Despite popular belief that it’s the cholesterol in your food that influences cholesterol in the bloodstream, that has not been proven to be the case. Your body makes 75% of the cholesterol it needs to survive for healthy brain and cell function. The other 25% it MUST take in from the food you eat.

When you eat more cholesterol in your diet, the body simply adjusts its cholesterol production downward to compensate. Research confirms that eating cholesterol-rich foods does not increase your cholesterol levels; the body is an adaptive, reactive mechanism which responds to changing conditions and balances appropriately.

(There are foods that will raise your cholesterol in an unhealthy way and we’ll talk about that later.)

We need cholesterol because it keeps cell membranes from falling apart and plays an integral part in cellular repair. It builds brain and nerve tissue, supports the immune system, and maintains neurotransmitter and brain function.

Cholesterol is also a vital pre-cursor to many major hormones including testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Cholesterol helps regulate mood, is required for synthesis of vitamin D and helps us digest fat-soluble vitamins such as A,D,E and K. We could not live without cholesterol!

If you don’t eat cholesterol, your body will go into crisis mode and start making the extra cholesterol it needs to survive and thrive. When you are tested, your cholesterol will be high, even though you are actually cholesterol deficient.

Let’s take a quick look briefly at the body’s inflammatory process to better understand what cholesterol does. Bear with me while we talk a little science.

When you cut yourself, the damaged tissue releases chemicals to start the inflammation process. Blood vessels constrict to slow down bleeding, blood thickens so it can clot and cells multiply to repair damage and facilitate healing while the immune system calls on cells and chemicals to protect against viruses and bacteria from attacking the cut.

This is very similar to what occurs within the arteries. As damage occurs from oxidizing fats and nutrient imbalances, chemicals are released to begin the inflammatory process. Arteries constrict, blood begins to clot, the immune system sends help, and nearby cells are told to multiply. As this process occurs over and over again in the artery lining, scars called plaque form. Over time, blood thickening and artery constriction combine to make a heart attack or high blood pressure more likely.

So remember the first step after trauma: chemicals are released to begin inflammation and start the healing process. Enter cholesterol, whose primary function is cell repair. Cholesterol is sent to help repair the damaged tissue in the artery linings and elsewhere: it is actually helping your body heal and keep you alive!

Now if the inflammatory process is occurring repeatedly, cholesterol is continually being manufactured or recycled in order to facilitate the healing process. When tested, your cholesterol levels will seem high.

But your body needs that cholesterol to heal, and your body is manufacturing the exact level of cholesterol it needs for brain and cell function along with that healing.

What effect do you think forcing cholesterol levels down artificially with a drug like a statin would have on the body? And if eating cholesterol-rich foods doesn’t increase your cholesterol levels, what does?

We just learned that cholesterol steps in to help cells heal, it is released upon infection or inflammation. It is also a precursor for stress hormones.

Whenever you the body is fighting an infection, whether it is an environmental allergy like pollen, a food allergy like gluten, or a bacterial or viral infection, you will find high cholesterol levels. If the body is under stress, cholesterol, which is needed to make stress hormones like cortisol, will be high. If the stress is short-lived, cholesterol will later drop: if you live a life of constant stress, you will see chronic low-grade inflammation, and consistently higher cholesterol levels as well.

Take the cholesterol away and leave the other concerns like infections and bad food choices and your body’s ability to heal is compromised. Take the cholesterol away but leave the stress triggers and you interfere with the body’s ability produce stress hormones, which can lead to serious health concerns.

Cholesterol is actually protective in these cases and higher levels are actually beneficial to the body’s health and well-being. We’ll cover this further in a future article, but I want to help you begin to see (because I realize this is a whole new way of thinking about cholesterol and understanding its role in your body for most people so it may take some time to really register) that cholesterol and yes sometimes high levels cholesterol levels are not only necessary, they can actually be beneficial.

Several studies have shown that people with high cholesterol actually live longer than people with low cholesterol. And 75% of people hospitalized for a heart attack had “normal” cholesterol. Perhaps you can begin to see why high cholesterol may not be a bad thing, especially since it hasn’t been directly linked to heart attacks or strokes.

As we saw when we looked at the inflammatory process in the body, cholesterol is  present whenever there is inflammation in the body. The inflammation that occurs from a stressful moment, and infection or an allergy is part of the body’s natural healing process occurring as nature intends it and that’s a good thing.

Sometimes, however, there is inflammation that occurs that is not necessary or desirable; it is self-induced from food choices that are not natural for our bodies. In today’s world, we bombard our body with artificial chemicals and nutrient imbalances that the body never had to deal with before. And we do it over and over and over, each and every day.

Eating cholesterol rich foods doesn’t raise cholesterol. But there are some foods that do. And that is a topic for another article you can read for free at www.nehealthadvisory.com

To your wellness and health: your true wealth!

Inger

Author: Inger Pols is the Editor of the New England Health Advisory and Author/Creator, Finally Make It Happen, the proven process to get what you want. Get a free special report on The Truth About Sugar: It’s Not All Equal. Learn more about Inger and receive her free bestselling ebook What Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You.

Article Photo: courtesy of Stuart Miles | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

You can’t pick up the paper or scan the online headlines without seeing something about cholesterol and heart health. Recent headlines challenged the guidelines and argued more people need statins. If you read my previous article on cholesterol, you’ll know why that’s not the answer.

In this article, I’d like to share with you why why LDL cholesterol is not ‘bad’ and why having your good LDL numbers doesn’t mean you are safe from a heart attack or stroke. Cholesterol levels are not a good predictor of your heart health and in this article, you will begin to see why 75% of hospitalized heart attack victims have ‘normal’ cholesterol and learn about a test that can save your life.

Let’s look at what cholesterol is and how it works and find out why Total Cholesterol and LDL cholesterol numbers will NOT reflect your true heart health risk.

Our cells need fat and cholesterol to function, but fat and cholesterol can’t readily travel through the blood. So the body combines them with protein-covered particles called lipoproteins. Lipoproteins can carry a good amount of fat and travel easily through the blood. There are three types of these particles that are particularly important: low-density lipoproteins (LDL), high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and triglycerides.

Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL)

LDL is responsible for taking the cholesterol from the liver to the body’s cells. Once the lipoprotein reaches the cell, the cell attaches to it and extracts the fat and cholesterol it needs.

High-Density Lipoproteins (HDL)

HDL then takes over and plays clean up, collecting cholesterol from the bloodstream, LDL and artery walls, and transporting it back to the liver to be recycled, an equally important role in healthy cholesterol function.

Triglycerides

Triglycerides are a type of lipid that is stored in your fat cells. Whenever you eat any extra calories that aren’t needed, they are converted into triglycerides, It’s easy to see how eating excess calories, especially from nutritionally devoid foods, will be reflected in your higher triglyceride levels. If you need energy between meals, hormones will release them to be burned as fuel as needed. (If that hunger period never arrives because you’re eating constantly that process won’t occur and they will remain awaiting their need.)

Triglycerides are an important part of healthy body function; you can’t live without them. But like most things, it’s about balance; in excess, triglycerides can cause problems. If your triglycerides are high, you typically have a lot of fat in your bloodstream, which means you are either making too much or are not burning it through exercise.

We need all three of these transporters in our bodies in order to function. Scientists have argued that HDL was good, and LDL and Triglycerides were bad: that excessive amounts are problematic and cause heart attacks. We’re going to dig into all of that more deeply in just a moment.

But first, I want to get something out of the way and talk briefly about total cholesterol numbers.  I can’t tell you how many people swear by their total cholesterol number. But total cholesterol is no more than a simple formula: HDL + LDL + Triglycerides. Even if you ascribe to the conventional wisdom that HDL is good and LDL is bad, which we are going to clarify  shortly, looking at total numbers still makes no sense.

If LDL and Triglycerides, the supposed bad guys, stay the same and HDL, the good guy, goes up, then total cholesterol will increase by default. If raising HDL is good for you, which we’ll confirm soon, then closer analysis reveals that the individual is actually better off than before, but yet their total cholesterol number has just gone higher and possibly even moved into a ‘borderline high’ or‘high’ range. This makes no sense whatsoever! You’ve now seen this from a formula standpoint, but next you will see why this is even more important when you understand more about how the cholesterol lipoproteins really work.

We discussed previously that all three components are essential for health. Unfortunately, LDL cholesterol has gotten a bad rap. It has been argued that when there is too much LDL, particles can be deposited in the walls of the arteries of the heart, and elsewhere, limiting blood flow. These deposits, known as plaque, can break apart and cause a heart attack or stroke. Because of this theory, LDL has been called the “bad” cholesterol.

The truth is, there is no good and bad cholesterol. There is only one cholesterol: LDL and HDL are lipoprotein cholesterol carriers and they are both equally necessary for survival and wellness.

While LDL has been labeled bad because it can lead to plaque development, we now know that there are multiple types of LDL. In fact, if you wanted to create labels, you can argue that there is good LDL and bad LDL. Research has shown that LDL particles come in different sizes and that large LDL particles cause no problem.

The small, dense LDL particles, the smallest of which are called very low density lipoproteins, or VLDLs, are troublesome for several reasons. They are tiny enough to squeeze through the lining of the arteries where they can oxidize, or turn rancid, which will cause inflammation. This will begin the process that can ultimately lead to the development of plaque.

If you are concerned about heart health, you absolutely must have your LDL particle number and size tested. Having that information is essential to assessing your heart health. You can have very high LDL cholesterol and be at no risk for a heart incident whatsoever or you can have absolutely ‘normal’ LDL cholesterol and be one of the 75% hospitalized for a heart attack who had ‘normal’ cholesterol at the time of their heart attack.

Simply knowing your LDL number is not helpful and will not reveal your true heart health risk. As Dr. Mark Hyman, President of the Institute for Functional Medicine put it,

“Newer tests look at not only the total amount of cholesterol, but the actual size of the cholesterol particles as well as the total number of cholesterol particles. In my view, this is the only test for cholesterol that should be performed. Using older versions of cholesterol testing leads to practicing medicine with blinders on. It is outdated misleading, and often leads to harmful prescriptions for medications when not indicated, It can also provide a false sense of security when your cholesterol numbers are normal but the type of cholesterol you have is the small dangerous kind.

Studies have found that people with cholesterol level of 300 g/dl but have very large cholesterol particles have very little risk of cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, people with “normal” cholesterol level such as 150 mg/dl but very small and numerous LDL and HDL cholesterol particles have an extremely high risk of heart disease.”

I cover this in great detail in a forthcoming article series on cholesterol and heart health. If you are interested in heart health, you’ll want to ensure you receive the whole series by joining the New England Health Advisory community. It’s free to subscribe at at www.nehealthadvisory.com. The information we cover can transform you and your heart health so you can avoid heart attacks, stroke, or unnecessary surgery and live a longer better life.

But for now, talk to your physician or health care provider about getting your LDL particle number and size tested. This test is now being covered by many insurance companies and getting much more attention. Once you know your risk, you can improve your numbers through simple lifestyle changes.

To your wellness and health: your true wealth!

Inger

Author: Inger Pols is the Editor of the New England Health Advisory and Author/Creator, Finally Make It Happen, the proven process to get what you want. Get a free special report on The Truth About Sugar: It’s Not All Equal at www.IngerPols.com

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