My summary of this interesting article is that as humans evolved in a cycle of mainly food shortage, and occasional feast, and did not live into a ripe old age, the authors argue that having more lipids in the blood have a reproductive survival advantage. Perhaps you survived starvation better, perhaps you could run from a sabre tooth tiger faster.
Who knows – but to cope with 21st century risks, the reproduction is perhaps not the issue- living well and living longer is. Thus the focus on diet, exercise, control of risk factors especially smoking, blood pressure and diabetes.
For the Medics, it explains lipid metabolism. For the non-medics, biologically plausible mechanisms to explain why we are built as we are. BUT it does not mean that is the truth. Written by Dr Iqbal Malik