Posts Tagged Cholesterol

Cholesterol is an important component for the proper functioning of the body. When the cholesterol …

By blocking this enzyme, the medication decreases the body’s internal production of cholesterol. Unfortunately, a well known and fairly common side effect is muscle pain and weakness that can often be debilitating. In addition to blocking the production of cholesterol, it is well known that these medications also block the production of important nutrients such as coenzyme Q10. We have known that a deficiency of coenzyme Q10 can lead to muscle pain and that supplementation can help to reverse this side effect. A recent study sheds light on another nutrient that is closely linked to muscle pain, vitamin D. We have known that vitamin D deficiency can cause both pain and weakness in the muscles, however, research had not linked vitamin D deficiency to muscle pain induced by cholesterol lowering medications…until now.

In a study of 621 patients who were prescribed statin medications, it was found that those who suffered with the muscle pain were significantly deficient in vitamin D. When the patients who suffered with muscle pain were supplemented with vitamin D, 92% of the patients saw resolution of their pain symptoms.
(Transl Res, 2009; 153(1): 11-6)

Dr. Ray’s Notes:

We have always known about statin’s impact on coenzyme Q10 levels and we commonly recommend coenzyme Q10 supplementation in those who take a statin medication. This study, may explain why some people continue to have pain even after supplementation with high doses of coenzyme Q10 and I am now beginning to recommend vitamin D supplementation for those who are taking statins. This makes perfect sense given the fact that your body produces vitamin D from, you guessed it, cholesterol. When cholesterol drops, it makes good sense that vitamin D levels may drop as well. In this study, the participants were placed on the prescription vitamin D at a dose of 50,000 iu weekly. I would recommend using a natural form of vitamin D on a daily basis rather than a synthetic form in high dose once weekly. For the general population I recommend 2,000 iu daily. If your blood is significantly deficient, you may require higher doses. Have your doctor order a blood test for 25-OH vitamin D with your next cholesterol test and to learn more about vitamin D, read our article 15 Facts You Must Know About Vitamin D.

One study, which you likely never heard about, evaluated the impact of cholesterol on longevity in men and women age 65-98 years of age (mean age 76 years old). The results were nothing short of astonishing:

The group with the lowest cholesterol were most likely to die during the study
HDL level (considered the good cholesterol) had no impact on risk of death
Women had higher levels of cholesterol than men and yet they lived longer!
Men who had similar total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels to the women lived just as long as the women
Even the bad cholesterol (LDL) was protective against early death. This means the people who had the most “bad” cholesterol lived the longest

Yes, but is there any other research that supports these findings?

Dr. Bernard Forette in Paris, France found that women of the mean age of 82 years of age who had the highest cholesterol enjoyed the longest lifespan. Women with a total cholesterol of 272 mg/dl seemed to have the longest lifespan while those women with a cholesterol of 155 mg/dl had over five times the risk of early death. When cholesterol was excessively high, in the range of 350 mg/dl, risk of death increased to 1.8 times normal. The interesting finding was that women who had cholesterols around 200 also shared an increased risk of dying equivalent to 1.8 times normal. The bottom line is there are two groups who die early, the group whose cholesterol is very low or very high! The group with an excessively elevated cholesterol usually have an inherited condition which causes extremely high cholesterol (around 400 mg/dl or higher), this group has a higher risk of early death.

In another study performed in the Netherlands, people older than 85 years of age were followed for 5 years. The group who had cholesterol levels greater than 252 mg/dl where half as likely to die as those with cholesterols less than 194 mg/dl. The people who had cholesterols between these two extremes enjoyed two-thirds the death rates as those who had the lowest cholesterol.

The bottom line of these studies is that senior citizens should reconsider cholesterol lowering treatment. Lowering cholesterol in seniors will not protect them from early death, it will likely shorten their lives. In addition, lowering cholesterol can place seniors at increased risk of depression, energy deficits and memory problems.

What about using natural products to lower cholesterol?

In senior citizens we do not recommend lowering cholesterol unless it is extremely high. At this point natural alternatives to cholesterol lowering medications can become a proper course of action. Unless cholesterol is elevated over 280, our recommendation is to leave it alone and look to other means of protecting yourself against heart disease. These other means include controlling carbohydrate intake, taking fish oil, antioxidants and other important herbs and nutrients to protect the heart.

References:

Schupf N, Costa R, Luchsinger J, et al. (2005). Relationship Between Plasma Lipids and All-Cause Mortality Nondemented Elderly. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 53:219-226.

Forette B, Tortar D, Wolmark Y (1989). Cholesterol as a Risk Factor for Mortality in Elderly Women. Lancet 1:868-870.

Waverling-Rijnsberger WE, Blauw GJ, Lagaay AM, Knook DL, Meinders AE (1997). Total Cholesterol in the Oldest Old. Lancet 350:1119-1123.

“Eat your vegetables,” that’s what Grandma used to say. And as time goes on and our medical scientists become more willing to look at how diet effect’s health, we find that Grandma was right. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables clearly can keep you healthy. “An apple a day can indeed keep the doctor away!”

Which parts of the fresh fruits and vegetables are responsible for maintaining good health? Before I answer that, let me ask a different question… why should it matter? Well, it matters to the big drug companies. If someone can discover an ingredient within the food that we eat that may save us from cancer or heart disease, then there is money to be made. The company would have to “alter” the ingredient chemically, so that they would have a “chemical entity” that they can patent and own. Then they can spend the millions of dollars needed to “prove” that it does what they say it does (clinical testing), than they can charge lots of money for the “medicine” and make billions in the process. Does anyone remember the news out of Johns Hopkins a while ago about broccoli sprouts and their reported benefit for protection against cancer? Of course, a company cannot patent broccoli, they can’t own it or stop you from buying it from the supermarket, so the race is on to make the ingredient different so someone can “own” it and profit from it.

Which ingredients have the biological activity may also be important to know because there may be cooking or processing procedures that may render the ingredient inactive, or destroy it completely. An example of this would be the essential fatty acids that were discussed in last month’s column. If one were to cook with flax oil then the omega-3 fatty acids contained therein would be destroyed. The processing of food has been shown to destroy enzymes and different nutritional components.

So… back to the question… what are the important ingredients in fresh fruits and vegetables that are responsible for maintaining good health? Of course, there are the vitamins and minerals… vitamin C, beta-carotene, zinc, selenium, etc. There are the enzymes that help digest food and help give the liver and pancreas a break from the work of digestion. There are the essential fatty acids that come from seeds and nuts. There is the fiber that we get from food.

And there are the “plant fats”, also know as sterols and sterolins. The primary fat that is found in animals is cholesterol, and the plant equivalent of cholesterol is called sterol. Animals cannot make sterols, but they can get them from the plants that they eat.

Animal studies (including humans) have demonstrated that Beta-sitosterol (the major sterol in higher plants) and Beta-sitosterol glycoside (another plant product) exhibit anti-inflammatory, anti-neoplastic, anti-pyretic and immune-modulating activities. These activities may help protect against and reverse such diseases as chronic viral infections, tuberculosis, cancer, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and various other autoimmune diseases.

The immune system within our bodies is very complex. There are basically two ways that our immune system protects us from disease. The first way is by creating antibodies in response to a particular invader. This is basically how an inoculation works. We inject into the body a part of a virus or bacteria. The body recognizes the invader and creates a specific defense against it, very specific cells that are floating through the body as sentries, waiting for the arrival of the bad guy. They can only fight against that specific bad guy. When someone gets infected with the virus or bacteria then the body is already armed to get rid of it. This is also the primary way that we hand down immunity from generation to generation… antibodies are passed from mother to child through the placenta and through a nutrient called colostrum that comes from breast feeding in the first few days of life.

The second way is through a less specific corps of cells that find invaders and destroys them through various forms of chemical warfare. The natural killer cells that help protect against cancer are among these types of cells. Within these particular cells, the balance between the different components is very important to the body’s ability to effectively fight off disease.

An “auto-immune” disease occurs when, for some reason, the body’s immune system starts fighting against the body itself, or certain parts of the body. In the case of multiple sclerosis, parts of the immune system start attacking the lining of the nerve cells, called the myelin sheath, and cause nerve damage that results in muscle weakness, fatigue and vision problems. It may be that the actual problem has to do with the “balance” between certain parts of the immune system.

Some of the immune cells do the attacking and other cells tell the attacking cells when to stop the assault. Too much of one type and not enough of the other has been observed in people with certain chronic viral and bacteria diseases, and in other chronic conditions, such as allergies and auto-immune disorders. Fixing this imbalance may be the answer to helping people with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, persistent allergies, psoriasis… even cancer and HIV.

What does all of this have to do with sterols and sterolins… the fats that come from plants? Research has shown that beta-sitosterol and beta-sitosterol glycosides work to help maintain the proper balance within certain parts of the immune system. These plant fats help return the body to normal function, they help “normalize” immune function. Is it any wonder that vegetarians seem to suffer less from all sorts of diseases, including various cancers, heart disease, allergies and auto-immune diseases? Ongoing studies looking into the effect of these plant fats include rheumatoid arthritis, chronic rhinitis and sinusitis, hepatitis C, HIV, and cancer.

So the next question is… which plant foods will provide the most of these healthy plant fats? Almost all plant foods contain some amounts of sterols and sterolins. The following list shows the foods with the highest contents (mg of sterols/sterolins per 100 grams of edible portion).

Nuts and Seeds:
Sesame seeds 443
Sunflower seeds 349
Cashews 130
Almonds 122

Vegetables:
Peas 108
Barley 98
Squash, white 89
Potatoes, white 40
Soybeans 30

Vegetable Oils:
Olive oil 91
Wheat germ 67
Sunflower oil 60
Cocoa butter 59

Fruits:
Figs 27
Oranges, naval 17
Pomegranates 16
Apricots 16

Beans and Legumes:
Peanuts 142
Broad 95
Kidney 91

Spices, dry:
Clove 242
Oregano 177
Thyme 152

As you can see, seeds and nuts contain much larger amounts than do many other foods. However, how these foods are cooked and stored, frozen or processed can affect the amounts of the good fats. For example, freezing releases an enzyme within the food that destroys the phytosterol glycosides. Boiling vegetables causes the plant fats to precipitate into the cooking water, which gets thrown away. The vegetable oils mentioned above actually have the sterol removed, because the “cloudiness” that they cause gives the impression of impurities in the oil.

The sprouts of certain foods, if consumed at the proper time, contain much higher amounts of the plant fats. There are products available at the health food store that take the sprouts, dry them and put them in a capsule to insure a certain amount of sterols and sterolins per capsule.

In conclusion, it seems to make sense that nature has the ability to provide us with all of the nutrition that we need to live long, healthy lives. It is clear that our understanding of just how this works is still in its infancy and that as time goes on we will discover more and more. In the meantime, my recommendation is to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Try to eat them in the packages that nature provides them, you never see a “can” of peas growing on a vine. Try to get them as close to the time when they were picked as possible and try to make sure that they were picked ripe, not ripened on a truck on the way to the store. Try to eat foods that are not treated with pesticides and other poisons.

And most importantly, think about what else your Grandma tried to tell you… if she was right about this, she was probably right about all the other things too!

Do Cholesterol Medications Protect Otherwise Healthy People from Heart Disease?

A recent study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that people who have normal cholesterol might benefit by taking cholesterol lowering medications called “statin” medications. In this study, researchers gave these medications to subjects who had normal cholesterol but an elevation in an indicator of inflammation called C-reactive protein. Researchers describe to subjects as “healthy men and women” with a bad cholesterol of less than 130 mg/dl and a C-Reactive Protein level of 2.0 or higher. One group of subjects received 20 mg daily of a medication called rosuvastatin (brand name Crestor) while the other group received an inactive sugar pill. The study, which was supposed to last five years, was ended early because researchers felt that it would be unethical to study due to aggressive decreases of heart attack, stroke, vascular surgery, hospitalization or death from cardiovascular causes.

Currently over 36 million Americans qualify for cholesterol lowering medications simply based on their high cholesterol numbers. This new study would open the door for doctors to prescribe cholesterol-lowering medication to over 10 million people who have normal cholesterol numbers. So is this study all it cracks up to be? Let’s dive into the study…

High blood pressure
Nitric Oxide
High Cholesterol
Pulse magnetic machines
VAP test

Cholesterol
Heart Disease
Thyroid
VAP test

Get Out of Pain Kit
Arthritis
Magnetics
Prostate problems
Bowel issues
Jewelweed Kit
Sleep
Rash
Cholesterol

Red Yeast Rice
Cholesterol
Vitamin K2
Heart Disease
Cooking oils
Hepatitis
Oxygen capacity
Electrolyte
Edema

Years ago, researchers placed rats on a diet that was high in coconut oil. Soon the researchers noticed that the cholesterol levels were becoming elevated and by the study’s end, the rats had developed plaques in the arteries consistent with heart disease.

Soon, the media was reporting that saturated fat, found in coconut oil, was the cause of our heart disease epidemic. There was one problem, however; the study wasn’t about coconut oil…

What Happens to Rats Who Are Deficient in Essential Fatty Acids?

When the researchers set out to study the rats, their intention was to study what happens to rats that become deficient in essential fatty acids such as, omega-6 and omega-3 fats. To do this, the researchers had to use a fat that was devoid of omega-6 and omega-3 fats. The problem was, most fats that are totally devoid of essential fatty acids are hard to incorporate into rat chow.  In fact, the researchers couldn’t find a fat in nature that was totally devoid of essential fatty acids…so they manufactured one.

It Looks Like Coconut Oil & Tastes Like Coconut Oil, But…

Of all of the fats that the researchers evaluated for the study, coconut oil was closest to the ideal oil. Unfortunately, natural coconut oil contains a small quantity of essential fats, which the researchers had to remove in order to make sure the rats became totally depleted of EFAs. To achieve this, the researchers developed hydrogenated coconut oil, a coconut oil that is flooded with hydrogen in order to remove all EFAs. There was one problem…

Hydrogenation Produces Trans-fats!

During the course of the study, the researchers were setting up the perfect storm for heart disease to develop…They were inducing an essential fatty acid deficiency and simultaneously flooding the rat’s body with trans-fats, which are known to promote high cholesterol and heart disease!

Right Observation…Wrong Finding

The researchers concluded that essential fatty acid deficiency leads to high cholesterol and heart disease. The media concluded that eating coconut oil causes high cholesterol and heart disease…

They Were Both Wrong!

Well, they were both only partially right. Essential fatty acid deficiency probably does cause heart disease, but this study only proves that EFA deficiency along with supplementation with trans-fats causes heart disease. The media was also partially right, eating coconut oil does cause high cholesterol and heart disease, but only if it is hydrogenated coconut oil, full of trans-fats, in combination with an EFA deficient diet.

They rightly observed that feeding rats coconut oil led to heart disease, but they wrongly deduced that the coconut oil was to blame. In fact, it was the hydrogenation of coconut oil and the EFA deficiency that ultimately led to catastrophic problems.

Natural Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil is Healthy!

In 1992, researchers performed a review of the published research on coconut oil. They concluded that unadulterated coconut oil did not cause elevated cholesterol nor did it cause an increased risk of heart disease (Philippine Journal of Internal Medicine 30:165-171;1992.)

In 1994, researchers added natural, unadulterated coconut oil to the diets of men with normal cholesterol. By the study’s end, their cholesterol increased from 166.7 to 170.0 mg/dl, however, the bad cholesterol came down a little while the good cholesterol went up a little. By the study’s end, the men enjoyed a healthier cholesterol balance. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 59:841-846;1994.)

In 1991, researchers fed 83 men and women a diet that was comprised of 24% fat, of which 75% came from coconut oil. By the study’s end, the total cholesterol went up by 17%, however, the bad cholesterol came down while the good cholesterol increased by 21.4%!

This is a small sampling of the scientific evidence that proves coconut oil to be safe and healthy cooking oil.

Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil is the Healthiest of ALL Cooking Oil

In this video, I explain why coconut oil is the best cooking oil compared to canola oil, olive oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, and corn oil.

Where to Get Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil

There are many brands of extra-virgin coconut oil on the market. I personally use the Nutiva Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil in my cooking, which is available in our online store. Other brands include:

Garden of Life Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

Jarrow Formulas Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil

How to Choose a Good Coconut Oil

As I mentioned, there are many good brands of extra-virgin coconut oil on the market:

1. Only choose extra-virgin coconut oil – Extra-virgin means that you are getting unadulterated and unrefined coconut oil.
2. Organic is Not Essential – Because coconuts are not typically sprayed with pesticides, it is not essential that it be organic.
3. It should be a white-solid at room temperature – Pure extra-virgin coconut oil is a white, soft, solid at room temperature. It will turn to a clear liquid at temperatures slightly above room temperature.
4. It should be lightly aromatic – In other words, it should smell like a coconut
5. It should have a mild and pleasant flavor – It is from coconut, so it does have a bit of a coconut flavor to it. If it is not right for your recipe, then use extra-virgin olive oil as an alternative.

Extra-virgin coconut oil is a safe and healthy oil to use in cooking and you should enjoy this oil without fear of heart disease or high cholesterol. Due to its mild, coconut flavor, it may not be appropriate for all recipes. If coconut oil doesn’t work for your recipe, then turn to organic butter as a second option followed by extra-virgin olive oil.