Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and has been our number

one killer every single year from more than a century.

Dr. William Clifford Roberts published extensively in the cause of our top killer.

He was the Chief of Pathology at the National Institutes of Health for 30 years

before he headed up Baylor University's Heart and Vascular Institute.

He authored more than 1,300 scientific publications,

wrote more than 100 book chapters in cardiology,

and was the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Cardiology for 40 years?

Well, what is the cause of atherosclerosis?

Well, first of all, didn't he mean causes?

I mean, there are lots of things that can increase a risk of heart disease,

have blood pressure, diabetes, cigarette smoking, inactivity, obesity,

but none of that matters, he said, unless we have high

cholesterol.

Atherosclerosis is a cholesterol problem.

Yes, these other factors can amplify the cholesterol damage, but as long as cholesterol

levels are low enough, heart disease remains rare.

There's only one necessary risk factor for atherosclerosis,

and that's elevated cholesterol in the blood. How low does our cholesterol have to be to

prevent and arrest atherosclerotic plaques? Ideally, our bad cholesterol, the LDL, should be

under 70 milligrams for decilator, which is less than 1.8 mill per liter.

If such a goal was created, the great scourge of the Western world would be essentially

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