I am not a medical doctor, but I do know that the body needs cholesterol - it is a natural compound and an essential part of mammal cell membranes. It is also an essential component of the myelin sheath that is the insulation around our nerve fibres. Our bodies will manufacture cholesterol if it needs to.
We have been told for years that people with high cholesterol get heart disease, so we have all cut back on our cholesterol intake. But what if it is the other way round? What if people who HAVE heart disease manufacture lots of cholesterol to try to repair the damage to their weak hearts?
The heart diesease itself could be caused by lack of exercise. Doctors constantly tell us we should do more exercise. Any muscle - and the heart is constructed of muscle - that is not regularly used will not be maintained in peak condition by the body. The heart beats all the time of course, but if it rarely or never gets above a certain level of work, then it will become weak and then might develop faults, in the same way that a car engine that only ever sits idling in traffic will clog up.
So for example it might not have been the lorry driver's greasy spoon breakfasts that were the problem but the fact that lorry drivers sat in a chair for 12 hours and did not exercise that caused their heart problems.
So there we all are avoiding butter, full fat milk and animal fats etc to keep our cholesterol down. However perhaps our bodies are having difficulty maintaining themselves and cruically the myelin insulation around our nerves. So dementia - possibly caused by crosstalk between the nerves owing to the poor insulation - is starting to become a real problem.
Statins change the balance of cholesterol in our bodies, reducing LDL and increasing HDL, but maybe this is causing other problems, such as reducing the ability of the body to maintain itself, leading to 'premature aging' and possibly dementia?
I am just thinking aloud here. Any doctors on the forum?