Cardiovascular disease is big money. The monetisation of a disease may seem strange, yet that is the current business model of pharmaceutical companies. They need disease in order to profit because they only manufacture drugs that treat symptoms once a disease has developed. They are not in the business of preventing disease. Aside from antibiotics, which they are actually reluctant to research, the drug companies produce little in the way of preventive medicine. Cardiovascular disease is a big moneymaker for the drug companies because they have systematically built up the cholesterol paradigm of cardiovascular disease, and in response to this have created a range of cholesterol lowering drugs of questionable effectiveness, and these drugs are immensely profitable to these companies. In order to maintain their facade, they must convince the public that cholesterol in the diet is the cause of cardiovascular disease because it raises blood levels of cholesterol, and that this in turn leads to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.
Because eggs are a very rich source of cholesterol, part of the narrative propagated by the drug companies and their paid agents is to vilify eggs (and other high cholesterol animal products). The trouble with this narrative is that it is provably false at every juncture and the nutritional literature does not support the contention that eggs can modify blood cholesterol levels. For example, in a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition1, researchers investigated the association between intake of eggs and the risk of cardiovascular disease using an analysis of older studies (a meta-analysis). The authors reported from the 16 studies they included in the analysis that those in the highest egg consumption category (those who consumed more than 1 egg per day) had no significant increase risk in cardiovascular disease, stroke, or mortality from cardiovascular disease when compared to those in the lowest egg consumption category (those who consumed less than 1 egg per week or those who never consumed eggs).
Therefore in healthy individuals eggs are not associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. These results agree with other studies (here and here and here) that show that eggs are not able to alter the plasma cholesterol levels of healthy subjects. Therefore the current paradigm that implicates dietary cholesterol as a causative agent in cardiovascular disease, and aims to vilify food such as eggs, is false. This leads us to the question that if cholesterol is not to blame for cardiovascular disease, what is the causative agent and why do the drug companies not shift their attention to address the true cause? Well according to a number of studies magnesium deficiency is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. For example, in a similar analysis of past papers2, another group of researchers analysed the previous literature for associations between magnesium and the risk of cardiovascular disease. The results of this analysis showed that each 0.2 mmol/L increase in plasma magnesium was associated with a 30 % lower risk of cardiovascular disease in the subjects.
This magnesium study is interesting because it also looked at dietary magnesium. Each additional 200 mg per day increase in dietary magnesium intake was associated with a 22 % lower risk of ischaemic heart disease. However this association was not linear, as a threshold was reached at ~250 mg intake. Therefore it is likely that magnesium does not possess pharmacological actions against cardiovascular disease (i.e. it is not acting as a drug), but instead those with a deficiency of the mineral have a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This likely related to the fact that magnesium is an important electrolyte in humans and is required for correct heart function as well as for relaxation of the arteries of the body. So why do the drug companies not focus on magnesium and why is this association almost totally ignored by the mainstream medical community? Well, magnesium is exceedingly cheap and there are no profits to be made correcting mineral deficiencies in subjects who consume low quality foods.
RdB
