by Victoria Woodard Harvey

Like many trainers, Mikki derives her sense of purpose from helping people get fit, and she is very good at it. The former Iron Maiden Body Building champion and award-winning coach  definitely does her homework, and her research has developed into a training approach using HIIT (high-intensity interval training) and Metabolic Resistance Training to burn fat while gaining muscle and improving cardio fitness. She believes that the quality of foods consumed on a daily basis is the largest determining factor in what we look like, what we feel like, and how long we live. Her book Your Primal Body: Lean, Fit and Pain-free at Any Age is due out later this year.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? My 6 a.m. clients.

Ever been less than fit? Not really. I grew up with two brothers in New Jersey, played hard and never stopped.

Breakfast today?  I had my usual, grass-fed beef and plant foods: zucchini, carrots, broccoli, green beans. with coconut oil and avocado.

Ideal meal plan?  The high-protein, low-carb diet of our Paleolithic hunter/gatherer ancestors was whole foods found in nature, like wild game, fish, vegetables, wild fruits, eggs and nuts. It’s an excellent model.

What’s your “beef”?  Wild game was naturally grass-fed and organic, high in omega-3, the anti-inflammatory fatty acid, and low in omega-6, the pro-inflammatory fatty acid.  Look at what kept early humans functioning optimally for millions of years.  If we returned to the dietary needs and physical activities dictated by our DNA, we could eliminate many cancers, Alzheimer’s, obesity, poor metabolism, low stamina.

Nightmare job?  Anything sedentary.

Greatest fallacy in fitness training?  That doing a ton of cardio is the way to get fit.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Any pet peeves?  The lack of standardization in fitness training is just crazy.  Anyone looking for a trainer should know whether the trainer has a science degree or just got an online certificate in a weekend.

One thing you can’t live without?  Kettlebells.  I’ve weightlifted for 20 years, but kettlebells put me in the best shape in my life.  I recently completed the RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge) certification training. Qualifying means snatching 35-lb kettlebells overhead 100 times in under 5 minutes. Pavel was sending home very buff Navy guys– it was austere.

Most underrated fitness tool?  The foam roller. I’ve seen clients increase range of motion and improve mobility in less than five minutes. Self-myofascial release is more than just “mushing out” adhesions in muscle, it signals the brain from tiny sensors in joints and muscle to regulate the amount of tension in tissue.  I can take anyone to a pain-free state in 99% of my cases.  It is truly amazing.

Gyms of the future? I imagine more functional training based on foot-based primal movement patterns, using fast twitch muscles, with plyometrics, cable machines and medicine balls.

Any vices?  This cup of coffee.

5 Tips for Eating Paleo:

1. Focus your meals on high quality animal protein foods from natural sources, such as fresh meat, fish, and poultry. Whenever possible consume local, grass-fed, free-range, organic, antibiotic, pesticide and hormone-free meat, which has a healthier fat profile.

2. Eat an abundance of plant food, such as brightly colored vegetables, berries and low glycemic fruit which are rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytonutrients

3. Include fresh, raw nuts in your diet, including walnuts, macadamia nuts, almonds, pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts, and pistachios.

4. Eliminate all grains and legumes (beans) Grains and legumes are a source of anti-nutrients, such as lectins and saponins, which wreak havoc with hormonal and immune systems and increase intestinal permeability, raising the risk of inflammatory diseases, such as celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

5. Avoid vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, corn oil and peanut oil, as well as mayonnaise, margarine and shortening. Increase omega-3 fatty acids, especially from fish.

Five Exercise MRT Circuit using only your bodyweight and one kettlebell:

Perform this circuit three times with two minutes of rest between each round, and rest as little as possible between exercises within the circuit (no more than 15 seconds).

1. Prison Bodyweight Squats (20 reps)
2.  Kettlebell Swings (30 seconds)
3.  T Push Ups (10 reps per side)
4.  Mountain Climbers (12 reps per side)
5. Lateral Lunge (20 reps per side)

Published in Food & Home, The Central & South Coast Lifestyle Magazine, Fall 2011

Some people object to the Paleo Diet with its emphasis on eating animal products because they say it’s not environmentally responsible and therefore bad for the planet. Until I read Lierre Keith’s book, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability, I might have agreed. But as a result of her work and many others, there is a growing awareness that vegetarianism is not the panacea for climate change, and those who are suggesting it is don’t know much about the reality of agriculture.

To begin with, the claim that the Paleo diet is not sustainable assumes conventional methods of cattle raising, done by restricting cattle to feedlots. Cows raised on grasslands have a much better effect on the environment, one which is truly sustainable.

In fact, there are a growing number of pioneers already raising cattle on grasslands throughout the country. Many of these producers are converting the corn and soybean fields they are no longer using to feed cows to perennial polyculture.  Lierre Kieth defines these terms nicely…. “Perennial because most of the plants live many years, sequestering carbon in their cellulose bodies, forming miles of vast root systems through the soil.  Polyculture because there’s so many of them, all cooperating, competing, contributing—all filling a niche with a necessary function.” These farmers are healing the wounds inflicted by industrial agriculture and returning the land back to the prairies.

When the ground is covered with greens all year round, it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a good thing.  In fact, grazed pasture is better at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than any other land use, including ungrazed pastures and forestland.  Researchers who study the impact of grazing on the land suggest that moderately grazed land has more carbon stored in the soil than grassland that has been undisturbed. Stored carbon increases the fertility of the soil and slows global warming.

What’s interesting about the grass-fed method is modern farmers have found that the best way to raise cattle is to mimic the way bison grazed many years ago. This method is called “managed intensive rotational grazing,” and it involves the use of temporary electric fences to keep the herd in an area for a short amount of time, like half a day. These fences are then rotated to another area through a series of padlocks. When the cattle have grazed all the plants to within a few inches from the ground, the area is left to completely recover. This method creates a sweet, easily digested and highly nutritious grass and promotes biodiversity, similar to the effect created when bison roamed the prairies many years ago. Amazingly, all of this is done without the use of tractors.

This is completely different from the confined feedlot grain-fed method, where the animals are crowded into sheds and all their feed requires fossil fuel to be shipped in. Also, the grain that these animals feed on is treated with fossil-fuel based fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides.

Interestingly, meat from grass-fed animals requires only one calorie of fossil fuel to produce two calories of food, while grain crops require from 5 to 10 calories of fossil-fuel for every calorie of food or fiber produced.

Another plus for the environment resulting from pastured cattle-raising is in the absorption of rainwater. Plowed fields shed rainwater almost as fast as a parking lot; the soil absorbs about 11⁄2 inches of rain in an hour. In contrast, permanent pasture can absorb as much as 7 inches of rain in an hour. In practical terms, this is the difference between floods and no floods.

Probably the most controversial environmental issue is whether cows raised on grain or grass produce more methane gas, a by-product of rumen digestion and a big contributer to the greenhouse gas effect. Several studies show that grain-fed cows produce less methane, but those studies were done on cows grazing conventional pastures with high fiber, low quality forage. The newer, rotational grazing has shown decreases by as much as 45 percent in methane production when compared with conventional pastures.  And when you consider that manure in feedlots is a major emitter of ammonia, another greenhouse gas, raising cattle on pasture offsets any added methane and ultimately reduces greenhouse gases.

Bottom line: Eating meat from well managed grazing animals is good for the planet.

Here is a list of grassland benefits from Mother Earth News:

• More humane animal treatment
• More nutritious meat and dairy products
• Reduced flooding and soil erosion
• Increased groundwater recharge
• More sustainable manure management
• Less E. coli food poisoning
• More fertile soil and more nutritious forages
• More diverse and healthier ecosystems
• Reduced use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow unsustainable corn and soy

Resources:
Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability

http://eatwild.com/environment.html

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Grass-Fed-Meat-Benefits.aspx

In a previous article, I explained how HIIT (high-intensity interval training) is the fastest way to burn fat while improving cardiovascular fitness, according to the latest research. The traditional approach to HIIT is sprinting, whether done on a track, a bike, or in a pool.

Recently, a new approach to HIIT has emerged that combines all the benefits of HIIT with resistance training. This hybrid form is called Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT), and it uses full-body exercises that are performed circuit-style in an interval fashion. With MRT, you alternate high intensity, all-out bursts of movement with short periods of rest, leaving little time for recovery. These workouts are intense and short, unlike cardio workouts that go on forever and are so often deadly boring. Also, with MRT, you don’t need much equipment.  You can focus on bodyweight exercises, and use dumbbells and kettlebells.

But the real beauty to these fast-paced workouts is that you crank up your metabolism to burn fat while also building muscle, thereby improving your body composition (ratio of lean body mass to fat). Studies show that MRT also improves your V02max (a measurement of endurance training status), lactate threshold (a marker of physical performance), and HDL (the good cholesterol).

There are many ways to do metabolic resistance circuits. You can lift heavier weights and rest more to emphasize muscle building. Or you can lift lighter weights, perform more reps and rest less to emphasize conditioning.

Here is an example of a five-exercise MRT circuit using only your bodyweight and one kettlebell. If you would like to give it a try, I suggest you perform this circuit three times with two minutes of rest between each round, and rest as little as possible between exercises within the circuit (no more than 15 seconds).

1. Prison Bodyweight Squats – 20 reps
2. Kettlebell Swings—30 seconds
3. T Push Ups – 10 reps per side
4. Mountain Climbers – 12 reps per side
5. Lateral Lunge – 20 reps per side

Notes on the exercises:
Prison Bodyweight Squats — Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and your toes pointing slightly outward. With hands behind your head, bend your knees and hips, keeping your back straight and knees pointed in the same direction as your feet, and descend by pushing your hips down and back until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Return by extending knees and hips until legs are straight and you are standing.

Kettlebell Swings — Stand a foot behind the kettlebell with a wider than shoulder with stance, toes pointed out about 20 degrees. Sit back into your heels and grab the kettlebell with both hands. Start by pulling the kettlebell through your legs close to your groin and thrust the bell forward to chest height using your hips. Squeeze your quads and glutes at the top of the movement and repeat for a desired number of repetitions or timed sets.

T Push Ups — Perform a traditional push up. In the up position, balance on your left hand and rotate your body, using your core muscles, 180 degrees until your right arm is perpendicular to the floor (your body will form a T). Rotate back until the right arm is down and you are in the up position of the push up. Then perform a traditional push up and upon return to the up position and repeat the process, but balance on your right hand and rotate your left arm and torso. Continue this sequence for the desired number of repetitions.

Mountain Climbers – Begin in a push up position with arms straight and the balls of your feet on the floor. Brace your midsection and keep your body still. Bring your right knee towards your chest and then back down to the starting position. Repeat with your left knee and continue alternating your feet as fast as you can.

Lateral Lunge — Stand with feet together and hands above your chest. Keeping your abs tight and chest high, take a big step to the right and squat down by lowering your hips down and back. Your trailing leg should be relaxed with knee extended. Then push off with your right leg and return to the starting position. Repeat for the desired number of repetitions on the right side and then switch to the left side or alternate back and forth between sides within the same set.

Maeda progress

Maeda before

“Mikki, when I started working with you last year, I was overweight and absolutely stuck. I couldn’t get the scale to budge. I also had exacerbated muscle problems in my leg. I had seen three or four doctors about my knee over the past two years, and no one could help me. By the time I started working with you I could barely walk.

A year later I have lost 18 lbs, and can not only walk, I can run. I have also lost 10% body fat.  I still have another 15 – 20 lbs to go, but now I know how to do it and expect to reach my goal before the end of 2011. You have absolutely changed my life.  I am honored to have you as a friend as well as my trainer.  Thanks for everything. I am so in your debt for really helping me when no one else could.”    Maeda

We all know that exercise is good for us–it prepares us to perform the activities of daily life and makes us feel better. But can exercise also reverse aging?

In a recent study, scientists at McMaster University showed that certain kinds of exercise, specifically strength training, reversed a genetic profile to that of younger men and women.  A gene expression profile measures how well an individual’s mitochondria (the energy furnaces of the cell) are working, and it has been suggested that mitochondrial dysfunction is related to loss of muscle in older adults. (Mitochondrial function is measured by counting the number of mistakes the mitochondria makes when transcribing DNA to make materials such as proteins.)

The study involved a before-and-after analysis of gene expression profiles taken from tissue samples of 25 healthy older men and women who underwent six months of twice weekly resistance training. Results were compared to tissue sample profiles taken from younger healthy men and women.

The researchers found that as a result of their strength training, the older adults had a complete reversal of their genetic fingerprint back to the levels seen in younger adults! These results strongly suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction is linked to aging in humans, but the good news is that strength training reverses aging! The researchers concluded that “…following exercise training, the transcriptional signature of aging was markedly reversed back to that of younger levels for most genes that were affected by both age and exercise.”

The study also measured muscle strength. Before exercise training, the older adults were 59% weaker than the younger adults, but after the training the strength of the older adults improved by about 50%, such that they were only 38% weaker than the young adults.

This is yet another example of how scientific evidence supports the idea that our genes evolved with the expectation of a certain threshold of physical activity for healthy gene expression.  It should come as no surprise that the right types of exercise restore disturbed homeostatic mechanisms towards the normal physiological range of our earliest human ancestors.

For most of our evolutionary history, we humans were hunter/gatherers—we hunted animals, fished, and gathered plants for food.   Our ancestors of the Paleolithic era ate a diet of whole foods found in nature, like wild game, fish, vegetables, wild fruits, eggs and nuts.

The wild game was naturally organic and grass-fed, meaning the animals grazed on open ranges and ate wild grasses that were high in omega-3, the anti-inflammatory fatty acid, and low in omega-6, the pro-inflammatory fatty acid.

The carbohydrates early humans ate consisted of non-starchy, fibrous plant food pulled from the ground or plucked from a bush. They ate none of the foods classified as carbohydrates today: starches found in grains; sugar; natural and industrial sweeteners, like high fructose corn syrup; and dairy products.  Theirs was naturally a low-carb/high protein and fat diet that kept their bodies functioning optimally for millions of years.

Why would you want to eat Paleo?
Your goal may be to maximize your body’s ability to burn fat and build muscle, so you can lose weight. Or, you may want to bring down dangerous levels of inflammation caused by our modern diet of highly-processed food, so that you can live an active, long and healthy life. In either case, there’s no getting around the fact that the foods you put in your body on a daily basis are the largest determining factor in what you look like, what you feel like, and how long you live.  So why not consume the highest quality nutrients?

Here are five simple tips for eating Paleo:

1. Focus your meals on high quality animal protein foods from natural sources, such as fresh meat, fish, and poultry. Whenever possible consume local, grass-fed, free-range, organic, antibiotic, pesticide and hormone-free meat, which has a healthier fat profile.

2. Eat an abundance of plant food, such as brightly colored vegetables, berries and low glycemic fruit which are rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytonutrients. Many of the health benefits are believed to come from the chemical compounds that give them their vibrant colors.

3. Include fresh, raw nuts in your diet, including walnuts, macadamia nuts, almonds, pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts, and pistachios.

4. Eliminate all grains and legumes (beans) Grains and legumes are a source of anti-nutrients, such as lectins and saponins, which wreak havoc with your hormonal and immune system. Lectins and saponins increase intestinal permeability, raising the risk of inflammatory diseases, such as celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis

5. Avoid vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, corn oil and peanut oil, as well as mayonnaise, margarine and shortening. Increase your consumption of all foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, especially from fish.

What’s the fastest way to lose fat while improving your cardiovascular fitness?
High Intensity Interval Training, otherwise known as HIIT.  Many people think that you have to spend endless hours on a treadmill or bike to achieve your ideal physique, but nothing could be further from the truth.

What is HIIT?
HIIT is an intermittant cardiovascular workout performed at a high intensity. HIIT consists of short, intense, bursts of movement followed by periods of rest, repeated X number of times. A classic example is to sprint up hill (or up steps) for 30 seconds then let your heart rate recover for 90 seconds. This is a basically a 20 minute workout consisting of ten 30 second sprints with one and a half minutes of rest in between. Keep in mind that the goal is intensity not duration. You want to sprint as hard and fast as you can, not hold back or pace to “save yourself,” so you can do more.

HIIT can be done in a variety of ways, but the traditional way (which I discuss here) is to use intervals for sprinting, whether on a track, on a bicycle or in a pool.

Why is HIIT so effective at fat loss?
Because HIIT causes a phenomenon called EPOC, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. After you perform high-intensity exercise, such as sprinting on a stationary bike, your body continues to need oxygen, leaving your metabolism elevated for hours after your workout before it returns to normal. Originally referred to as “oxygen debt,” EPOC is the term researchers now use to describe the events that occur as the body returns to homeostasis.

Research suggests that high-intensity training “disturbs” the body’s homeostasis, throwing the body off its normal balance. This results in a larger energy requirement after exercise to restore the body’s systems back to normal. This energy expenditure causes a significant increase in fat loss which makes HIIT the most effective method for fat loss.

Next I will show you how to combine HIIT with resistance training so you get the benefits of metabolic and resistance training in one package!

We  know that a low-carb diet can keep you sensitive to insulin and thus help you avoid storing fat, but did you know that your body composition—whether lean and muscular or mostly fat with little muscle— affects insulin sensitivity, too?

Why is this important you ask?

Because when you have more muscle on your body, you have better glucose uptake, less circulating insulin and as a result less fat storage. It’s how to win the battle on obesity!

In a recent study, Loren Cordain and others wanted to understand the relationship between body composition and insulin resistance. The researchers noted that until about 50 years ago, proportions of muscle and fat on the modern body remained similar to ancestral ratios. They compared the physiques of pre-agricultural adults, based on skeletal remains, with modern elite athletes and determined that body compositions were similar – in both groups males had about 10 percent body fat and females had about 15.  They then compared these statistics to average modern humans and found that males have greater than 25 percent body fat while females have more than 35 percent.

Even more important, this evolutionary change in body composition can affect insulin circulating in your blood, and thus your health and fat-burning ability. (Remember, high levels of insulin are not desirable, creating a condition known as insulin resistance and decreasing the ability of your cells to take up glucose.) The mechanism is this: Because fat cells and muscle cells compete for circulating insulin, relative to your proportion of muscle to fat, your body composition determines how insulin is distributed when it is released from the pancreas.  And since insulin receptors on muscle cells are much more efficient at glucose uptake than those on adipose tissue, fitness level is a big predictor in glucose uptake.  In other words, an individual in better condition with more muscle may induce 7 to 10 times more glucose uptake than someone with more adipose tissue.

The point is that a lean, fit, muscular person will have much greater insulin sensitivity than an out of shape, overly-fat and unfit person. Additionally, an imbalance of fatty tissue receptors relative to muscle cell receptors requires the pancreas to secrete extra insulin, which leads to insulin resistance.  Bottom line, having more muscle on your body will improve insulin sensitivity, because muscle cells are more efficient at glucose uptake than fat cells.

Having more muscle on your body is a good reason to lift weights and gain muscle.  But to build muscle and increase the VO2max of the muscle, which is necessary because high insulin sensitivity requires muscle fitness, perform metabolic resistance circuits, a hybrid of weight lifting and interval training.

If you do metabolic resistance circuits to build strength and conditioning, you improve your body composition, creating more muscle and less fat.  But you also improve your glucose uptake and as a result have less circulating insulin, so you store less fat.  It’s how to win the battle on obesity!

Anyone who tells you that exercise alone does not affect weight loss is clearly missing this point.  It’s not about how many calories you burn in response to exercise; it’s about changing your body composition through strength training and improving the VO2max of the muscle.  This is the link; it’s why exercise is so important in the obesity epidemic.  It’s not just about diet.

I finished writing my book! It took me about nine months, but it’s finally done. I’m excited to give you a sneak preview of the contents and will let you know as soon as it is available to buy.

The title is Your Primal Body: Lean, Fit and Pain-free at Any Age. The premise is that you have a birthright to be pain-free, lean and fit at any age, just as our earliest human ancestors were, and you can restore your body to natural health and fitness when you know how.

In Your Primal Body, you’ll learn how to achieve a lean, muscular and vibrantly healthy body based on your DNA. The human genome has evolved so slowly that our genetic blueprint is almost exactly what it was 40,000 years ago when we were hunter-gatherers.

Our bodies are designed to do what our Paleolithic ancestors did every day: move quickly out of harm’s way, stay lean and muscular to hunt and gather food, and live a long life free from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases so prevalent in our modern world.

But through modern day sedentary living, we’ve lost touch with basic movement patterns, the kind of movements early humans did, like squats and step-ups. In addition, the modern diet of highly processed foods, so different from the wild game and foraged plants our ancestors survived on, causes the production of hormones that inflame the body and lead to disease.

Your Primal Body contains a 5-Step Program that shows you how to get into alignment with the way your genes are best expressed. It emphasizes movements that are functional and full-body, like the movements of early humans. And the low-carb primal diet controls inflammation, thereby reducing your risk of disease.

Scientists who have studied the remains of early humans tell us that our ancestors were in amazing physical condition, similar to modern day Olympic athletes. By mimicking their diet and activity patterns, you too can create a lean, muscular and healthy body.

For decades the US government has been advising us to avoid eggs, along with butter, whole milk and cheese.  They claim that because these foods are high in cholesterol they increase the risk for heart disease.

Recently the government changed the guidelines and they now advise us  to eat one egg a day.  “Evidence suggests that one egg (i.e. egg yolk) per day does not result in increased blood cholesterol levels, nor does it increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in healthy people,” according to the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

But they could have told us to  eat as many eggs as we want, because eating cholesterol containing food, it turns out, does not lead to heart disease.

In this recent post to Spacedoc.net, Dr Malcolm Kendrick and Dr Duane Graveline explain the way cholesterol works in the body…

Foods containing cholesterol don’t raise blood cholesterol for several reasons. The main one is that our bodies, like the bodies of all living creatures, are capable of an amazing thing called homeostasis. Namely, keeping the level of things that are important e.g. temperature or potassium levels, at a constant level. No matter what you do on the outside, things remain calm and in control on the inside.

If your body couldn’t do this, you would die in about two seconds flat. Looking at cholesterol, our livers synthesize around five times as much cholesterol as you are ever likely to eat in your diet. If you eat less cholesterol, your liver will synthesize more (of this vital substance). If you eat more cholesterol, you liver will synthesize less. This is homeostasis in action.

Quite how much cholesterol you would need to eat to overwhelm your homeostatic system is unknown. Nobody has managed to do it yet. People fed up to ten eggs a day kept their ‘cholesterol levels’ constant; something first proven by Ancel Keys – ironically the man who almost single handedly created the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis in the 1950s.

The body controls ‘cholesterol levels’ – actually the level of low density lipoprotein (LDL) through the action of LDL receptors in the liver. If the LDL level rises, LDL receptors on the liver catch hold of it, drag it back into the liver and recycle the cholesterol contained within the LDL.

If you have a lack of LDL receptors – the underlying cause of Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH) – your LDL/cholesterol level will rise. Not, because of anything you eat. In fact, despite anything you eat. In short, the body normally controls LDL/cholesterol levels within certain levels, completely independent of diet. If this system fails, it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you eat. It is entirely due to errors within your homeostatic system. It is as simple at that.

Cholesterol is perhaps the most important biochemical in our bodies. The true cause of heart attacks and strokes is a form of inflammation. For the past 40 years our dietary guidelines have been wrong. Is anyone coming out with an apology for all this – some words from our national leadership? Don’t hold your breath while you are waiting.

The most we will ever get is this really foolish statement, “One egg a day gets the OK.” Meanwhile Big Pharma alone has made some 75 billion in profits from the use of statins to lower cholesterol and no doubt the food industry has taken its share as well.

Meanwhile the game has changed. Statins work to lower cardiovascular risk not by cholesterol reduction, which they do well, but by inflammation reduction. The same doctors who put you on statins for cholesterol reduction are keeping you on statins for their anti-inflammatory properties. And testing your blood for cholesterol? Forget about it! From now on we will be using the C-reactive protein test for the level of inflammation in your bloodstream. Cholesterol is the most important biochemical in your body.

Hat tip to Dr Michael Eades on Twitter.