“Slightly out of whack” includes undiagnosed thyroid problems, those fluffed off by the doctor and those not corrected by medication and/or changes in diet. Either too much or too little thyroid will do. And a whole lot of people are sitting ducks, unaware of possible danger.

Preventable danger.

We need to talk about this. Getting our arms and minds around the problem has a lot in common with wrestling an octopus, so I’ll take it one tentacle at a time, talking about both problems and solutions.

Since the topic is heart disease, I’ll start with cholesterol. Write this on a stone: Cholesterol is my friend, not my enemy.

Your thyroid–and all the rest of your endocrine system–can’t function without cholesterol. Neither can your brain. In fact, every cell in your body needs cholesterol to do good things.

When medicine landed on 200 as the maximum possible cholesterol level for good health, the average cholesterol level in the U.S. was 240. And it wasn’t a problem. Somehow or another, 200 sounded good to the doctors, so they whooped it in as the sacred standard.

Making that nonsense even worse, the whole idea of cholesterol as the enemy came from a misreading of the research. I’ll talk about the real cause of heart disease, including congestive heart failure, in another tentacle.

Setting the new, much ballyhooed, cholesterol standard below the natural average automatically created a huge market for a new type of drug, statins.

Statin drugs are the biggest medical fraud in history. They do virtually nothing positive for men and absolutely nothing positive for women. But they excel at side effects: brain, muscles, liver, endocrine system and eyes all come under assault from statins. That’s a whole lot of suffering for no good reason.

Statins do their dastardly work by disrupting an enzyme that creates cholesterol in the liver. Well, excuse me very much, but the body works as an intricate beehive of interrelated enzyme actions; yanking out one thread throws everything into chaos. Liver transplant anyone?

Want to get really outraged? The medical community already knows everything I’m telling you. Cholesterol received a clean bill of health and statins got found out a few years ago, but since it takes about twenty-five years for change to reach the doctor’s office, the statin disaster will keep roaring down the tracks for a long time. Big Pharma makes big bucks from statins. And your health? Phffft.

So what should you do if your doctor scares your socks off about cholesterol? I mean, besides looking for a new doctor who doesn’t treat by intimidation.

First, recognize that normal cholesterol levels range up to 300–sometimes higher.

And it’s low cholesterol that’ll kill you. A cholesterol level lower than 150 invites big-time problems–cancer and stroke to mention just two. You lack the defense to fight back

Second, a safe way to lower your cholesterol level, if you’re in the very small percent of people who crank out cholesterol by the carload, is pantethine, a Vitamin B5 offshoot that blesses your whole body and lowers cholesterol like nobody’s business. (Pep for the Pooped includes a discussion of pantethine; it’s new to most people although it’s been around for a long time.)

Third, if high triglycerides haunt you, cut out high fructose corn syrup and transfats. Not cut them back; cut them out–which will take some doing because they’re everywhere. Just consider label-reading as your new hobby and go for it. Be the Captain of your own health ship.

To sum up: Steer away from statins and quit worrying about cholesterol.