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Cholesterol Does Not Cause Heart Disease

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The Cholesterol Myth- Debunked

Last week I read one of the most informative books I have read in a very long time. The book is called The Great Cholesterol Myth, by Jonny Bowden and Dr. Stephen Sinatra. It is my sincere wish that every physician and person read this informative book. Here is a brief synopsis on what I learned.

Is cholesterol the great threat we have been told to believe and does it really cause heart disease? New research is proving that nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

What is cholesterol?heart newsletter

Cholesterol:

  • is a waxy substance that is found in every cell in your body
  • helps to produce hormones, cell membranes, Vitamin D and bile acids needed for digestion
  • is made in the liver

If you don’t get enough cholesterol in your diet your liver will simply make more and vice versa.

Yes, we need cholesterol! The question is how much and what type?

There are two types of cholesterol

1)    LDL-Low density lipoprotein (also known as the ‘bad’ cholesterol)

2)    HDL- High density lipoprotein (also known as healthy or ‘good’ cholesterol)

Old school told us that total cholesterol was a good indicator of heart disease, but this is no longer correct. We also thought that if LDL was high, that you might need to be on statin drugs.

We now know that there are different types of LDL and not all of them are bad.

LDLA is fluffy-like a cotton ball and is harmless. LDLB is small and hard and if it becomes oxidized, it can stick to the arterial walls and cause issues. Knowing how high your LDL is, isn’t helpful unless you know which type of LDL is high. Most physicians look at the total LDL number, not the size and type.

Some Interesting Facts

  • Statin drugs deplete the body of Co enzyme Q10, which is needed for a healthy heart.
  • Statin drugs cause cognitive and memory problems as well as depression
  • Not all LDL is bad
  • Not all HDL is good; it has varying degrees
  • Just because you have high HDL does not mean you are not susceptible to heart disease
  • Good HDL reduces inflammation
  • Bad HDL does not reduce inflammation, so this is why some people who have high HDL can still develop heart disease
  • Half the people with heart disease have normal cholesterol
  • Half the people with elevated cholesterol have healthy hearts
  • Lowering cholesterol has limiting benefits
  • Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease
    Did you read that correctly? Yes you did, but it is worth repeating, cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease.

This brings me to the real cause of heart disease, no not cholesterol or fat, but inflammation.

Inflammation

There are two types of inflammation, acute and chronic. Acute is when whack your ankle against something and it gets red and a little inflamed and takes a day or two to heal. Chronic inflammation is silent and it kills. Chronic inflammation is usually undetected and yet it is the cause of most degenerative diseases such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, kidney disease and obesity.

Oxidation

Inflammation happens when oxidation takes place in the body. Oxidation is really aging, or a type of rusting from within. A good example of oxidation is how an apple turns brown when left out on the counter.

Cholesterol is only a problem if it has been oxidized or damaged. Damaged or oxidized LDL cholesterol sticks to the walls of the arteries and begins the process of inflammation. Inflammation begins with free radical damage and leads to heart disease. So the concept of good and bad cholesterol is quite outdated.

Do you have heart disease?

The best predictor of heart disease is to measure the ratio between your triglycerides and your HDL levels. High triglycerides tend to correlate with the bad LDL or LDLB and usually mean you are insulin-resistant, which also is indicative of heart disease. Reducing your triglycerides and raising your HDL levels will, in turn, lower your chances of heart disease.

Sugar

Sugar, not fat, is the #1 dietary contributor to heart disease

High sugar intake drives up insulin, which raises blood pressure and increases cholesterol which then contributes to inflammation in the arterial walls.

Sugar also raises triglycerides. When sugar sticks to the protein in your blood it creates AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-Products), which are damaging and toxic to your body. This same process damages LDL, contributing to inflammation which leads to heart disease.

3 Ways to Stay Healthy

  • Having low triglycerides
  • Having High HDL levels
  • Having Low insulin levels

Insulin

Insulin is known as the fat-storing hormone and is the cause of many illnesses.

It makes our body’s cells absorb glucose from the blood. The glucose is stored in the liver and muscle as glycogen ( its sister hormone) and stops the body from using fat as a source of energy.  Together they maintain blood sugar levels.

When you eat a donut and drink a sweet drink your blood sugar rises and your pancreas produces insulin to combat all the sugar you have just ingested. The insulin rounds up the excess sugar and sends it over the muscle cells. If you go out and exercise it out then all is fine, but if you sit in your car or at your computer for hours then it just sits in your cells. Then you eat lunch and your pancreas produces more insulin and it sends it to the muscle cells, but they say, “we don’t want it,” so they resist it and the excess sugar goes to your fat cells. After constant bombardment, the fat cells say, “no more,” and become insulin-resistant.

Now the insulin starts to talk to your kidneys and it tells them to hold onto salt and the kidneys bring on more water to stabilize and dilute the salt. Increased sodium retention results in increased water retention, which means more blood volume, which means higher blood pressure. Approximately 70 percent of people with high blood pressure are insulin-resistant. Therefore insulin can raise your blood pressure.

If you keep assaulting your body with high sugar intake or a high carbohydrate diet, your fat cells become more resistant and insulin resistance takes over. If your insulin stays high, diabetes ensues. Insulin also locks the door to the fat cells so it make is very difficult to lose weight. Chronically high insulin promotes inflammation, therefore promoting heart disease.

Did you know that you probably consume approximately 156 pounds of sugar a year?

Are You Insulin-Resistant?

Did you know that one in three people is insulin-resistant in North America? You could be insulin-resistant if:

Your belly touches the wall before the rest of your body

You’re a male with waist sizes more than 40 inches

You’re a woman with waist sizes more than 35 inches

And this is interesting—you can be thin and insulin resistant

The good news is that insulin resistance is reversible

A good predictor of insulin resistance is comparing your triglyceride levels to your HDL levels. If your ratio is 3 or more, it is a good indication of insulin resistance and a good indication that you have the bad LDL.

High triglycerides correlate with high LDLB or the bad LDL. Low levels of triglycerides tend to mean you have more of the harmless LDLA particles.

Being insulin-resistant means the insulin in your body is contributing to the inflammation in your body. This damages the LDL cholesterol, which then starts plaque formation.

By lowering your triglycerides raising your HDL you may reduce your risk of heart disease.

Lowering your sugar consumption will more than likely lower your triglycerides and your fasting insulin.

Sugar Facts

Table sugar is made up of fructose and glucose. Regular sugar is 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose. High fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Fructose is the damaging part of sugar. Some call it metabolic poison to the body. It goes straight to the liver and turns to fat. Fructose is the major cause of a fatty liver and a fatty liver equals insulin resistance.

When you eat a piece of fruit, the fibre helps slow down the insulin response in the body, but when you eat high-fructose corn syrup, it raises your triglycerides and uric acid, as well as your appetite.

Start to read food labels and you will soon realize that high-fructose corn syrup is in almost every pre-packaged food item there is. It is cheaper to produce than white sugar, and it is far sweeter. It also increases appetite where glucose decreases appetite, which explains why fast food restaurants love it. Fructose leads to insulin resistance, which leads to inflammation which then leads to heart disease, so sugar or high fructose corn syrup is far more damaging to the heart than fat or cholesterol.

 

Conclusion

Hypertension, high triglyceride levels, and high ratio of triglycerides to HDL are all greater predictors of heart disease than cholesterol or fat. Sugar or, more specifically, fructose, raises every one of these.

Yes, fat raises LDL, but the harmless LDLA, and it lowers the LDLB or bad LDL. Sugar, on the other hand, increases the bad LDLB particles and decreases the harmless LDLA particles.

Seems like there are far worse things for us that cholesterol, don’t you think?

 

Tests to ask your Doctor for

1)    Particle Size Test: will measure LDL particle size. If you have pattern A cholesterol profile, most of your LDL cholesterol is big and fluffy, and harmless. If you have pattern B, most of your LDL is the small pellet-size cholesterol, which causes inflammation. NMR LipoProfile Test, the Lipoprint, the Berkeley, the VAP or LPP tests will measure your LDL.

2)    C-Reactive Protein (CRP): is a marker for inflammation. Ask for the (hs-CRP) test

3)    Fibrinogen: is a protein that determines the stickiness of your blood. Normal levels are between 200 and 400 mg/dl and can be elevated when inflammation is present. Ask for either the Clauss method or the FIF test.

4)    Serum Ferritin: checks for amount of iron in your blood

5)    Lp(a): elevated Lp(a) is a serious risk factor

6)    Homocysteine: is an amino acid by-product that causes your body to lay down sticky platelets in blood vessels. Excess levels can affect your cardiovascular health.

7)    Interleukin-6: is important because it stimulates the liver to produce CRP. Higher levels have been associated with asthma and heart disease.

8)    Coronary Calcium Scan: calcium is fine in the bones, but not so good if it’s in your coronary arteries.

Foods to Eat

1)    Grass-fed meats

2)    Wild salmon

3)    Vegetables

4)    Nuts and seeds

5)    Berries

6)    Beans

7)    Garlic and turmeric

8)    Dark chocolate

9)    Green tea

10)Olive oil

11) Red Wine

Foods to Avoid

1)    Sugar

2)    Processed carbohydrates

3)    Trans fats

4)    Processed meats

5)    Vegetable oils

6)    Soda

Lifestyle Changes

Lower your stress

Meditate

Practice yoga

Express emotions

Play

Cultivate intimacy

Enjoy life

 

Resources: The Great Cholesterol Myth by Jonny Bowden, PH.D., C.N.S and Dr. Stephen Sinatra, M.D.,F.A.C.C.

77 responses to “Cholesterol Does Not Cause Heart Disease”

  1. Shirley,

    Thanks for the great information!
    I will start to practice in my eating habits.
    You have done so well,—-keep up the good work!
    Love,
    Mary Ellen.

    Reply

  2. Shirley, it took me about a year of hundreds hours of reading and watching videos to determine the things people need to do to prevent heart disease. You summed up in your blog everything I have discovered and that book you cited by Dr. Sinatra could not be more right. Excessive sugar is indeed the cause of most health issues. It is in everything (and comes from carbohydrate foods) and it causes the destruction within us. Some people may not have this issue, maybe because their active lifestyle is able to burn it up, but if it cannot someday, big problems await. Excessive sugar creates fat. That fat is carried around by people requiring their heart to work harder. Excessive sugar also causes insulin resistance (diabetes) and then red blood cells are forced to carry it around ones body causing inflammation of the arteries, which causes cholesterol to need to patch these arteries, which causes high blood pressure. And finally, excessive sugar causes skin tags. The greatest thing one can do for their body is to avoid sugar, to exercise, and to get lean. The body will then repair itself, but don’t wait until chronic disease results because then much more is involved than simple diet and lifestyle changes. Sometimes supplements are needed too. Many of us are deficient in magnesium, potassium, calcium, d3, k2, true vitamin c, ubiquinol (especially if on statins), and other minerals and vitamins. Supplements can help the body repair itself. Thank you for sharing everything you put in your blog. Even your food recommendations are excellent.

    Reply

    1. Thank you Len for this wonderful comment- I am so glad you have found wellness and good for you for knowing what your body needs.I am so glad you are here part of our community and thank you for sharing I so appreciate it.

      Reply

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Shirley Plant

About Shirley

I'm Shirley Plant, nutritionist and cookbook author. My passion is helping you figure out which foods fuel your body and which ones deplete it.

Appearances By Shirley

  • CTV News
  • Rogers TV
  • FoodNetwork.ca
  • The Eat Real Food Health Summit
  • Menopause Wellness Summit
  • The Parenting TeleSummit

Appearances By Shirley

  • CTV News
  • Rogers TV
  • FoodNetwork.ca
  • The Eat Real Food Health Summit
  • Menopause Wellness Summit
  • The Parenting TeleSummit

Shirley's Cookbooks

Finally... Food I Can Eat!

Finally... Food I Can Eat!

A dietary guide and cookbook featuring tasty non vegetarian and vegetarian recipes for people with food allergies and intolerances. Recipes free of gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, wheat, nightshades, sugar and yeast.

AVAILABLE NOW FROM

Finally... Paleo Food I Can Eat!

Finally... Paleo Food I Can Eat!

Paleo recipes for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and dessert. Recipes free of grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugar, eggs and almonds. Plus, chapters on the mind body connection by Dr. Eva Selhub M.D and healing your body from chronic illness with Dr. Terry Wahls. M.D.

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