Cholesterol-It Does a Body Good??

Most of the people I know are on some kind of special diet and or cholesterol lowering drugs. At the beginning of the year, I started making small dietary changes and it appears to be working. My cholesterol dropped 72 points from December to April and I am still losing weight and exercising regularly. Today, I weigh 187 pounds. That is 23 pounds gone from my 210 pound starting point. 175 pounds is my minimum goal-to be "normal" on the height/weight charts, and I'm really starting to feel that 175 is attainable with almost no real effort to get there! My maximum goal was to lose 50 pounds in 2009, which means I still need to lose 27 pounds. I think I can do it! I thought I would pass on some health and diet information for your consideration. I hope you take the time to slog through it, because I have spent more than a week writing this and I think it is important. You have to see all sides of an issue, and sometimes, it is not politically correct to look at the less popular viewpoint, but it is necessary nonetheless.

We all need fats in our diet, but all fats are not created equal. Saturated fats, those fats derived from mostly animal products, are digested and processed into LDL's (Low Density Lipoproteins), which is commonly called the "bad" cholesterol. LDL's help form the plaque that clogs and narrows our blood vessels. This in turn raises blood pressure as the heart has to pump the blood through smaller channels, and if there is a blockage, a stroke or MI(myocardial infarction, AKA heart attack) can occur. Unsaturated fats, which are derived mostly from plant based fats, are digested and processed into HDL's (High Density Lipoproteins), which is commonly called the 'good' cholesterol because they reduce the plaque buildup. In the makeup of your total cholesterol, you always want a higher amount of HDL in your blood than LDL; the ratio is important. What is really important, however, is to know and understand all sides of the cholesterol issue. Pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry have an ulterior motive for making you think all cholesterol is bad-they want to sell you drugs for the rest of your life. But you, as a thinking, independent human who is responsible for your own health and life, can consider all sides of the equation and make a more informed decision as to what is best for you.

We get cholesterol in the food we eat and our body produces it when it is needed. It is not an inherently bad thing, just as steroids are not inherently bad. Cholesterol is actually the most abundant steroid in the body. You just have to think of it in a scientific way and not in the popular media catchphrase kind of way. The material that forms the wall of every cell in our bodies is cholesterol-the cholesterol is what protects and seals the cell, preventing transfer of materials across the membrane. Another often overlooked function of cholesterol in the body is that it is needed in the production of Vitamin D. Without it, you couldn't make Vitamin D from sunlight exposure. Vitamin D is found naturally in whole milk and is bioavailable, but if you are limiting your cholesterol intake, you are probably drinking low fat or skim milk. Vitamin D (as well as Vitamins A, E, and K) is fat soluble-that means it is naturally found it, transported by and stored in fat, so what kind of sense does it make to skim the milk/remove the fat, and then add a fat soluble vitamin back to a liquid with no fat? That is like adding oil to vinegar! Of all the chemical molecules of substances found in the human brain, cholesterol is the most abundant. It is used in the hormone uptake process, the process where our brains uptake serotonin, the hormone that is so important in depression and mood disorders. Many anti-depressants work by manipulating the serotonin uptake process, and without sufficient levels of cholesterol in the brain, it is a wasted effort. Without cholesterol, our brains could not process our memories as well. Cholesterol is also found in bile, the bile which helps us digest all fats, plant and animal fats. If there is too little cholesterol, the body has trouble digesting fats, and cell damage can occur.

LDL acts as a patch if a vessel is damaged. When LDL's are high, you can assume that your body is creating excess LDL to repair damaged vessels and cellular walls. HDL acts as a scrubber, removing the old patch material and sending it back to the liver for reprocessing. Triglyceride is a fatty form of cholesterol that is stored in the liver. Cholesterol moves through the body as a triglyceride molecule. Triglyceride counts can be in excess of 1000, and that much fat in the system will thicken the blood, cause blockages and interfere with the gas exchange in the lungs. Obviously, if you are in good health, your body won't need much repair, and your blood won't need to transport triglycerides, therefore you will have low cholesterol and low triglyceride level. You have to consider the big picture of what is happening, cause and effect. If LDLs are high and HDLs are low, your cells are deteriorating and not being repaired. If HDLs are high and LDLs are low, that means there is very little damage and what was there is healing.

There are reasons why cholesterol tests will give an erroneous measurement of elevated triglycerides or give an actual reading of an elevated triglyceride count that is only a temporary fluctuation. Hypothyroidism can cause the thyroid to erroneously call for massive amounts of triglycerides from the liver. Cholesterol tests are usually given under fasting conditions so that dietary cholesterol is isolated and removed from the equation. However, if you fast per doctor's
orders and then do work that requires your body to produce energy, the triglyceride level can spike due to the fat (triglyceride) being released into the bloodstream for energy conversion. So, don't fast and then workout or clean the house or garden or exercise. Don't expend energy. Take a break from the routine and don't exert yourself. The last thing you want to do is to jog across the parking lot or run up some stairs on the way to the lab to have your blood drawn. In addition, if the body needs cholesterol, LDL, for patching, and there is none provided by the diet, then the body will call for the release of triglycerides temporarily raising the level of lipids in the blood over background levels. Cholesterol plays a very important role in body processes in multiple organ systems. When doctors began measuring cholesterol levels in the blood and quantifying them, they, by default, created categories of high and low cholesterol, and then when it was discovered that cholesterol levels could be manipulated, Big- pharma dusted off the snake oil and relabeled it as a statin. I'm only half kidding with this, but I take a harsh stance to play the Devil's Advocate role at times.

Luckily, I was able to lower my cholesterol with eating more nutritious food and with increased exercise. I improved my overall health and I avoided statins. Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that work by preventing the body from making cholesterol, specifically, LDLs. It doesn't "cure" or "fix" anything and may actually inhibit your ability to heal. In addition to thwarting LDL production in the liver, they also recall LDL patch material that is already circulating in the body. Yes, it prevents plaque build up, but maybe in general, under normal conditions, temporary levels of high blood serum cholesterol is not a bad thing. Statins interfere with production of Co-Q10, which is extremely important in muscular performance. Remember that the heart is a muscle, and since it works continuously, it uses a lot of energy, needs a lot of Co-enzyme Q10 to produce the power to pump. Statins reduce Co-Q10 in addition to cholesterol, and this has been attributed to an increase in heart failure by some researchers. In my opinion, taking statins removes the symptom and ignores the overall problem. If your LDLs are high, you must ask yourself why? Is it because you have cardiovascular disease and your body is trying to repair the vessels or is it because you incorporate too much animal fat in your diet or is it because elevated LDL levels are secondary to some other problem like hypothyroidism. If you reduce the level without understanding why it was elevated or correcting the underlying cause of that elevation(be it lack of exercise or gallbladder disease, whatever), you may be harming your body. It is the equivalent of removing the batteries from your smoke detector because it goes off when you broil food and it is annoying. Yeah, if you remove the batteries, you can broil those steaks in peace, but you also lose the warning that your house is on fire. It is worthy of some thought that the side effects of statins are mostly the same symptoms one would have if one's cholesterol is too low or out of balance: digestive upset, cognitive issues, muscular weakness, etc. There is a lot more controversy as to whether or not it is a good thing to take statins to lower cholesterol or to simply manipulate cholesterol levels in general, than you would think by listening to the mainstream media and your medical doctor. Statins mute the immune system and have been proven to cause cancer in rats. If you are considering drugs to counter an existing symptomatic disease, it is one issue. If you are considering drugs as a prophylactic against contracting disease, it is another. Do your own research and look at this issue from all angles. You have the power to control what goes into your body. Try these links for starters:

http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/statin.html
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/11/07/bad_news_about_statin_drugs.htm