Another article on statin drugs that completely ignores the benefits of a vegan diet

MSNBC.com | Heart Health: As cheap statins arrive, why fret about lifestyle?

I think any article on cholesterol and/or cholesterol-lowering drugs should be required to call doctors like Dean Ornish (who writes for MSNBC/Newsweek now anyway, incidentally) for a quote before publishing. Yes, lower-cost statin drugs portend a society ever more reliant on drugs to solve their problems, rather than truly healthful lifestyle changes. But rather than talking about the benefits of a vegan diet, which has been clinically shown to have the same results as these drugs, the article focuses instead on the merits of exercise and weight loss. While proper exercise may offer a small improvement in overall cholesterol, it doesn't begin to address the HDL/LDL ratio in a way that diet can.

I can personally attest to this. Before I ever got back into the gym (which probably isn't doing any wonders for my serotonin and cortisol levels anyway), I went vegan. My cholesterol dropped to 112 the first time I checked my blood profile after switching to a plant-based diet, and seemed to stabilize a little higher at 138 a couple of years later, with an ideal HDL/LDL ratio at that level.

Categories: cholesterol | health | vegan | statins