*45 In 2003, for instance, the National Cholesterol Education Program described the shift in emphasis from total cholesterol to LDL cholesterol this way: “Many earlier studies measured only serum total cholesterol, although most of total cholesterol is contained in LDL. Thus, the robust relationship between total cholesterol and [coronary heart disease] found in epidemiological studies strongly implies that an elevated LDL is a powerful risk factor [my italics].”
Return to text.

†46 In the technique described by Fredrickson, Levy, and Lees, LDL cholesterol is not measured directly but calculated from the measurements of triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and total cholesterol.
Return to text.

*47 Those that did mention the effect of carbohydrates on HDL cholesterol rejected the relevance to heart disease, on the basis, as the American Heart Association explained, “that epidemiological studies have demonstrated an inverse relation between carbohydrate consumption and risk for CHD.”
Return to text.

*48 The nutritional constituents of such a piece of relatively fatty meat can be found in the Nutrient Database for Standard Reference at the USDA Web site, along with those of thousands of other foods.
Return to text.

*49 To be precise, Krauss says, he rediscovered this heterogeneity of LDL: Waldo Fisher of the University of Florida, and Verne Schumaker of the University of California, Los Angeles, had discovered it independently a decade earlier, but had not pursued it further.
Return to text.

*50 This suggests that saturated fat elevates LDL-cholesterol levels in part by increasing the amount of cholesterol in the LDL, and so making larger and fluffier LDL to begin with, rather than by increasing the number of LDL particles or by increasing the number of small, dense LDL particles.
Return to text.

*51 What used to be known as juvenile-onset diabetes, which is characterized by an insulin deficit, is referred to as Type 1 or insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, IDDM. The less severe form, which is characterized by insulin resistance rather than a lack of insulin, used to be called adult-onset diabetes. It is now called Type 2 or non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus or NIDDM. This is the terminology that I’ll now use as well.
Return to text.

*52 Named after Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, a distant relative of William Banting, of corpulence notoriety.
Return to text.

*53 The reports do acknowledge, as the AHA-NIH-ADA conference report put it, that “very high-carbohydrate diets may accentuate atherogenic dyslipidemia”—i.e., small, dense LDL, high triglycerides, and low HDL—but then it recommends a high-carbohydrate, low-saturated-fat diet as the treatment.
Return to text.

*54 Ralph DeFronzo, on the other hand, believes that sufficient studies have confirmed Stout’s observations and that insulin itself should thus be considered an “atherogenic hormone.”
Return to text.

*55 This hypothesis cannot, however, explain why atherosclerosis among diabetics has remained relatively impervious to the otherwise beneficial effects of insulin therapy to control blood sugar.
Return to text.

*56 Those in Cerami’s laboratory at Rockefeller University and the researchers who trained with him get credit for much of the AGE work that followed.
Return to text.