Quantum Effect in the Brain Challenges Conventional Wisdom

Medicine is complicated. I looked again at the conclusions of the study as covered in the article, and it turns out I had missed the primary underlying factor - although high LDL and total cholesterol unquestionably cause increased arterial plaque and corresponding coronary heart disease (and higher death rate due to those causes), this high LDL and TC according to the statistics also cause considerably lower cancer death rates. So the result is that overall net mortality rate due to all causes goes down as  LDL and TC levels increase. So the obvious conclusion is that it is useless and even doing harm to artificially try to keep LDL and TC low in the hope that the lower CHD achieves a lower probability of death. 

Excerpt from the Conclusions:

"...when the focus is on older people, which is when the vast majority deaths occur, and on all-cause mortality the perception of the risks associated with cholesterol are reversed. It is also highly significant that these results do NOT conflict with the research on middle-aged men and heart disease. The data from Honolulu confirm that in those involved in the study with low cholesterol there was a low death rate from heart disease but crucially the incidence of cancer was relatively high and demonstrates why it is vital to consider the big picture. The emphasis on TC and LDL cholesterol as risk factors was based on a complete failure to do so. There is absolutely no logical justification for advising people to lower their TC or their LDL cholesterol. On the contrary all the evidence which is now available indicates that that the higher the better. The results for women are quite exceptional and show consistently that those with the highest TC values invariably have the greatest life expectancy."