Cholesterol

Cholesterol

You have been your doctor. They say that your cholesterol is too high. You need to reduce it urgently. You are a little anxious to say the least. What do you do? 

Scaring people by telling them their cholesterol levels is a red herring. Cholesterol is something that can be measured and lowered through drugs called statins. That makes a fortune for pharmaceutical companies and the doctors and scientists who developed them. Statins might open up the arteries and reduce heart disease or stroke but by some other mechanism than simply reducing cholesterol. Before you consider statins try flushing your body of unwanted fats and changing your lifestyle to lower the stress on your body.

The real culprits are too much salt, processed food, food eaten in a hurry and not digested slowly, lack of exercise, too much processed sugar like refined fructose corn syrup or processed glucose, too much alcohol, too much stress in your life putting pressure on the systems in your body, smoking or recreational drugs, too many stimulants like drinks that fire you up then leave you exhausted and angry. (It is said that if an animal is tired it takes a rest, if a human being is tired they take a stimulant). Simply making sure that you give enough time to sleep will take some of the demands off your body.

If you want to take some practical steps to clean your body stop eating processed food. Change the fats you consume. Use Benecol, Pura, Flora or butter and reduce the amount. Eat plant fats in preference to animal fats. Cut all of the fat off meat. Eat outdoor reared chicken and pork instead of red meat. It is easier to remove the fat from chicken and pork than from beef. Squeeze fresh lemon juice onto lamb, it helps to digest it and the vitamin C releases the iron. Cut out bought pizza with plastic cheese on top and too much salt, cut out pies, salty processed foods and eat real food, prepare your own lunch at take it to work. Take a large spoonful of oatbran on your cereal. Take a large spoonful of wheatgerm a day as well. Try a teaspoon of linseed or linseed (flax) seed oil a day (don't soak it simply crunch it). Snack on plain cashews, almonds, pine nuts, unsalted pistachios, oatcakes, dried unsulphured apricots, organic carrots. Eat lots of green vegetables, watercress, broccoli, courgettes, lettuce, cabbage, colourful fruit like fresh mango, strawberries, cherries, raspberries, grapes, red grapefruit. Drink at the most one smoothie a day. Don't overdo the fruit. There is a lot of fructose that might upset your digestion.

What is the thinking behind this advice? Benecol and plant fats contain phystosterols. They help to flush out unwanted fats. Oatbran, oatcakes and linseed contains soluble fibre. It helps to clean the bile duct that leads from the gallbladder. Regularly take a spoon of lecithin (extracted from soya). Lecithin helps to dissolve cholesterol in the bile duct. Egg yolk also contains lecithin so eat up to six eggs a week. 

Other plant fats include low salt peanut butter, palm oil, avocados, dessicated coconut and coconut oil, almonds and almond oil, plain, unsalted cashews, extra virgin olive oil.

What is cholesterol and how does it act?

"Chole" means bile; "sterol" means solid; "-ol" comes from alcohol. So cholesterol is a waxy, bile alcohol. It is a repair substance that the body uses for plugging leaks in the plumbing. It insulates the faster conducting nerves. It helps your brain to make connections. It is used to make hormones to cope with stress and help sexual arousal. It was found when the arteries of dead people were examined. Other substances like calcium were there as well. When your body is under stress the blood vessels get inflamed and leak. Cholesterol is a waxy substance carried around in fatty / protein molecules. The fatty / proteins plug the leaks. Macrophages (lit. 'big eaters') come along and engulf the mixture turning it into plaque or hardening of the arteries. The macrophages drive the plug into the artery walls leaving porridge like plaque. Cholesterol is not the cause of plaque it is the consequence of inflammation. Inflammation is the body's attempt to repair damage. The answer is to tackle the causes of damage not cholesterol. The nations with the highest cholesterol (around 7.1) are the Austrians and the Swiss. The ethnic group with the lowest cholesterol (around 4.5) are the displaced aboriginal tribes in Australia. The group with the lowest rate of heart disease are guess who? The Austrians and the Swiss. Possibly because they have more cohesive social groups and live amongst beautiful mountains affects their stress levels. The group with the highest rate of heart disease are the Aboriginal Australians. Read the book "The Cholesterol Cure". In his book Dr ... puts the view that stress on whole groups in society leads to stress in their bodies. His view is that overwhelming stress is the major factor in heart disease. The original findings of substances in the blood vessels including cholesterol, was done on young men who had died in the Vietnamese war. You could not ask for a more stressful effect on the body than being in a war. 

Other causes of inflammation

The answer is not as simple as stress. South West Scotland had extremely high levels of heart disease. Displacement of whole communities was a factor when the tenements were cleared. However Scotland is also the home of deep fried everything from haggis to mars bars. In the Orkney Islands where we used to live, you could catch wonderful wild brown trout in the lochans. If you visited Balfour's restaurant in Evie you would find those beautiful trout, deep fried in batter. 

Hydrogenated or Altered Fats are another factor

Oils are liquid at a cool temperature; fats are solid, monounsaturated fats go waxy when cold.

Oils include sunflower, rape seed, soya, almond, flax seed. Fats include lard, most animal fats. Monounsaturated fats include duck or goose fat, olive oil, peanut butter, coconut, safflower.

Overheating oil alters it chemically into hydrogenated fat. You could call them altered fats. They are unusable by the body and block the action of helpful fats. They turn into flabby cells clogging up your blood vessels. In brief, your body does not need processed, hydrogenated fats. 

If you are going to fry food or roast potatoes it is healthier to use duck or goose fat, lard, coconut oil or butter. Lower the temperature if you fry with oil. For instance add a little water if you are cooking mushrooms, onions or garlic. It keeps the oil at boiling not frying temperature.

Your body needs cholesterol. If you don't eat it, your liver and other cells will make it, (unless you are on statins). Good sources are eggs, prawns and other shellfish. The older you are the more important cholesterol becomes. An older person, especially female, is more likely to die of liver disease, mental dysfunction or cancer if their cholesterol is too low. Don't worry about cholesterol. There are more important things in life to keep your attention.