Study: Lower Your Cholesterol and Raise Your Risk of Death Following Mainstream Diet Advice

You've been hearing for decades about how a healthy diet is one that lowers your intake of saturated fats and replaces them with "healthy" unsaturated oils. This, you have been told, will lower your cholesterol and your risk of having a heart attack.What you probably didn't hear is that a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) February of this past year found that though the first claim is true--swapping out saturated fats for vegetable oils will lower your cholesterol--if the oil you use instead of saturated fat is full of omega-6 fatty acid, like safflower oil or corn oil, the second claim is completely false.The study found that when men who had already had a heart attack replaced saturated fats with safflower oil and ate margarine made with safflower oil they significantly raised the risk that they would die of a heart attack, stroke or, in fact, any cause of death over the next five years.How significantly was that risk raised? The study states: "Among the control and intervention groups combined, an increase of 5% of food energy from unspecified PUFA [polyunsaturated fatty acids] predicted about 30% higher risk of cardiovascular death and all cause mortality. A reduction in SFA [saturated fat] and increase in the PUFA:SFA ratio were also associated with increased risks of all cause and cardiovascular mortality." In short, the more they replaced saturated fat with "healthy" polyunsaturated oil the more likely they were to die.I was only made aware of this s...
Source: Diabetes Update - Category: Diabetes Source Type: blogs