Cholesterol
You are probably aware of the many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health. Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease.
And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough.
What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?
That’s right, you do need cholesterol.
Cholesterol is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function.
Your Total Cholesterol Level is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk
The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330.
In addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs.
I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:
HDL/Cholesterol ratio
Triglyceride/HDL ratios
CRP levels
They give you a closer idea of what’s going on, but they still do not show you everything.
Cholesterol is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy
Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept.
In the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people’s minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.
"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."
What most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D. If your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D.
Cholesterol and Inflammation – What’s the Connection?
Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease … the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for.
Plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks.
Cholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary. It’s also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation.
The test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.
If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair. Conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing the damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol.
Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?
In 2004, the U.S. government’s National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels. Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.
Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws. Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.
So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?
Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs. The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States. Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends?
Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.
And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The Dangers of Cholesterol-Lowering Medications
If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I’m saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don’t need drugs to lower your cholesterol.
Contrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications -- another vastly over-prescribed category -- were first).
Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills.
Statin drugs lead to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure.
Muscle pain and weakness is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.
By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage.
Statin drugs have also been linked to:
An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)
Dizziness
Cognitive impairment, including memory loss
A potential increased risk of cancer
Decreased function of the immune system
Depression
Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)
And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig"s disease.
Other cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.
Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?
With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it. Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease?
Take, for instance, Pfizer’s Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans.
According to Lipitor’s own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?
The REAL numbers are right on Pfizer’s own newspaper ad for Lipitor.
Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:
"That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."
What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they"ve just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing.
So you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen.
The trial by the drugs’ makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone.
Of course, the answer is not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have you believe.
You can lower cholesterol in your body naturally, without risking any of the numerous side effects of statin drugs.
There is a major misconception that you must have a low fat diet to protect your heart. While it’s true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, this should not scare you. This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease.
Not surprisingly, numerous studies have actually shown that Keys’ theory was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including these studies from Fallon and Enig’s classic article The Skinny on Fat.
Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious fats from their diets, the American diet changed and has eventually led to increased inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body.
Schedule your Natural Health Consultation to get tested if you haven’t lately and/or find out how to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally.
If someone you love is currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you to share this information with them as well. We can help develop a plan to achieve the cholesterol levels you were meant to have, along with the very welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and mental clarity. Call us today at 925-718-8759!
Edited from Dr. Joseph Mercola
You are probably aware of the many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health. Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease.
And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough.
What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?
That’s right, you do need cholesterol.
Cholesterol is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function.
Your Total Cholesterol Level is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk
The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330.
In addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs.
I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:
HDL/Cholesterol ratio
Triglyceride/HDL ratios
CRP levels
They give you a closer idea of what’s going on, but they still do not show you everything.
Cholesterol is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy
Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept.
In the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people’s minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.
"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."
What most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D. If your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D.
Cholesterol and Inflammation – What’s the Connection?
Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease … the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for.
Plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks.
Cholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary. It’s also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation.
The test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.
If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair. Conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing the damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol.
Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?
In 2004, the U.S. government’s National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels. Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.
Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws. Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.
So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?
Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs. The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States. Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends?
Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.
And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The Dangers of Cholesterol-Lowering Medications
If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I’m saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don’t need drugs to lower your cholesterol.
Contrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications -- another vastly over-prescribed category -- were first).
Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills.
Statin drugs lead to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure.
Muscle pain and weakness is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.
By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage.
Statin drugs have also been linked to:
An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)
Dizziness
Cognitive impairment, including memory loss
A potential increased risk of cancer
Decreased function of the immune system
Depression
Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)
And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig"s disease.
Other cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.
Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?
With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it. Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease?
Take, for instance, Pfizer’s Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans.
According to Lipitor’s own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?
The REAL numbers are right on Pfizer’s own newspaper ad for Lipitor.
Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:
"That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."
What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they"ve just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing.
So you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen.
The trial by the drugs’ makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone.
Of course, the answer is not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have you believe.
You can lower cholesterol in your body naturally, without risking any of the numerous side effects of statin drugs.
There is a major misconception that you must have a low fat diet to protect your heart. While it’s true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, this should not scare you. This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease.
Not surprisingly, numerous studies have actually shown that Keys’ theory was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including these studies from Fallon and Enig’s classic article The Skinny on Fat.
Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious fats from their diets, the American diet changed and has eventually led to increased inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body.
Schedule your Natural Health Consultation to get tested if you haven’t lately and/or find out how to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally.
If someone you love is currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you to share this information with them as well. We can help develop a plan to achieve the cholesterol levels you were meant to have, along with the very welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and mental clarity. Call us today at 925-718-8759!
Edited from Dr. Joseph Mercola