Sorry, I haven’t a clue

Public health advice is wrong on all the big issues, says Bryan Hubbard

Hello—your special public health adviser here. Hope you’re well (You are? You’re not following my advice?). Now, it’s come to everyone’s attention (except mine) that much of what I’ve been recommending for more than 40 years is not only wrong but dangerous.

For many years, I’ve been recommending a diet with low-fat dairy products to help reduce your risk of heart disease. Actually, that’s wrong. I’ve also been telling you to take cholesterol-lowering statins if you want to live a long life. That, too, is wide of the mark. And, finally, I’ve advised you to avoid drinking alcohol, but that’s not entirely wise, either.

The devil is in the details, as they say, although in my case it’s in the screaming headlines, too. So, without further ado, let’s look at how I scored an own goal, as they might say in this World Cup year.

Avoid full-fat dairy

Yup, this was a big one. We were told almost from day one that it was bad advice, and that was 40 years ago. Studies at the time demonstrated that full-fat dairy wasn’t contributing to cardiovascular disease and was even protecting people from it.

We ignored the studies and plowed on with the advice to consume only low-fat dairy and milk. Now, a new study underlines the point: A full-fat diet doesn’t cause weight gain or increase the chances of developing heart disease. Instead it allows the body to process higher levels of vitamin D, calcium and protein, and it keeps blood pressure in check, researchers from the University of Toronto have demonstrated.¹

Older people would especially benefit from a diet with full-fat dairy, which, funnily enough, is the same group we told to eat only low-fat products. My bad, as they say on TV shows I don’t watch.

Avoid all alcohol

OK, we did have some zealots in our ranks who liked to bang tambourines on a Sunday. Still, the advice was rock solid: Any amount of alcohol is bad for us.

But, actually, that’s not entirely true. People who drink a glass or two of wine every day are far less likely to develop cancer or heart disease—and so could live longer. Wine, and especially red wine, is the one alcoholic drink that has this protective effect, just as long as it’s drunk in moderation, as researchers from the Second Xiangya Hospital at the Central South University in China have discovered. Moderate red wine drinkers lower their risk of heart disease by 21 percent.²

Take statins to live longer

This one will make you laugh (please). Since the 1990s, we’ve been urging people over age 50 to take a statin a day to lower their levels of LDL cholesterol, which we like to call “bad” cholesterol. It clogs up our arteries, causing a heart attack or stroke. None of this is true, but I’ll press on.

More and more of us are reaching our 100th birthday, and today one in 5,000 people reaches this impressive milestone. That means they’re avoiding all the killer diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s and, yes, heart disease.

So here’s the kicker: Countless studies from around the world have discovered one common feature of centenarians—they all have high levels of LDL cholesterol. I know—I fell over laughing, too.

Here’s one example: A study from Sardinia, a “blue zone” in Italy where the average lifespan is way beyond the norm, discovered that 168 nonagenarians and centenarians had median total cholesterol levels of around 200 mg/dL. These are levels that would prompt most doctors to prescribe statins. More remarkably, those with LDL cholesterol above 130 mg/dL survived significantly longer than those with lower levels: 3.82 years versus 2.79 years.³

All of this would be deeply embarrassing but for the fact that I don’t really care. I’m quitting my role as your public health adviser, as of today, for a lucrative position at a major drug company that makes statins and has benefited from my public health advice utterances for all these years.

So, take what I’ve been saying with a pinch of sea salt (which, despite what I recommend, is also quite good for you, by the way).

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