by Sean Croxton

I wish more medical docs had half the chutzpah of Dr. Cate Shanahan.

It takes a brave woman to go on live radio and rip the pharmaceutical industry a new one.

I mean, does your prescription pad wielding doc ever tell you stuff like this…

* 
The only people who truly benefit from cholesterol-lowering drugs are men who have had a heart attack and are also smokers but refuse to quit.

* 

Your total cholesterol score has nothing to do with your risk of having a heart attack…and that there’s a MUCH better way to determine your risk. 



* Cholesterol is a crucial building block for your brain. Cholesterol-lowering drugs shrink the brain, leading to potentially serious issues like dementia.

* 

Insurance companies pay HUGE bonus checks to doctors who “help” their patients keep their LDL — the supposed bad cholesterol — levels down. So how do you think they go about keeping these numbers down? 



* A whopping 70% of women on cholesterol-lowering drugs for five years or more go on to develop diabetes. Diabetes doubles the risk for heart attacks. Go figure…



Probably not.



And there’s more. A lot more.