For years, we have been fed a narrative that a high level of LDL cholesterol is responsible for causing heart disease, and therefore lowering LDL cholesterol to the lowest level possible is a good thing.
The current recommendations are to reduce that number to less than 70 mg/dL. For a report that appeared in the journal Neurology, researchers studied the association between LDL cholesterol and brain bleeding risk. More than 96,000 subjects who had never had a stroke, heart attack, or cancer were studied.
Averages of LDL cholesterol were correlated to the development of heart disease. Subjects with LDL cholesterol levels of 70 mg/dL to 99 mg/dL had a similar risk of heart disease as those with levels greater than 100 mg/dL.
Those with LDL levels less than 70 mg/dL had a significantly higher risk for developing heart disease than those with LDL levels of 70 mg/dL to 90 mg/dL.
For those with LDL levels of 50 mg/dL to 69 mg/dL, there was a 65 percent higher risk, and there was a 169 percent higher risk for those with LDL levels below 50 mg/dL.
I’ve been saying this for years: Using toxic medications to lower cholesterol levels as much as possible does not make sense. This study found a significantly higher risk of brain bleeds when LDL levels are lowered to the recommended ranges.
Statin drugs help about 1 percent of people who take them. Now we have new cholesterol-lowering medications that target LDL cholesterol receptors. They poison a crucial enzyme which results in a drastically lower LDL cholesterol.
But the side effects of doing this include serious, life-threatening infections, cancer, and now brain bleeds.
As I wrote in my book, The Statin Disaster, both statins and LDL lowering medications are fraught with side effects and have poor efficacy.
If your cholesterol levels are too high, it is best to search for a reason why this is occurring and avoid taking toxic medications that simply fail most who take them.
© 2025 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.