Breaking Free of the Cholesterol Myth

The following is adapted from Unstoppable.

For years, I listened to all the common advice about health and wellness, and I tried to follow them to the letter. But time and time again, I ended up exhausted, and I frequently put my body through unnecessary strain and beat myself up when I didn’t get the results I wanted. That’s because much of the common advice was flat-out wrong. 

It wasn’t until I decided to abandon the “right way” of being healthy that I began to see through some of our most prevalent dietary myths. A lot of our popular knowledge about calories, fat, and meat comes from misguided sources. The cholesterol myth, though, is one of the most deceptive of all. 

You’ve likely heard that eating fat will boost your cholesterol, which in turn, will cause heart disease. But I’m here to tell you that not all fat is bad, and in fact, cholesterol may not have as much to do with heart disease as we once thought. 

Will a High-Fat, Low-Carb Diet Hurt Me in the Long Run?

When I first started experimenting with a high-fat, low-carb diet, my biggest concern was cholesterol. Yes, I felt better than ever. I was losing weight. I finally wasn’t hungry all the time. But was it worth it if I were only to discover an astronomical increase in my cholesterol? I knew that following a high-fat diet would inevitably increase my cholesterol, which had long been linked to cardiovascular disease, so I couldn’t help but wonder: was this newfound diet going to kill me?

At the same time, conventional wisdom had been wrong in other parts of my wellness journey, so was it possible that it was also wrong about high cholesterol levels being linked to cardiovascular disease? 

What the Research Shows

Though I sifted through a wide array of research and science from all over the spectrum related to cholesterol, the most impactful information came from a man named Ivor Cummins, host of The Fat Emperor podcast and regular speaker on the topics of diabetes and heart disease. 

What I found especially interesting about Ivor’s work was the fact that he isn’t a traditional diet or health researcher. He’s an engineer by trade, with a degree in chemical engineering and specialization in complex problem-solving methodology, an obsession with root cause analysis, a term more typically used in software engineering, but applicable to almost any other scenario.

Ivor began his research for personal reasons, which mirrored my own health experimentation. Upon receiving a blood test with poor results, he began to study the causes of dyslipidemia, the name for abnormally high cholesterol or fats in the bloodstream. As he studied the causes behind his negative blood test, he realized that the research required far more than a generic medical background to determine the origin of this common disease. It, in fact, required analysis by someone with deep experience in root cause analysis, something with which Ivor was extremely familiar.

Ivor started out hoping to find answers to his elevated levels of cholesterol, but instead, he stumbled upon something far more complex: the systematic denial of sugar’s powerful role in heart disease. As Ivor has pointed out in many talks and podcast episodes, insulin resistance plays a much more powerful role in the risk of cardiovascular disease than cholesterol does, and that insulin resistance is caused by the consumption of huge quantities of sugar that the human body isn’t able to process. 

What’s more, Ivor contends—as I do—that the best indicator of potential heart disease isn’t your cholesterol number, it’s your coronary artery calcium (CAC) results. Although few people are familiar with the CAC scan, in 2018, the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology broadly endorsed the test for at-risk patients. In fact, it’s probably useful for a much broader segment of the population, particularly those who are trying to parse signal versus noise when it comes to cardiovascular health.

Sugar is the Culprit, Not Cholesterol

You can do more to decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease by cutting out sugar and carbohydrates than worrying about your levels of cholesterol from eating fat. This isn’t just a trendy conclusion—it’s proven by ample scientific and medical research that has been systematically buried.

But why, you might ask, why would anyone bury this type of useful data?

The simple answer is money.

The more complex one is: people make more money by avoiding determining the actual root cause of heart disease and charging patients and insurance to patch the problems around it than by solving the root cause of heart disease itself. In addition, let’s be real: sugar is a booming business. Just think of all the food that’s made tastier with the help of corn syrup, fructose, and other cornerstones of the processed foods industry. Sugar and its derivatives help products fly off the shelves, even though they’re poisoning us in the process.

Bottom line?

If you want to avoid heart disease, forget obsessing over cholesterol. Get obsessed over the amount of excess sugar you’re putting into your body and how it’s putting you at risk for serious medical repercussions.

For more advice on dietary myths, you can find Unstoppable on Amazon.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur who launched several companies before he began high school. David spent his youth working more than one hundred hours a week, until he realized the toll it was taking on his mind, body, and life. After failing to see results from conventional wisdom, he decided to do what he does best: innovate. His unique journey to wellness has helped him realize his life’s purpose of empowering others to optimize their own lives by reclaiming their health. As David continues to evolve, he receives tremendous support from his partner, Dawn, and their three inspiring children.