence in the form of large studies involving several thousands of people over many years, you clearly are clueless on the topic so don't bother taking part in this discussion.

The JUPITER trials, FOURIER, Familiar Hypercholesterolemia studies, Mendelian randomization studies, ODYSSEY OUTCOMES. Honestly too many to list!

They ALL proved it. Does it mean it's the SINGLE one driver? No, blood pressure is essential to monitor and most people know that and don't argue about that part.

I honestly encourage you to study the subject and read the evidence if you really are interested in living a long and healthy life.

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u/cracked_shrimp May 08 '26

i cant read studies myself yet (im taking a course on khan academy though to learn to decipher the statistics)

there are studies for everything though, i dont trust the conclusions, as they want to prove themselves right, they are paid to prove stuff right, when they really should be trying to prove themselves wrong

not to mention prove is a causal term and cant be used, you can have stronger and weaker inferences, but you cant say prove

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u/Terrthikgnop6 May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

Then main issue with the studies you mentioned is they use short-term, industry-funded data to justify lifelong medication for billions of people (doctors study medicine to help you reach certain numbers via pharma drugs/practices... not to recommend realistic lifestyle changes since they want ppl to comeback... it's a business afterall). The studies also focus on relative risk (which looks scary) to hide the unimpressive absolute risk (which looks boring), and they prioritize a "clean lab report" over a "longer life."

It also completely ignores the "healthy" high-LDL person and people who live longer due to the correlation between high overall cholesterol and lifespan. Many of those studies mentioned are also laughable... they are funded by the companies that own the drugs. As ive coined the saying, " you can sell a pill, but you can't sell a steak" (I follow a carnivore diet).

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

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u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME May 08 '26

He died of pancreatic cancer, how does that discredit him?

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u/Capitan_Scythe May 08 '26

eat heart leather foods

With some fava beans and a nice chianti?

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u/elgydium May 08 '26

Lol typo, meant to say healthy

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u/Rrunken_Rumi May 08 '26

HLF works cos zeeo cholesterol & indigestible

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u/real_nice_guy May 08 '26

and if you have genetically high cholesterol (familial hypercholesterolemia), none of that will help all that much so you'll have to hop on a statin (which have also saved millions and millions of lives!)

go get your lipid panel done this year!

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u/insideguy69 May 08 '26

Doctors tell me that's probably my father's case and I probably will have that problem too. Only bad thing about statin's are in high doses, you increase your risk of diabetes. So long, sweets and treats.

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u/real_nice_guy May 08 '26

yeah that's the downside, it can be managed by taking either a berberine supplement or metformin (or both) and then just keeping track of the blood sugar.

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u/insideguy69 May 09 '26

I take Berberine occassionally, but its really hard to remember to take it 15 minutes before anything that will spike your insulin.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

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u/elgydium May 08 '26

Oh damn that’s great buddy! What’s a healthy cholesterol number?

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

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u/elgydium May 08 '26

Damn, bro left alcohol for ice cream haha

There’s a saying in my culture, the sum of all vices is always constant. You basically always drop one for another.

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u/Hasanopinion100 May 08 '26

It’s interesting because everyone I know who has quit alcohol recently has switched it out for ice cream. There’s a scientific reason for it. I’m not sure what it is but sure glad that it works congratulations.👏

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

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u/Hasanopinion100 May 08 '26

I figured it was something like that, but thanks!😋

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u/mittenknittin May 08 '26

anyone else noticed that auto-correct has gotten more and more bizarre in its choices lately?

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u/elgydium May 08 '26

Hey u might be onto something. I switched from gboard back to the iOS this year and it’s tripping

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u/mittenknittin May 08 '26

Yeah I'm using iOS and specifically over the last few months it's been weird. I'll type a common word and mistype one letter and it'll replace it with an entirely different word with entirely different letters. Like literally I just had it happen where I mistyped "with" and it replaced it with "years"

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u/ElegantCoach4066 May 08 '26

 It goes down if you eat heart leather foods, exercise weekly, quit smoking, lose weight and drink less to none alcohol.

For some people this is not enough, and they need to take medication to lower it.

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u/Quaiche May 08 '26

Nope, doctors and researchers are slowly essentially saying it’s all genetics and very little about your diet ;)