What Marriage is

AUGUST 14, 2015

The Birdwatcher’s Guide To Marriage

TYLER BLANSKI

At last, here is an easy-to-follow guide for identifying a real marriage that exposes the new imitations to be, well, imitations. Essential for the 321 million Americans who have a biological mother and father, this new guide includes stunningly accurate illustrations, important field marks and behaviors, plus expert advice on identification basics that will help readers judge for themselves: what is the definition of marriage? Compact and comprehensive, the Birdwatchers Guide To Marriage is an excellent choice for the married and not-so-married.

As any birder can tell you, sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see, and marriage is no exception. That’s why so many Americans are taking marriage back to its basics. Having now explored all the possibilities of what a marriage could be—straight or gay, permanent or temporary, sexual or asexual, monogamous or polygamous, adding or subtracting ad infinitum—we rediscovered an understanding of marriage that’s so old (no sexual technology, no operations, no Supreme Courts necessary!) it’s new again.

Pull Out Your Binoculars: Two ViewsWhether you’re new to birding or a seasoned expert, it’s safe to say that everyone believes in marriage equality: we believe government should treat all marriages equally. What we might disagree about is what marriage is. Ken Myers, host of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, has observed that when a government takes steps to protect or preserve or prevent some activity or condition, it must first be able to define the thing in question. So when a government decides to protect wetlands, for example, it must first define what a wetland is, what qualifies a certain space to be a “wetland.” So also with marriage. If a government should provide public support for marriage, that government must have some agreed upon definition of what marriage is.

So, what constitutes a marriage? The authors of What is Marriage? have observed that the debate is primarily between two views of marriage: the conjugal view and the revisionist view.

Why does marriage exist? The conjugal view gives one answer: babies. Marriage exists because humans reproduce sexually, and human offspring are raised best with both the biological mother and father. Although not all marriages produce offspring, and although marriage has many other goods and purposes, marriage is different inkind from other relationships because other relationships do not so suitably conceive and rear children. Marriage came into being because humans reproduce sexually, and because human children require an unquantifiable amount of nurturing and education. So marriage is the institution that binds one man and one woman as husband and wife to be mother and father to any children that are born of that union.

Against this, the revisionist view is that—regardless of what it once was—marriage today is a loving emotional bond, a “sexual-romantic companionship” or “domestic partnership,” one distinguished from other relationships not in kind but by degree, by the intensity of emotional or sexual fulfillment. In the phrasing of same-sex advocate John Corvino, marriage is a relationship with “Your Number One Person.”

So. Is marriage gay, straight, or both? Is marriage monogamous or polygamous? Is marriage the conjugal union of one husband and one wife for life, normally for the procreation and provisioning of progeny, for the vitality and health of society … or is marriage simply a sexual-romantic bond between whomever, whenever, and for as long as they feel like it?

Let’s say a group of people, however mixed, claims to be married. Are these lovebirds really married? Is this a real marriage or an imitation? Here are four simple questions that will help you spot a real marriage when you see one.

1) Can It Be Consummated?Why is marriage sexual? Marriage is a wide-ranging cooperation in domestic life, but nesting is not the distinctive feature of marriage. Unlike friendships, which are a relationship of hearts and minds, and unlike college roommates who simply share a living space, what makes a marriage so distinctive and unique is that it is also a bodilyrelationship. Robert P. George reminds us that, historically, a marriage was not considered valid until it had been consummated by the act that fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation, until the husband and wife had become “one flesh.”

How can two people become “one flesh”? Two human beings genuinely become one flesh in the generative act. We digest our food, we walk, we think, as separateindividuals. But sexual reproduction is different. Sexual intercourse is a single act, but it is performed by two human beings—not as individuals—but as mated pairs, as male and female. Mating doesn’t always produce children: our law has always understood that, and it has never treated infertility as a barrier to marriage or as a ground for legal annulment; but it has always treated non-consummation as ground for a legal annulment. A marriage is not complete until it is consummated.

Marriage is different from other kinds of sexual or romantic unions not only in degreeof intensity, but different in kind: it can produce and rear offspring.

This does not mean that sexual intimacy and pleasure are not meaningful in themselves, for even when conception is not achieved, the bodily union is. Two men, two women, and groups cannot achieve bodily union for there is no function toward which their bodies can coordinate. Although same-sex partners can engage in acts that lead to orgasm, they cannot become a single reproductive principle; they cannot unite in a way that even infertile couples can unite in acts that fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation.

It is only because a man and a woman can become a mated pair—and not because humans long for intimacy or friendship or release from sexual tension—that marriage came into being. Yet the Supreme Court’s reasoning turns marriage into an especially intense emotional relationship with Your Number One Person, and a definition so subjective, so dependant on personal feelings, tastes, or opinions, is hardly viable for society. Marriage is more than roosting.

What are we left with now that the Supreme Court has abandoned the conjugal definition of marriage and embraced the idea of marriage as a sexual-romantic companionship to Your Number One Person? We cannot explain why marriage should be a sexual relationship. We cannot explain why two people couldn’t just as well consider the central integrating feature of their marriage to be mixing cocktails together or worm-fishing or some other non-sexual interest.

But why, then, should the state be involved at all? Government is not ordinarily invested in people’s relationships—of ordinary friends, or siblings, or cousins, or tennis players, or book clubs. Even more, if marriage is just a commitment to Your Number One Person, why should a marriage be sexual?

Government cares about civilization, and marriage is the foundation of civilization. Government does not care about the romantic partnerships to Number One Persons. As author Ryan T. Anderson puts it, the government is not in the “intense companionship business.” Historically, government has been concerned about marriage because marriage is connected to procreation and child rearing in a very natural and fundamental way that is good for society.

Here’s a bird’s-eye view: Every single child is begotten of a man and born of a woman, and every single child has the right to be raised by his biological mother and father. Who are we to preemptively deprive them of this right by normalizing gay marriage?

2) Is It Two?A flock of geese may come in any number. Not so with marriage. Why is marriage a bond of two people, and not five or eight? Again, however strange it might sound to us today, the short answer is babies. How many people does it take to make a baby?

It’s true: a husband and wife share a common life that is not only physical but also financial, emotional, moral, intellectual, and spiritual. But the comprehensiveness of this sharing is distinct from other kinds of relationships in its unique suitability for begetting and rearing children.

Marriage, historically understood, is a union recognized by society that formalizes legal rights and obligations between the husband and wife, the parents and child, and the family and community. This recognition is not only necessary for the benefit of the spouses, but especially for the benefit of any children the marriage might produce.

Three or four people may choose to sexually stimulate one another, but they cannot become a single reproductive principle. The idea that marriage is the conjugal union of one husband and one wife emerges out of human nature and is therefore universal. Only one man and one woman can become “one flesh.”

The revisionist definition of marriage cannot explain why marriage should be the union of two and only two people, and not three or more people in so-called “polyamorous relationships,” since three or five people can feel a close emotional bond and can decide that they like to express their emotional feelings for each other in mutually agreeable sexual play.

Birds of a feather flock together. It’s only natural that people with the same tastes and interests will be found together. But marriage is not a grouping of any number of persons for any number of reasons because every single human child has one biological mother and one biological father, and unless there is a tragedy (either abuse or abandonment or death), it is best for human children to be raised by their biological parents.

Husband and wife are sexually complementary. This is what makes them so suitable for a shared life as spouses and for being the parents of their children, conferring upon them the natural benefit of both maternal and paternal contributions to child rearing.

Besides, trying to be 100 percent committed to more than one person in a “polygamous marriage” could never result in a truly equal relationship. Despite the best of intentions, multiple lovers and children by multiple spouses always leads to competition and disharmony within the “family.” This is why monogamy (being married to one person at a time) is a good idea.

3) Is It Exclusive?“Whose child is this?” It’s an important question for any society, and the vow of fidelity helps to answer that question. Historically, sexual infidelity has been grounds for divorce because sexual infidelity threatens the one thing that makes marriage so unique and so distinct from other kinds of relationships: making babies. For example, if a wife is sexually unfaithful to her husband and a child is conceived, a very problematic question rises: who is the father?

George Gilder makes a compelling case in his book Men and Marriage that when a child is born the mother is always there. Biology takes care of that. But will the father be there? Will the biological father stay with the biological mother and help that mother raise and nurture their child, conferring on him or her the enormous benefit of being brought up in the committed bond of the union that brought that child into being? Biology does not take care of that. If that happens, it’s because culture makes it happen. And the way a culture secures for its children the benefit of a father and a mother in a committed bond is marriage.

So marriage is sexually exclusive. By vowing fidelity, each partner makes it public that they are no longer sexually available for others. Fidelity not only encourages spouses to commit to raising the children that this marriage has produced in a stable union, but it also ensures the emotional commitment of the bond. Marital jealousy is real, and fidelity helps to preserve trust and peace—for the parents and the children.

According to the revisionist view of marriage, there is no ground or principle—opinion, maybe, but no principle—for why marriages should be sexually closed, rather than open. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; it’s better to be content with what you have than to risk losing everything by seeking more. A proverb, however, is not a principle. According to gay marriage ideology, there is no principle for why there should be fidelity and not promiscuity apart from feelings. But feelings wax and wane, and marriage is “till death do us part.”

4) Is It Permanent?“Till death do us part.” Who would ever promise something so … permanent? Because humans are not sharks. Marriage has historically included a vow of permanence because the children who come into being as the result of human sexual reproduction do not come into being like baby sharks, who simply swim away from their mothers as soon as they are born. Human children need to have their diapers changed, they need to be nursed, swaddled, loved, and educated. The idea that marriage is permanent is linked to human nature.

The stability of the marital bond is beneficial for the spouses themselves, since a commitment to a lifelong bond is a power incentive to give the marriage your best, but it is especially beneficial for their children. A child’s sense of belonging and security is directly linked to the stability of his parents’ marriage. Even more, a child benefits enormously from receiving both the maternal and paternal contributions in education. Biological parents have a unique incentive to raise their children well. Many parents fail to do the best they can, of course, but there is no other bond which can be relied on to provide a greater possibility that children will be raised by people committed to them than the parental bond.

—And parenting never stops. Even when children become adults and fly the nest, the fact remains that they still have a biological mother and father, and that the committed bond of that union is a positive good in their lives. Except for in the case of abuse, abandonment, or sexual infidelity, the stability and harmony of life-long marriage is good for both the husband and the wife and any children they might have.

Without admitting that marriage and children are linked, no account can be given according to the revisionist understanding of why marriage should involve a pledge of permanence as opposed to being a temporary partnership for as long as the love lasts. But a diamond is forever. And marriage is for life.

The Misidentification of MarriageIs it a friendship or a love affair? Is it a brotherhood or a partnership or a marriage? It’s time to take your birding to the next level, and these four questions will help for fast identification in the field. The Supreme Court’s ruling is not a tiny tweak that simply helps gay people to consider their relationships as marriages. We are talking about a fundamental misidentification—an abolition—of marriage, because it would abolish all the historic norms and criteria and principles of matrimony that make it so suitable and fruitful and healthy for the great project of child-rearing and human flourishing.

This guide fully admits that a real marriage is not necessarily a good or happy marriage. The degree to which married couples respect and love one another differs, and the level of mutual support varies as much as the level of enthusiasm. But even the worst of marriages are more real than the imitations. However well intentioned or happy other kinds of relationships may be, if they are not a bond between one man and one woman as husband and wife to be sexually faithful, to be committed for life, and to be mother and father to any children born of that union, then they are not a marriage.

I think everyone can agree that the new definition of marriage is pretty indefinite. Two guys? Five women? A woman and two cats? Cohabitating sisters? The book club that feels they’re being treated like second-class citizens? The soccer team that wants to adopt a child? Hey—love is love!

Love is love, and a platitude is a platitude. The question in the so-called “gay marriage debate” is not about if gay people love each other, but about if love is enough to make any relationship a marriage. That’s why the Birdwatcher’s Guide To Marriage is not directly about who gets to marry, but about what marriage is.

Marriage is one of our greatest natural resources. If we redefine marriage to be something other than a conjugal union of husband and wife for the procreation and rearing of children, the meaning of marriage simply dissolves. All of this, of course, will be seen as bigoted and closed-minded and insane, but in the end marriage is the only thing that keeps humanity going—at least when it comes to the birds and the bees.

Study on matrimony

Australian men’s sacrifice on the altar of matrimony

• BETTINA ARNDT
• THE AUSTRALIAN
• JULY 18, 2015 12:00AM

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“Aussie men prefer the wife to stay home.” How typical was this anti-male spin in the media’s reactions to the latest research findings released this week from the annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey.It’s just extraordinary how common it is for social science research to be used to paint men as bad guys. That’s the story that always captures media attention. Let’s unpack what the findings ­actually said and what the journalists failed to report.

What HILDA found was men whose wives do paid work outside the home — both full time and part time — are less satisfied with their relationships than those whose partners do not work. This is actually nothing new — it has been showing up in the HILDA results for more than a decade. But contrary to many people’s sexist assumptions it may have nothing at all to do with men hankering to have their little ladies safely installed behind the white picket fence. Rather, it may reflect the wisdom of that famous old dictum: happy wife, happy life.

The main reason for Australian wives to be out of the workforce is a very good one — they are mainly mothers of very young children. Most women in this situation don’t want to work. They see it as a worthwhile job to take care of their infants and toddlers, and all the evidence suggests that overall many are happy to do just that.

Almost half (47 per cent) of mothers in couple relationships with children under five are not in the workforce, according to 2011 census figures. In her paper Parents Working Out Work, University of Queensland sociology professor Jennifer Baxter reports 69 per cent of non-working mothers say the reason they aren’t looking for work is they prefer to look after their own children.

While most men are happy for their wives to care for their young children it does force the fathers into the role of sole breadwinners, which is hardly all beer and skittles. Not that we ever hear much about the pressures a man comes under to intensify his work efforts, the fact he may get locked into a job he hates to pay the mortgage, and the lack of choices in his life. Oh no, all the research reporting is on the burden of child-rearing on the woman and how little the man contributes to home duties and childcare. “Parenthood makes men even lazier,” trumpeted an article on this topic published in The Age this year.

“Men come off looking like a bunch of lazy, couch-lying, TV-watching sloths,” Greg Jericho wrote for the Guardian Australia, selectively picking from last year’s HILDA data comparing the total work done by men and women.

He chose to highlight only the worst-case scenario, where women earning the same as their husbands do far more total work. He failed to point out that overall there was only a couple of hours difference in the 70-plus hours a week both fathers and mothers spent on paid plus unpaid work.

Most men are pulling their weight, with the average Australian man working twice as many hours as his wife, even if he does less around the home. The problem for men is there’s still no guarantee that will keep her happy. And a miserable wife is a very risky prospect indeed, as social research clearly demonstrates.

“It’s the marriage where the woman is far less happy than her husband which is really at risk. Marriages can survive quite well if the man is the one who is more miserable but unhappy wives call the shots — which accounts for the instability of marriages today,” says Deakin University expert in wellbeing and economics Cahit Guven who, with a group of international researchers, published a paper on “the happiness gap”. Using data from tens of thousands of relationships in three countries, they discovered that the bigger the difference in the happiness of husbands and wives the greater the risk of a breakup, but only when the husband was feeling better about life than was his wife.

That accords with advice given by John M. Gottman, one of America’s foremost researchers on marriage. He conducted a study tracking newlyweds, following them up for six years to see which marriages were happy and stable and which ended in divorce.

Gottman and his colleagues recorded their surprise at the outcome, which they summed up in this advice to men: “If you want your marriage to last for a long time ... just do what your wife says. Go ahead, give in to her ... The marriages that did work all had one thing in common — the husband was willing to give in to the wife. We found that only those newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their wives are ending up in happy, stable mar­riages.”

So men know they can’t afford to have unhappy wives — it affects their own life happiness if their wives are miserable. But women can be pretty oblivious when hubby isn’t doing so well, according to a study published last year by Rudgers University sociologists. This research, looking at 394 older couples married an average of 38.5 years, found the married men were a lot happier when their wives rated the marriage more highly — even if the men didn’t see their marriages as so great. But it didn’t make much difference to the women’s happiness if the men rated their marriages highly. “Women are the ones who drive the emotional climate of the relationship,” says Deborah Carr, one of the researchers.

As Gottman points out, it all speaks to the loss of power (in marriage) that men have experienced in the past 40 years.

Marriage has become an increasingly risky prospect for men, given how tough it is for men to live up to women’s high expectations, how easy it is for an unhappy woman to leave the marriage and the high costs for men if that happens.

Perhaps the most powerful summing up of this changing deal comes from a female writer, a Canadian blogger, girlwriteswhat. The Canadian divorcee writes provocative social commentary on social issues affecting men, including Good Men, Raw Deal, her take on recent trends in marriage: “From a woman’s perspective, marriage still provides significant benefits over single life — in fact, marriage as an enterprise has only improved for women since the 1950s. A woman now has the right to say no to sex with her husband. If he’s abusive, she has an entire public-sector industry itching to help her. If a woman decides she doesn’t want to be married to that jerk who doesn’t help with the dishes, has mommy issues and leaves his dirty socks lying all over the place, well, she doesn’t have to be. She won’t be stigmatised, she won’t be financially destroyed and she won’t lose her children.”

Her conclusion: “For women, marriage is all benefit and zero risk, and that’s why women are whining about men’s reluctance to tie the knot. But for men, it’s the other way around — no guaranteed benefit, and the kind of risk an adrenaline junkie would eschew.”

One of the big unanswered questions is whether men are noticing that marriage is a dud deal for them. Marriage rates have indeed been dropping in Australia, with increasing numbers of couples living in de facto relationships, up from 1.5 million in 1996 to 2.9 million in 2012. No one really knows how much this change is being led by men, although the women’s magazines are full of stories about men’s reluctance to commit. The latest HILDA data points to some interesting trends in these de facto relationships. For a start the cohabiting couples tend to be happier than married couples — that’s hardly surprising because at the first sign of trouble many de factos split up. About 90 per cent of married couples are still together after four years, compared with 74 per cent of de facto couples. After 11 years the figures are 80 per cent for marrieds and only 57 for de ­factos.

That’s not good news for the increasing numbers of children being born into these de facto relationships, contributing to greater developmental problems in children with cohabiting parents. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, Lixia Qu and Ruth Weston from the Australian Institute of Family Studies found children in cohabiting families lag behind children with married parents in overall socio-emotional and general development, show poorer learning, more conduct problems and ­experience poorer parenting. The number of dependent children living with cohabiting parents doubled from 0.9 million to 1.8 million between 1996 and 2012.

Long-married couples tend to get happier across time — happiness starts to rise for those who make it through the 20-year itch, although there recently has been a spike in divorces for such couples. With de factos it’s different; across time both men and women tend to become increasingly dissatisfied, with the most unhappy group being women who have been with the same bloke for more than 10 years and never marrying.

Could it be that women in these relationships end up feeling they have missed out? Surely there’s something irritating about living with a man who remains determined to keep the door that little bit ajar — although obviously sometimes it is the woman who still desires the escape hatch.

Many well-educated women in de facto relationships don’t end up having children. Although in lower socio-economic groups it has become commonplace for children to be born in cohabiting relationships, it’s still rare for well-educated women to have children without being married.

As Mon­ash University sociologist Bob Birrell suggested, writing about these emerging trends over a decade ago in Men and Women Apart, most well-educated women remain determined to provide that extra stability for their children.

What we see in HILDA’s latest glimpse at the evolving pattern of family relationships is men and women making different decisions, all hoping to do well in the great lottery of life. But the corrosive effect of an unhappy wife is a powerful underlying story and one that’s just not going to go away.

Bettina Arndt is a Sydney-based social commentator and online dating coach.

A Cool Weekend

Plotting a graph through danger

• TIM BLAIR
• THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
• JULY 13, 2015 12:00AM

DO you yearn for the simple life? Not up for any stress? Good news! Any number of easy jobs are available.

There’s wind chime tuning, for example, and horoscope writing, and whoever’s task it is at the ABC to vet Q&A audience questions in between drawing up that week’s yoga roster.

And then there are the more stressful but ultimately more rewarding jobs that typically attract hardier types. A policewoman once told me of the time she was called to the docks where a Chinese labourer had been squashed. Standing next to a row of shipping containers, she asked the ship’s captain where the body was. “Under that one,” he said.

The container in question was perhaps a centimetre higher than all the others.

Near the end of her late-night shift, a doctor friend was suddenly swamped with dozens of young patients so drunk they could barely speak. In between stomach pump deployments, she tried to find out how much they’d consumed. One or two managed to reply: “Just ten bucks.”

On the way home hours later, she drove past one of those outer-suburban beer barns. This one featured a sign: “All You Can Drink! $10.”

Even some animals have challenging jobs. Search and rescue dogs at Ground Zero following the September 11 World Trade Center attacks became distressed because there were simply no bodies to be found — just parts of them. One of them located a spine.

But all of these people (and dogs) are just coasting when compared to society’s boldest individuals. I’m talking about those brave men and women who fearlessly analyse graphs, who without heed of any dangers study carbon dioxide concentrations and who risk their very lives attending international seminars and receiving research grants.

“Existential dread is fairly common among those who work on ­climate change on a daily basis,” US meteorologist Eric Holthaus wrote last week.

“Being a climate scientist is probably one of the most psychologically challenging jobs of the 21st century.”

Even the pronounced lack of climate change in recent years hasn’t reduced the pain for these heroes, many of whom now suffer “pre-traumatic stress disorder”, a term coined by Washington-based forensic psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren to describe the anguish that results from preparing for horrific outcomes before they actually happen.

This month’s Esquire magazine has a brilliantly funny piece listing all of these pre-traumatised global warming wimps. “Among climate activists, gloom is building,” reports John H. Richardson. “Jim Driscoll of the National Institute for Peer Support just finished a study of a group of longtime activists whose most frequently reported feeling was sadness, followed by fear and anger.”

Ask normal people how they feel about climate activists and you’ll probably receive similar answers. University of Texas climate scientist Camille Parmesan told the magazine: “To be honest, I panicked fifteen years ago — that was when the first studies came out showing that Arctic tundras were shifting from being a net sink to being a net source of CO2.

“That along with the fact this butterfly I was studying shifted its entire range across half a continent — I said this is big, this is big.”

Presumably terrified by the idea of moving butterflies, Parmesan — declaring herself “professionally depressed” – up and fled to England, where insects know their place.

“There’s a growing, ever-stronger anti-science sentiment in the USA. People get really angry and nasty. It was a relief not to have to deal with it,” crumbly Parmesan told Esquire.

Senior alarmist Michael Mann, who helped devise the hockey stick graph that is part of climate science religious iconography, also feels the awesome pressure of occasional criticism. “You find yourself in the centre of this political theatre, in this chess match being played out by very powerful figures — you feel befuddlement, disillusionment, disgust.”

“Some of his colleagues were so demoralised by the accusations and investigations that they withdrew from public life,” Richardson writes. “One came close to suicide.” Mann discovered that “contact with other concerned people always cheered him up.” That’d be a happy crowd.

Fear breeds paranoia, as we saw in Australia a few years back when Will Steffen reported: “Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence.”

The former Climate Commission member was moved to announce his concern following an alleged threat during an Australian National University climate seminar. According to climate activists, a global warming sceptic at the event had told people he had a gun licence and was a “good shot”. But it emerged that the fellow in question was retired public servant John Coochey, whose comments about firearms were in relation to the ACT’s upcoming kangaroo cull.

As usual with climate scientists, that ANU mob was suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder. They were scared by something that was never going to happen. I wonder how these trembling doomsayers are coping with Australia’s current cold snap.

cholesterol

By Dr. Mercola

Cholesterol could easily be described as the smoking gun of the last two decades. It's been responsible for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years.

Yet when I first opened my medical practice in the mid-80s, cholesterol, and the fear that yours was too high was rarely talked about. Somewhere along the way however, cholesterol became a household word -- something that you must keep as low as possible, or suffer the consequences.

You are probably aware that there are many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health. Not only is cholesterol most likely notgoing to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease.

And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough. But before I delve into this life-changing information, let's get some basics down first.

What Is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?

That's right, you do need cholesterol.

This soft, waxy substance is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function.

Your liver makes about 75 percent of your body's cholesterol,1 and according to conventional medicine, there are two types:

1. High-density lipoprotein or HDL: This is the "good" cholesterol that helps keep cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any excess from arterial plaque, which may help to prevent heart disease.
2. Low-density lipoprotein or LDL: This "bad" cholesterol circulates in your blood and, according to conventional thinking, may build up in your arteries, forming plaque that makes your arteries narrow and less flexible (a condition called atherosclerosis). If a clot forms in one of these narrowed arteries leading to your heart or brain, a heart attack or stroke may result.

Also making up your total cholesterol count are:

• Triglycerides: Elevated levels of this dangerous fat have been linked to heart disease and diabetes. Triglyceride levels are known to rise from eating too many grains and sugars, being physically inactive, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively and being overweight or obese.
• Lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a): Lp(a) is a substance that is made up of an LDL "bad cholesterol" part plus a protein (apoprotein a). Elevated Lp(a) levels are a very strong risk factor for heart disease. This has been well established, yet very few physicians check for it in their patients.

Understand this:

Your Total Cholesterol Level Is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk

Health officials in the United States urge everyone over the age of 20 to have their cholesterol tested once every five years. Part of this test is your total cholesterol, or the sum of your blood's cholesterol content, including HDL, LDLs, and VLDLs.

The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol should be less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 300.

In addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.

In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs. Now, with testing children'scholesterol levels, they're increasing their market even more.

I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

• HDL/Cholesterol ratio
• Triglyceride/HDL ratio

HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That ratio should ideally be above 24 percent. You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That ratio should be below 2.

Keep in mind, however, that these are still simply guidelines, and there's a lot more that goes into your risk of heart disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol were brought into the picture. They give you a closer idea of what's going on, but they still do not show you everything.

Cholesterol Is Neither 'Good' Nor 'Bad'

Now that we've defined good and bad cholesterol, it has to be said that there is actually only one type of cholesterol. Ron Rosedale, MD, who is widely considered to be the leading anti-aging doctor in the United States, does an excellent job of explaining this concept:2

"Notice please that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -- fats combined with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' cholesterol. Cholesterol is just cholesterol. It combines with other fats and proteins to be carried through the bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not mix very well. Fatty substances therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of proteins and are far from being just cholesterol.

In fact we now know there are many types of these fat and protein particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the so-called small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, because they can squeeze through the lining of the arteries and if they oxidize, otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause damage and inflammation.

Thus, you might say that there is 'good LDL' and 'bad LDL.' Also, some HDL particles are better than others. Knowing just your total cholesterol tells you very little. Even knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you very much."

Cholesterol Is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept. In the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people's minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.

"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol.That will automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best friends. We would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one's risk of dying. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."

Vitamin D and Your Cholesterol

You probably are aware of the incredible influence of vitamin D on your health. If you aren't, or need a refresher, you can visitmy vitamin D page. What most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D. Bottom line? If your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D. Additionally, it provides some intuitive feedback that if cholesterol were so dangerous, why would your body use it as precursor for vitamin D and virtually all of the steroid hormones in your body? Other "evidence" that cholesterol is good for you?
Consider the role of "good" HDL cholesterol. Essentially, HDL takes cholesterol from your body's tissues and arteries, and brings it back to your liver, where most of your cholesterol is produced. If the purpose of this was to eliminate cholesterol from your body, it would make sense that the cholesterol would be shuttled back to your kidneys or intestines so your body could remove it.

Instead, it goes back to your liver. Why? Because your liver is going to reuse it. "It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale explains. "Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health."

Cholesterol and Inflammation - What's the Connection?

Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease... the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for.

What am I getting at? Well, first consider the role of inflammation in your body. In many respects, it's a good thing as it's your body's natural response to invaders it perceives as threats. If you get a cut for instance, the process of inflammation is what allows you to heal. Specifically during inflammation:

• Your blood vessels constrict to keep you from bleeding to death
• Your blood becomes thicker so it can clot
• Your immune system sends cells and chemicals to fight viruses, bacteria and other "bad guys" that could infect the area
• Cells multiply to repair the damage

Ultimately, the cut is healed and a protective scar may form over the area. If your arteries are damaged, a very similar process occurs inside of your body, except that a "scar" in your artery is known as plaque. This plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks. Notice that cholesterol has yet to even enter the picture. Cholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary.

Remember that no cell can form without it. So if you have a bunch of damaged cells that need to be replaced, your liver will be notified to make more cholesterol and release it into your bloodstream. This is a deliberate process that takes place in order for your body to produce new, healthy cells. It's also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation. The test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries. Generally speaking:

• A CRP level under 1 milligrams per liter of blood means you have a low risk for cardiovascular disease
• 1 to 3 milligrams means your risk is intermediate
• More than 3 milligrams is high risk

Even conventional medicine is warming up to the idea that chronic inflammation can trigger heart attacks. But they stop short of seeing the big picture. In the eyes of conventional medicine, when they see increased cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream, they conclude that it -- not the underlying damage to your arteries -- is the cause of heart attacks. Which brings me to my next point.

The Insanity of Lowering Cholesterol

Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone so far as to call high cholesterol "an invented disease, a 'problem' that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."3 And this explanation is spot on. If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair.

Conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol. As Dr. Rosedale so rightly points out:

"If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place. It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation."

I'll discuss how to do this later in the report, but first let's take a look at the dangers of low cholesterol -- and how it came to be that cholesterol levels needed to be so low in the first place.

If Your Cholesterol Is Too Low...

All kinds of nasty things can happen to your body. Remember, every single one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive -- including those in your brain. Perhaps this is why low cholesterol wreaks havoc on your psyche. One large study conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms.4 This may be because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a substance involved in the regulation of your mood. On a similar note, Canadian researchers found that those in the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration had more than six times the risk of committing suicide as did those in the highest quarter.5

Dozens of studies also support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violent behavior, through this same pathway: lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression.6 And one meta-analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer,7 while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson's disease. What cholesterol level is too low? Brace yourself.

Probably any level much under 150 -- an optimum would be more like 200. Now I know what you are thinking: "But my doctor tells me my cholesterol needs to be under 200 to be healthy." Well let me enlighten you about how these cholesterol recommendations came to be. And I warn you, it is not a pretty story. This is a significant issue. I have seen large numbers of people who have their cholesterol lowered below 150, and there is little question in my mind that it is causing far more harm than any benefit they are receiving by lowering their cholesterol this low.

Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels Are Healthy or Harmful?

In 2004, the U.S. government's National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels. Before 2004, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.

Fortunately, in 2006, a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine8 found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws. Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.

So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about? Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.9 The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States. Coincidence? I think not. Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends? Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.10 And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The Dangers of Cholesterol-Lowering Medications

If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I'm saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don't need drugs to lower your cholesterol.

To put it another way, among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these drugs, as they had genetic challenges of familial hypercholesterolemia that required it.

Contrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications -- another vastly over-prescribed category -- were first).11

Disturbingly, as written in BusinessWeek early in 2008, "Some researchers have even suggested -- half-jokingly -- that the medications should be put in the water supply."12 Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills. Statin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that's needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about this is that when you go tinkering around with the delicate workings of the human body, you risk throwing everything off kilter.

Case in point, "statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right," say Enig and Fallon. For starters, statin drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure.

Muscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.13 By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage. Statin drugs have also been linked to:

• An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)
• Dizziness
• Cognitive impairment, including memory loss14
• A potential increased risk of cancer15
• Decreased function of the immune system16
• Depression
• Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)

And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig's disease.17 Other cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.

Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?

With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it. Most cholesterol-lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease? Have you ever heard of the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to treat? I didn't think so. In fact, most doctors haven't either. And herein lies the problem. NNT answers the question: How many people have to take a particular drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack)? For example, if a drug had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack.

Easy enough, right? Well, drug companies would rather that you not focus on NNT, because when you do, you get an entirely different picture of their "miracle" drugs. Take, for instance, Pfizer's Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans.18 According to Lipitor's own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right? Well, BusinessWeek actually did an excellent story on this very topic earlier this year,19 and they found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer's own newspaper ad for Lipitor.

Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type: "That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."

What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people. The NNT, in this case, is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they've just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing. So you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen. Or in some cases, not hidden at all.

Zetia and Vytorin: No Medical Benefits

Early in 2008, it came out that Zetia, which works by inhibiting absorption of cholesterol from your intestines, and Vytorin, which is a combination of Zetia and Zocor (a statin drug), do not work. This was discovered AFTER the drugs acquired close to 20 percent of the U.S. market for cholesterol-lowering drugs. And also after close to 1 million prescriptions for the drugs were being written each week in the United States, bringing in close to $4 billion in 2007.20

It was only after the results of a trial by the drugs' makers, Merck and Schering-Plough, were released that this was found out. Never mind that the trial was completed in April 2006, and results were not released until January 2008. And it's no wonder the drug companies wanted to hide these results. While Zetia does lower cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent, trials did not show that it reduces heart attacks or strokes, or that it reduces plaques in arteries that can lead to heart problems.

The trial by the drugs' makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone.21 Of course, the answer is not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have you believe. You see, statins are thought to have a beneficial effect on inflammation in your body, thereby lowering your risk of heart attack and stroke.

But you can lower inflammation in your body naturally, without risking any of the numerous side effects of statin drugs. This should also explain why my guidelines for lowering cholesterol are identical to those to lower inflammation.

How to Lower Inflammation, and Thereby Your Risk of Heart Disease, Naturally

There is a major misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. While it's true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, I've explained earlier in this article why this should not scare you -- but I'll explain even further here. This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease. The nutrition community of that time completely accepted the hypothesis, and encouraged the public to cut out butter, red meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy and other "artery-clogging" fats from their diets -- a radical change at that time.

What you may not know is that when Keys published his analysis that claimed to prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart disease, he selectively analyzed information from only six countries to prove his correlation, rather than comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22 countries. As a result of this "cherry-picked" data, government health organizations began bombarding the public with advice that has contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going on today: eat a low-fat diet. Not surprisingly, numerous studies have actually shown that Keys' theory was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including these studies from Fallon and Enig's classic article The Skinny on Fats:22

• A survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese.23
• A Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.24

Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they were left hungry. So they began eating more processed grains, more vegetable oils, and more high-fructose corn syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters. It is this latter type of diet that will eventually lead to increased inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body. So don't let anyone scare you away from saturated fat anymore. Chronic inflammation is actually caused by a laundry list of items such as:

• Oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs)
• Eating lots of sugar and grains
• Eating foods cooked at high temperatures
• Eating trans fats
• A sedentary lifestyle
• Smoking
• Emotional stress

So to sum it all up, in order to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally, you must address the items on this list.

How to Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally...

1. Make sure you're getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega3-fats. I prefer those from krill oil. New research suggests that as little as 500 mg may lower your total cholesterol and triglycerides and will likely increase your HDL cholesterol.
2. Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your daily diet. It is especially important to eliminatedangerous sugars such as fructose. If your HDL/Cholesterol ratio is abnormal and needs to be improved it would also serve you well to virtually eliminate fruits from your diet, as that it also a source of fructose. Once your cholesterol improves you can gradually reintroduce it to levels that don't raise your cholesterol.
3. Eat the right foods for your nutritional type. You can learn your nutritional type by taking our FREE test.
4. Eat a good portion of your food raw.
5. Eat healthy, preferably raw, fats that correspond to your nutritional type. This includes:
• Olive and olive oil
• Coconut and coconut oil
• Organic raw dairy products (including butter, cream, sour cream, cheese, etc.)
• Avocados
• Raw nuts
• Seeds
• Eggs (lightly cooked with yolks intact or raw)
• Organic, grass-fed meats
6. Get the right amount of exercise, especially Peak Fitness type of exercise. When you exercise you increase your circulation and the blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of fighting an illness before it has the opportunity to spread.
7. Avoid smoking and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.
8. Address your emotional challenges. I particularly love the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for stress management.

So there you have it; the reasons why high cholesterol is a worry that many of you simply do not need to have, along with a simple plan to optimize yours. If someone you love is currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you to share this information with them as well, and take advantage of the thousands of free pages of information on www.Mercola.com. For the majority of you reading this right now, there's no reason to risk your health with cholesterol-lowering drugs. With the plan I've just outlined, you'll achieve the cholesterol levels you were meant to have, along with the very welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and mental clarity.

Too good to be true? Hardly. For the vast majority of people, making a few lifestyle changes causes healthy cholesterol levels to naturally occur. As always, your health really is in your hands. Now it's up to you to take control -- and shape it into something great