A systematic review (an analysis of studies) of LDL cholesterol (the one we are all told is dreadfully bad cholesterol) in people aged 60 and over in the British Medical Journal.
Nearly 70,000 people were assessed for all-cause mortality (basically reasons for death) and what they found was that a huge percentage of participants with high LDL live as long, or longer, than those with low LDL.
Oops! That is not the message we have been given!
Another nugget to consider is that in the over 60s, the majority of statin trials have shown NO positive impact on cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Oops again!
(Remember though – if you have been prescribed medications, please talk to your doctor about any concerns you have – don’t just stop them)
Dietary recommendations up until now have been to replace all “bad” fats and oils with vegetable oils. They have found that this advice may actually be quite flawed and doing this may in fact be implicated in the findings that doing this may INCREASE mortality – oops again!
Which vegetable oils are not ideal? Those which can be inflammatory due to their composition, such as peanut, corn, sunflower, cottonseed and canola oils.
Olive oil and coconut oil are not in this grouping.
What are the best things I can do – I am not 60!
Basically, get up and move – and watch your diet. Problems arise when your diet involves lots of inflammatory foods and substances, impacting the health of your blood vessels, which your body sees as important to repair – a major factor that is leading to arterial plaques (the repaired points).
There are definitely many other things to consider when maintaining or improving cardiovascular health – but this gives you something to think about at least.