Blaming cholesterol is like accusing firemen of fire accident. It is like accusing policemen wherever there is crime. Of course, they will be present when there is a bad incident. Consider cholesterol is like firemen or policemen. But we need to understand why is the cholesterol which is a healthy essential substance needed for by every cell in our body, would create a problem for us. When there is inflammation or eruption or minor fissures caused by other inflammatory substances like triglycerides, pollutants, toxins, and substances from junk foods, you will find cholesterol together with calcium forming plaque in the arteries and lot of other places. But instead of fixing the root cause of the issue, we attack the symptom by taking an easier route like lowering the cholesterol using statins drugs. There is nothing wrong in taking statins for a while if the cholesterol and triglyceride levels are very high. However, if the root cause is not mitigated, then you would be taking statins for life.
Functions of Cholesterol
- Cholesterol is a waxy type of fat, or lipid, which moves throughout your body in your blood. Your body makes cholesterol, but you can also get it from foods especially from animal foods. Your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs like 3000 mg/day.
- “Cholesterol” is needed by each cell in our body.
- Cholesterol is used to produce/repair cell membranes,
- Precursor to hormones like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, cortisone,
- Required to produce vitamin D from sunlight
- Needed Generate bile acids that help you to digest fat.
- Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function.
What is LDL and HDL
- LDL is not cholesterol. Low density lipoprotein is a protein that shuttles cholesterol and triglycerides.
- LDL is the carrier that transports cholesterol from the liver to the vessels and cells.
- HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) transports the cholesterol from the arteries back to the liver.
Uses
- Allows cell permeability – allowing electrolytes to travel in and out of the cell
- Protects the cell against microbes
- Needed to make bile
- Needed to make fat soluble vitamins – A, D, E, K1, K2
- Needed to make adrenal hormones like cortisol
- Needed to have sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone
- Your immune system needs cholesterol to function
- Needed to combat the negative effects of bacterial toxins
- Helps inhibit the damage from microbes
- Acts as a band-aid to help in the healing of the endothelium layer
Here are some of the problems with low cholesterol:
- Depression
- Cellular damage
- Low sexual hormones
- Strokes
- Mental issues
- Short term memory loss in elderly
- Susceptibility to infection
- Increase risk for allergies and asthma
Triglycerides
- Triglycerides are a type of fat (lipid) found in your blood. It is a combination of three fatty acids held together by a glycerol molecule.
- When you eat, your body converts any calories it doesn’t need to use right away into triglycerides. The triglycerides are stored in your fat cells. Later, hormones release triglycerides for energy between meals.
- If you regularly eat more calories than you burn, particularly from high-carbohydrate foods, you may have high triglycerides (hypertriglyceridemia)
- Adipose tissue triglyceride represents the major energy store of the body. Fatty acids are mobilized from adipose tissue triglycerides by the action of hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), which is activated by glucagon and adrenaline (epinephrine) and inhibited by insulin.
Triglyceride Uses
- What is the main benefit of a triglyceride, like glucouse it is used for our energy needs.
Reasons for high triglycerides
- Very high levels of triglycerides are associated with liver disease.
- High triglycerides can cause inflammation in arteries and may contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls (arteriosclerosis) — which increases the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.
- Extremely high triglycerides can also cause acute inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis).
- A first sign of metabolic syndrome is high insulin in blood and high triglyceride levels – For metabolic syndrome, that group includes abdominal obesity (visceral fat), high blood pressure, high blood sugar, low HDL cholesterol
Statin
Any of a group of drugs which act to reduce levels of cholesterol (which also reduces triglycerides) in the blood.
Few Types of statins
- atorvastatin
- fluvastatin
- pravastatin
- rosuvastatin
- simvastatin
Researchers warn that unless a patient is at high risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke, statins may cause more harm than good’. Many studies found statins decrease energy and fitness and increase fatigue and sleep problems. They also found that statins may increase the risk of muscle aches and pains, kidney and liver problems, bleeding in the brain, and type 2 diabetes.
We need to understand that most of these symptoms are our body’s way of giving us feedback that something is wrong in our body and the cause may be somewhere internal. Suppressing symptoms like inflammation or pain or discomfort or cholesterol is like switching off the fire alarm just because we are the alarm sound is irritating to us. When there is fire alarm, we need to put off fire and not switch off alarm bells and believe that it is peaceful now.
Modern medicines and drugs are well suited for treating Acute pain and diseases, trauma, and infections. There are very few drugs/medicines which treat the root cause of the disease in modern medicine. Especially in the case of chronic lifestyle diseases (disorders), majority of the allopathic drugs would modulate, block, or suppress various symptoms(that show up due some inherent disease or disorder) and rarely treat the main cause of the symptom.
May medical research and top-level medical associations clearly said there is no connection of having high cholesterol and heart diseases. In fact, many studies show that high cholesterol is associated with higher life experience and lower cholesterol has association with higher all-cause mortality. Same is with saturated fats.
So, when we are assessing our blood lipid profile, we need to understand it holistically and must not just look at LDL cholesterol and use statins if someone prescribes.
There are two types of LDL particles that should be taken into account when calculating heart disease risk:
- LDL-A particles are larger, less dense, and lower your risk. They basically transport fats and nutrients and does not involve in repair work.
- LDL-B particles are smaller, denser, and increase your risk. This is what is shown as VLDL in our lipid profile. They involve in repair work and even cause inflammation by causing friction in artery walls.
When you have low triglyceride levels but high LDL levels, generally speaking for majority of people it could indicate that they are leading a healthy lifestyle. That also means you are metabolically healthy, mostly your other blood parameters would be good, and you may also be doing reasonably well with your eating habits, exercise and sleeping routines.
If you have high triglycerides. Mostly you would be having low HDL and generally high VLDL and LDL as well. So this is dangerous. This combination means that you might be doing wrong in multiple areas like diet or exercise or insufficient sleep or stress or obese or per-diabetic or diabetic or even low in certain vitamins and minerals in your blood.
What is the best way to read lipid profile
- Total cholesterol / HDL cholesterol ratio – Should be between 3 and 4 to ensure healthy cholesterol levels and a substantially reduced risk of heart disease. Total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio is the best predictor of cardiovascular disease risk on the basic blood lipid panel
- Triglyceride / HDL ratio – Another better way of calculating cholesterol link to cardiovascular disease. Less than 2 is ideal. Anything above 2 is bad .
What could cause abnormal lipids (cholesterol or triglycerides?
- Obesity
- Poorly controlled diabetes.
- An underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism).
- Liver or Pancreas disease
- Regularly eating more calories than you burn.
- Smoking
- Alcoholism
- Sometimes high triglycerides are a side effect of taking certain medications including steroids
- Poor lifestyle
How to lower High Triglycerides and improving HDL level – “Lifestyle Changes”
- Get more physical activity and exercise daily– A balanced exercise program of Strength training/HIIT and cardio
- Weight loss – To be precise target Fat-loss using right exercise regime and nutrition.
- Sleep well (at least for 7 to 8 hours)
- Reduce stress and anxiety using meditation or deep breathing Henriques
- Choose healthy fats like Omega 3.
- Add some protein rich foods. Eat foods with healthy fats.
- High quality Vitamin/Mineral Supplements will be helpful
- Eat more fibre – colourful vegetables and fruits
- Eat at regular intervals and avoid snacking in between meals
- Lower sugar, refined carbs, and refined oils
- Stop smoking and drinking alcohol
~Praveen Jada
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