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The Liz Earle Wellbeing Show

Cholesterol and statins explained, with Dr Ellen Fallows

The Liz Earle Wellbeing Show

Liz Earle

Wellbeing, Arts, Gut Health, Self-improvement, Women's Health, Beauty, Healthy Ageing, Menopause, Midlife, Health & Fitness, Hormones, Supplements, Health, Exercise, Fashion & Beauty, Fitness, Education, Better Second Half, Skincare, Liz Earle

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Confused about cholesterol? GP Dr Ellen Fallows joins Liz to unpack everything you need to know about cholesterol - and how to make personal choices between lifestyle interventions and medication.


Ellen reveals exactly what cholesterol is - and why it's important - and discusses with Liz how concerned we need to be about this fatty compound.


The episode also covers the optimum levels of cholesterol, the role of food and our diets here, and Ellen shares alternatives to statins, if we prefer not to go down that route.


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Most of my time is spent talking about pills when I know there's very good evidence that if I can help people shift to, for example, a Mediterranean diet, it's much more effective than me trying to persuade somebody to take a statin.

0:14.0

And I also know that that diet will help their mood, it will help reduce their risk of cancer, of all these other things, dementia,

0:22.6

all sorts of things.

0:25.4

That's GP Ellen Fallows. She's here to unpack what we really need to know about cholesterol

0:31.2

and how to make personal choices between pills and lifestyle interventions.

0:37.1

This is the Lizzole Well-Bebeing Show, the podcast, helping us all

0:40.4

have a better second half. I'm Liz Earle. Welcome to our conversation today as you tune in to

0:47.1

my mission to find ways for all of us to thrive at any age, but especially in later life by

0:53.2

investing, of course, in our health and our well-being

0:55.5

today. Well, regulars here will have gathered by now this month, my 62nd birthday month,

1:02.1

is all about ageing more boldly and more healthily than ever before. So today, a topic

1:08.1

so many of you write to me asking for guidance on, as you notice your body changing with time, and that is cholesterol.

1:15.6

Do you know, I probably get more comments about people confused about all the conflicting advice on both sides of the saturated fat debate than almost anything else,

1:24.6

and it's a subject I feel quite strongly about having researched and

1:29.2

written about fats and oils since my very first book, Bital Oils, published, gosh, almost 35 years ago now.

1:37.4

And then, of course, in more recent years, becoming even more aware of the importance of things

1:42.1

like cholesterol in creating healthy hormones, and for midlife

1:45.8

women especially, and we know how important these are to maintain. So to advance the conversation,

1:52.2

I'm truly delighted to be joined today by Ellen Fallows, a GP, the vice president of the British

1:58.3

Society of Lifestyle Medicine and a lecturer in Lifestyle Medicine at Oxford University.

2:04.3

As an experienced obesity and lifestyle medicine expert,

2:08.6

she can help us understand what cholesterol is,

...

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