Lol Paul has cholesterol levels of like 400. He's never said but lowers cholesterol

social media advises are mostly bro-science

Looking at the paper, on an age standardised basis that's only true of women and even then that disappears once you get to 6.1+ mmol/l (236 in burger units). While the multivariate adjustment makes high cholesterol look even worse it controls for HDL which is unfair and bad science IMO. High HDL is the one overt advantage that high TC would have.

Low Cholesterol is Associated With Mortality From Stroke, Heart Disease, and Cancer: The Jichi Medical School Cohort Study

Access full-text academic articles: J-STAGE is an online platform for Japanese academic journals.

I do agree that TC is not the best (or even 2nd best measure) but even then, the push for extremely low LDL on any measure isn't a good idea either. VLDL (which is rarely checked) is the only one that generally shows a positive correlation with ACM as it goes down. One other thing that should be noted is that cardiovascular disease is now very treatable. Even though cholesterol causes atherosclerosis, modern medicine & surgery can keep you alive a really long time. Other issues separate to the cardiovascular system that may arise from extremely low cholesterol may not be as treatable.

Sorry 6.21+ (240 mg/dl). Misread it the first time.