Česky | Deutsch

NaturalWay – Margit Slimáková

care about your health

• News
• Topics
• Articles
• Services
• About
• Contact

 

Cholesterol

Cholesterol is one of the most controversial nutrients in the history. The conventional medicine see cholesterol as the main culprit behind cardio vascular diseases and the pharmaceutical industry supports this assumption by the plethora of cholesterol lowering drugs. Cholesterol has been responsible for demonising entire categories of foods, like eggs and saturated fats, and blamed for the heart disease in the last fifty years.

In the reality the cholesterol is a naturally occurring fat which is fundamentally required for a good health. It is a vital component of every cell membrane in our body, it is the precursor of the male hormone testosterone, the female hormone estrogen and the precursor of all steroid hormones, it helps to produce bile acids that participate in fat digestion and sunlight interacts with the cholesterol on our skin converting it to the vitamin D. Cholesterol is manufactured in the liver in the amount required by the body to perform its various functions.

What about the artery-plugging cholesterol? The main quoted reason for necessity of reducing the blood cholesterol is the massive increase in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) during the 20th century. The connection between cholesterol and CVDs is based on the subsequent examinations of those who died of CVDs, which showed that their arteries had been "clogged up" with fatty deposits that were high in cholesterol. Ever since, doctors have been trying to invent ways to reduce blood cholesterol levels, but they have not stopped considering why they were first of all elevated. At the same time food industry recommends happily low cholesterol and low fat products even when these are usually based on trans fats and sugars, which elevates your risk of CVDs.

Why is cholesterol binding to our arteries? Like all other cells in the body, the artery cells are constantly under the attack from free radicals and they are in a continual state or replacement and repair. As a consequence, they need a constant supply of new collagen to replace the damaged cells. Collagen is made of a number of components, including vitamin C. When there is lack of vitamin C in the body (not enough veggies on your plate), new collagen cannot be formed to repair the damaged artery cells. Therefore cholesterol is used by our body. The molecules of cholesterol bind to the damaged sites, preventing blood loss and its disastrous consequences. In the absence of vitamin C and other antioxidants this process is being repeated and gradually the arteries become clogged up with cholesterol restricting the blood flow until something blocks the remaining space, causing ischemia (lack of blood flow) and cell-death due to oxygen "starvation". Therefore cholesterol is a sign of a problem, not the cause of the problem, and the problem is vitamin C, or, more specifically, lack of it! That’s why the Nobel Prize was awarded to scientist Dr Linus Pauling who suggested that heart disease was in fact a chronic scurvy and could be treated with vitamin C. Pauling was ridiculed by the medical establishment, which preferred simple path: the cholesterol in diet means the cholesterol in blood which causes CVDs and has to be solved by cholesterol lowering drugs. But if you have increased level of cholesterol, it is at least partly because of increased inflammation in your body. What is actually needed is to address whatever can cause your body damage which leads to increased inflammation and then to increased cholesterol.

Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol level, but they usually do not make you healthier, and it is very questionable if they help to prevent from the heart disease. Statin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver which is needed to manufacture cholesterol but they also deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness and eventually heart failure. The statin drugs have also been linked to an increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in hands and feet and trouble with walking), dizziness, cognitive impairment, including memory loss, decreased function of the immune system, depression and liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function). The statin drugs also do not modify LDL particle size, and particle size is the factor that can make LDL “bad” in the first place. Small LDL particles get easily stuck and cause chronic inflammation, which raises your risk of heart disease, while large LDL particles do not have such adverse effects. Particle size can only be modified through dietary intervention.

The diet has changed during the last thirty years: on the one side the consumption of saturated fats decreased but on the other side we eat substantially much more trans fats, high processed vegetable oils and sugars, especially high-fructose corn syrup, which all are nutritional killers. The latter type of diet will eventually lead to increased inflammation and therefore to the cholesterol in your body. A chronic inflammation is caused by a laundry list of items such as oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from the overcooked, scrambled eggs), eating lots of sugar and processed grains, eating food cooked at high temperatures, eating trans fats, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and an emotional stress. In order to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally, you must address the items on this list.

What should you do if you have "high-cholesterol"? The decision is yours. Research has demonstrated that a combination of natural remedies, regular exercise and dietary changes can make a significant difference to LDL levels and reduce or even eliminate the need for drug prescriptions. The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol should be less than 200 mg/dL (5,16 mmol/l), but what they do not tell is that total cholesterol level is not at all perfect indicator in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 300.

 

Vocabulary

High-density lipoprotein or HDL: This is the "good" cholesterol that helps to keep cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any excess from arterial plaque, which may help to prevent heart disease.

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 is formed in one of these narrow arteries leading to your heart or brain, a heart attack or stroke may result. But LDL particles come in different sizes; the 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, they can cause damage and inflammation.

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.

Your total cholesterol level is not a great indicator of your heart disease risk and even knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you very much."  More useful are tests of:

Lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a) is a substance that is made up of the LDL ("bad cholesterol") plus a protein (apoprotein a). Elevated Lp(a) levels show a great risk for heart disease and therefore they are more important for the evaluation of CVDs risk.

C-reactive protein (CRP) level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.

A CRP level under 1 milligram per litre of blood means that you have a low risk for cardiovascular disease, 1 to 3 milligrams means that your risk is intermediate and more than 3 milligrams show a high risk.

HDL/Cholesterol ratio, divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent.

Triglyceride/HDL ratios, divide your HDL level by your triglycerides. That percentage should be below 2.

 

My recommendations

• Prevent or treat already present CVDs problems by healthy nutrition and regular exercising. The most important is to avoid oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs), eating lots of sugar and processed grains, eating food cooked at high temperatures, eating trans fats, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and an emotional stress. 
• Eat healthy natural food and from the fats choose raw fats as an olive oil, a coconut oil, organic raw dairy products (including butter, cream, sour cream, cheese, etc.),  avocados,  raw nuts, seeds and eggs (lightly cooked with yolks intact or raw). If eating meat, prefer organic grass-fed meats, which has different contain than animal meat fed by unhealthy diet.
• If, for whatever reason, you choose to stay on statin drugs, then please make sure to choose supplement with Ubiquinols or Coenzyme Q-10.