Help With Cholesterol

Help With Cholesterol

Cholesterol is on a lot of people’s minds, because some of us may have ‘high cholesterol’, while others are simply wanting to be in good health, including having healthy hearts.

Cholesterol, both in your blood, and in your food, is a simple concept to understand, and to control yourself, as long as you avoid the common ignorance displayed by some ‘authorities’.

First off, high blood cholesterol is only ONE, fairly small factoring heart disease.
What this means is; if your blood cholesterol is high, do not worry, until you check other, often more important variables. Lots of people have high blood cholesterol levels, and live to a ripe old age. Others have low levels, but die young from heart disease anyway. Consider the other factors below, and you will understand why.

Blood cholesterol comes in different sizes; LDL’s are bigger, and are often called ‘bad cholesterol’. HDL’s are smaller, and called ‘good cholesterol’.

There is another, special type of blood cholesterol; Lp(a), or lipoprotein (a). It is FAR more important than total cholesterol, LDL, or HDL as a heart risk factor. By a factor of at least 5! This means that if your Lp(a) levels are low, you don’t have much to worry about, EVEN IF YOUR ‘BAD CHOLESTEROL’ IS HIGH. Conversely, if your cholesterol levels are ‘healthy’, but your Lp(a) levels are high, you are NOT safe from heart disease. This knowledge was widely accepted amongst atherosclerosis/ cardiology researchers since the 1960’s, and has been a very consistently strong risk factor. So check your Lp(a) levels- your doctor can order this test from most labs, if they happen to know about it. I heard one doctor who had a large heart patient clientele refer to the testing of Lp(a) as a cutting edge, late-breaking important development. HA! Has he heard about the collapse of the Berlin wall? After all, it only happened 15 years ago! In the Dietetic manual followed by dietitians in Canada and the USA, Lp(a) is listed under ‘other risk factors’, with no explanation. Predictably, the Manual goes on and on about LDL’s, HDL’s, and dietary fats.
Lp(a) levels can be lowered quite easily. Dr. Linus Pauling, 2 time Nobel Prize recipient, together with Dr Matthias Rath, found that the body produces a lot of Lp(a) to help repair arteries damaged by low vitamin C levels. Unfortunately, Lp(a) is a strong, storng arterial placque promoter. Vitamin C supplementation reliably lowers Lp(a) levels.

Getting back to the much weaker risk factors of LDL, and total blood cholesterol, if you want to lower them, fine, but NOT with drug ‘therapy’! Why? Because most cholesterol lowering drugs used today also lower Coenzyme Q 10 (Co Q10), which is extreme bad news for heart health. Maybe that’s why cholesterol lowering drugs are not very impressive when studied, as to prolonging life, to put it kindly.

Drop Your Cholesterol
Very easy; consume plenty of flax meal. Use the meal and not the oil; about 2 tablespoons per day, or more, for more powerful lowering of cholesterol. You can put it on oatmeal or other hot cereal (avoid boxed dry cereals- toasting ruins them), or you can just wash down your flax meal with juice, water, or any drink.
If your cholesterol levels are very high, and do not drop, the liver may need attention. Do a liver cleanse- search the web or ask a nutritionist about it. Most dietitians and Doctors would laugh at the idea of a liver cleanse, since they like to ignore the overwhelming (non mainstream) evidence that internal cleansing is key to health.
Water is surprisingly effective in dropping cholesterol levels. Underhydration (not drinking enough) reliably raises blood and body cholesterol. Increase your water drinking; lower your cholesterol. A healthy minimum is 2 litres of water per day, with extra needed by those who drink coffee or alcohol.
Exercise is accepted even by the mainstream as a powerful way to keep all types of blood fats at healthy levels, including LDL’s, HDL’s, and triglycerides, which are particularly tough to treat.

Homocysteine was discovered to be a very important substance found in the blood, in terms of heart disease. It is an amino- not a fat.
High homocysteine levels = heart attacks and artery placque.
This was conclusively proven in the late 60’s, but of course, is emerging now as a ‘new’ risk factor. This one is laughably easy to control- vitamins B6, B12, and folate, found in any good B complex multivitamin, send high levels plummeting- fast! (McCully, K.S., Homocysteine, vitamins, and prevention of vascular disease. Military Medicine. 2004 Apr;169(4):325-9)

Coconut Oil
1. Can you say “USA vs. Poor Nations”? The entire bashing of coconut oil is a ploy to sell more junk, refined soy and corn oil, in North America! Coconut oil is high in saturated fat- any nutritionist will tell you that, but do they know that the fats are mostly medium and short-chain? Medium and short chain fats improve fat metabolism, support heart health, and they even kill Candida fungus in the body. Predictably, the research shows that people who eat a lot of coconut oil in their diets have VERY HEALTHY hearts (Mann,JI. A South Pacific perspective on diet and cardiovascular disease. Proceedings-of-the-Nutrition-Society-of-New-Zealand. 1996; 21: 1-8) Of course, when they move to the western world, and leave the coconuts behind, they start catching up to our high heart disease numbers. Coconut oil IMPROVES blood cholesterol levels (Nevin KG, Rajamohan T. Beneficial effects of virgin coconut oil on lipid parameters and in vitro LDL oxidation. Clinical Biochemistry. 2004;37(9):830-5). Some studies I saw, desperate to implicate coconut oil, fed subjects coconut oil WITH CHOLESTEROL ADDED. Cholesterol is an exclusive animal product, which cannot be found in any plant product, including coconut oil.

Circulation

It is all ultimately about circulation. Stop the circulation to part of the heart; BAM; a heart attck. Stop circulation to the brain; POW; a stroke. If circulation is only partially choked off, angina (heart), transient stroke (brain), impotence (penis), numbness and tingling (limbs), or pain (anywhere), results.
Atherosclerosis we already discussed.
Another easy to control factor is blood vessel dilation (good), and constriction or spasm (bad). Magnesium helps our vessels dilate, letting the blood flow well. A magnesium deficiency reduces dilation, and can directly cause blood vessel spasms, which are a direct cause of heart attacks, especially the sudden, severe ones. Magnesium is deficient in many if not most people- we ‘burn up’ magnesium with stress. Do yourself a favour-take a supplement. Many athletes in my care have, and report better performance. Physical and mental stress consume magnesium.

Vitamin E
There are literally hundreds of studies showing that the more vitamin E we consume, the longer we live, and the healthier our hearts and arteries are.
Even the conservative Dietetic Manual for US and Canadian Dietitians states that supplemental vitamin E lowers heart disease incidence by over 40%!
There was a recent study to the contrary which was preposterously analysed and executed. I thoroughly read the study, and in disgust realized that it got published because it supports the anti- supplement medical bias. It is far too poor a piece of work to have garnered the attention that it did, otherwise.
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Trans fats
After 50 years of strong research(I wish I was exaggerating), there is talk of reducing or eliminating these plastic, dangerous fats from our food supply. That would be good, given that trans fats are far, far worse for us than any other dietary fat, anywhere.
Butter or margarine? The answer is easy- butter is better! That has been proven in direct research since the 60’s, but the message gets obscured in the media, and schools. I stick to the research for my facts.
Of course, virgin Olive oil beats the pants off of butter, as one of the most heart health fats possible. Just do not fry with it! Frying is evil, but if you must, do use coconut oil, or ghee.

Microwave Marvel
Microwaved vegetables raise cholesterol, which was a bizarre finding in a well designed human study. Microwaving is an abusive, electromagnetically unnatural process which renders food toxic, on a molecular level. Use a toaster oven, your stove, or ANYTHING BUT a microwave to heat or cook your food.

In summary, exercise, drink plenty of water, and take extra B complex, C, and E, and you most likely to enjoy a healthy heart and whole body circulation. And do not fry or microwave anything, if you can help it.