#30 Talking with Tracee – Cholesterol Rant

Cholesterol Rant

“These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease. Please consult your medical professional for advice regarding cholesterol. This podcast is just the opinion of the author, and she could be wrong”

When I post  keto recipes, many people complain to me and are worried about their cholesterol.

Do people think you are crazy on keto? Do they ask you about the whole cholesterol deal?

My guess is Yes, and in this episode, I am hoping to simplify this issue and give you an answer to their nagging concerns.

My big question is what is wrong with cholesterol exactly?

Well, many doctors told us it is too high if it’s over 200.

I don’t blame the doctors per se, this is what they are taught in medical school and from all the pharma companies pushing the cholesterol lowering medications.

Many people know about total cholesterol, HDL (the good cholesterol) and LDL (the bad cholesterol)

But do you know what triglycerides are?

How about cholesterol particle size?

How about homocysteine?

Or CRP?

We will cover these later

So let’s get back to the question…why does it matter if you have high cholesterol?

Many people answer that it’s because they don’t want to have a heart attack.

Did you know that most people who die from heart disease have normal cholesterol levels? (link at bottom of page)

Well that doesn’t make sense!

We are made to believe that a blood cholesterol level above 200 is too high and it would be a good idea to take medication.

Did you know that years ago, that number was 300….wonder what happened? I think the big pharma companies just wanted to sell more drugs and scared the crap out of the doctors.

Please don’t’ think this is about blaming doctors. Their code of ethics is “Do No Harm.”

However, in medical school, they mostly learn about medicine. It has been said that most doctors don’t receive more than a few hours of nutritional education.

And Hippocrates said, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. Who am I to argue with Hippocrates?

So why aren’t doctors talking about food instead of statins.

History

In a nutshell, in the early 20^th century, Carnegie and Rockefeller, who owned pharmaceutical companies, basically withdrew funding of all nutritional/lifestyle based medical schools.  Only the drug therapy based schools were able to thrive. This forced the nutritional schools to fold and their pharma companies to grow.

Fast forward 200 years and the forgotten history of how modern medicine evolved, many doctors don’t understand what Hippocrates was trying to say back in 1700 and only know about medicines.

And thanks to good old TV commercials and 6 page magazine ads, patients are surrounded with the lastest and greatest medicine promising to cure all their problems.  From high cholesterol  to erectile dysfunction from Alzheimer’s to diabetes.

OK so this explains why our unknowing doctors are prescribing so many meds: that is what they learned in med school and it’s what their patients want.

Oxidized Cholesterol

While heart disease is the #1 killer in both men and women. Cholesterol is not the enemy. Even LDL is not the enemy.

It’s oxidized cholesterol.

Imagine a room filled with balloons aka cholesterol. You can easily walk from one end of the room to the other. They are floating easily through the air. They are NOT oxidized, not sticking to the walls. Try taking a balloon and seeing if you can just stick it to a wall. It falls on the ground right?

Well, What happens when you rub a balloon in your hair and then try to stick it to the wall. It sticks. Crazy stuff. Well you just oxidized that balloon.

LDL cholesterol becomes oxidized or sticky when it is damaged by free radicals.

When it is non-sticky, it is healthy and serves a purpose of hormonal production and energy transportation.

Other risk factors of heart disease include:

Smoking, Aging, High blood pressure, high CRP (c reactive protein),obesity, diabetes, low HDL, OXIDIZED LDL, low free testosterone in men.

But when your LDL or total cholesterol gets high, your doctor wants to put you on a cholesterol lowering medicine. Have you seen the list of side effects to these bady boys? Probably not without a magnifying glass.

The worst is Statins decrease CoQ10  (which is necessary for energy production) and increase reactive oxygen species (rust) and this rust leads to damaged cells.

Last year, when I had my blood checked, these were my results.

• TRIGLYCERIDES 47
• HDL 60 – cleans out sticky LDL
• LDL 179 – distributes energy from fat
• Glucose 84
• CRP < .10 inflammatory marker
• Homocysteine is 8.3

So my total cholesterol is 239. Many docs would run out and put me on a statin.

My LDL is “too high” also.

My HDL and Glucose are great

And My trigs are incredible – as I just ate 5 pieces of bacon for lunch.

But the kick here is the trig/hdl ratio – the goal is 2:1. You take the triglycerides and divide it by the HDL.

So if your trigs are 150, which is considered ok and your HDL is 75, you are at 2. 150/75 = 2. Anything below a 2 is good.

Well, if I do the math on mine, it’s 47/60 = .78

Hmmmm that sounds pretty dang good to me.

The other test you want to get is particle size.

Not all LDL are created equal.

The small dense LDL are bad and the large fluffy LDL are good.

Bottom line, we need cholesterol. Like I said earlier it’s necessary for hormone production, cell membranes, and the precursor to vitamin D.

Cholesterol is the mother hormone. It produces pregenelone and pregnenalone produces the sex hormones of progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, and DHEA.

A big part of aging is a decrease in hormones. So why would anyone want to decrease cholesterol is they want to age younger.

The book Cholesterol Clarity is a very good resource.

I loaned mine out, so didn’t even have the chance to reference it for this podcast.

There is a great website called Cholesterol Code which Dave Feldman talks about his experiment with eating cholesterol laden foods and testing blood cholesterol. http://cholesterolcode.com/

There is an inverse relationship.

When he eats cholesterol, 2 or 3 days later his blood reading is low. When he doesn’t eat cholesterol foods, his blood levels are high.

In a nutshell, this tells me that your body will produce the cholesterol it needs. If you eat it, your body doesn’t need to produce any, it’s all happy and satisfied.

But when you don’t eat it, your live goes into hyper drive and produces a bunch (most likely to store extra for famine)

Hope this episode gives you a short answer to your nagging friends who complain about their cholesterol and your bacon burger. They ae probably eating the bread.

Tell them about episode 1 where I talk about the “low fat” movement leading to the obesity epidemic, referencing the powerpoint slides I found on the CDC website.

“remember, don’t blame the butter for what the bread did.

Be on the look out for more talking with Tracee episodes. Please let me know what topics you want me to summarize for you.

Seriously, I did eat 5 pieces of bacon, mindlessly…and now I am stuffed. Think mindful eating will be another great episode for Talking with Tracee.

If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend. Also if you will head over to itunes and give us a quick rating and review, I will certainly appreciate it.

Links

Book: Cholesterol Clarity

Heart Disease/Cholesterol Study

Episode 1 – https://highenergygirl.com/meet-high-energy-girl/

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/databases.html

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