Because Good Medicine Deserves Better Explanations
The TG/HDL-C Ratio in Clinical Context For decades, cholesterol has been the headline act in our understanding of heart disease. High LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) — the so-called “bad” cholesterol — was cast as the main villain, while HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) earned praise as the “good” kind. Statins became the blockbuster therapy, and LDL-C targets the cornerstone of … Read more
Growing up and living with the diet-heart hypothesis through my professional career has been a remarkable experience. I was lucky. My mentors were great. I went to all the big cardiology conferences. I read the best books and I learned from the great masters. Early on, I was taught the fairly well established relationship between blood cholesterol and coronary heart disease. … Read more
Recently, concerns have been raised about the increased risk of diabetes associated with statin therapy. However, it has been pointed out that the risk of diabetes is low in absolute terms and when compared with the reduction in cardiovascular events achieved by treatment. In other words, the potential benefits to health are believed to outweigh potential … Read more
The metabolic syndrome is a constellation of risk factors, most usually associated with increased body weight, fat accumulation around the abdominal organs often termed central, or visceral obesity (1), and increased resistance to the effects of insulin. Other names that have been used to describe the metabolic syndrome are syndrome X, the insulin resistance syndrome, the deadly quartet (2) and … Read more
An interesting scientific paper on the efficacy of different dietary approaches in type 2 diabetes recently caught my eye. The study has not received much media coverage although it certainly addresses a question of importance to millions of people worldwide. More than 20 million people in the US have type 2 diabetes. According to the … Read more