Don’t let hig cholesterol kill you ...beating it is simple

The country is facing a health crisis. From heart disease to stroke, millions of Brits are developing life-shortening conditions – and they are often triggered by lifestyle choices. Our brilliant new series will help you reduce your risk and make vital changes – before it’s too late. This week,

Pat Hagan takes a closer look at high cholesterol

Back in post-war Finland in the 1950s, it was hard to imagine a healthier lifestyle than that of the country’s thousands of forestry workers. They spent all day outdoors in the fresh air, indulging in the kind of arduous physical labour many of us would balk at these days.

It should have been a recipe for good health and a long life. Yet, something was killing them well before their time.

It wasn’t until a landmark study in 1953 by an American researcher called Dr Ancel Keys that the mystery was solved.

Keys compared the diets of men from seven different countries to try to work out why rates of heart disease appeared to be so much higher in some than others.

He found Japanese fishermen who lived mainly on vegetables, rice and fish were easily outliving the foresters of Finland, who consumed enormous amounts of saturated fat – even routinely spreading butter on their cheese.

It was the study that finally unlocked the role of cholesterol in the rising heart disease epidemic and marked a turning point in the way medicine approached the problem. In the decades since, high cholesterol has emerged as public enemy number one when it comes to heart disease.

GPs routinely test for it, food manufacturers market low-fat products designed