Tag: cholesterol

High Cholesterol… Says Who?

High cholesterol… according to what measure?

Don’t leave before you read the last few lines! My lipid profile was checked when I was going in for other blood tests at the doctors. The GP surgery pointed me to a website to read as I had ‘high cholesterol’. My level could be considered borderline high according to some measuring, apparently.

My cholesterol numbers are not at the bottom of the UK’s range, but also not at the top.

It seems there are a number of cholesterol measures to take into account and a number of ways to skin this particular cholesterol cat?

This is a UK page I found (the UK and the US seem to measure things differently).

High cholesterol… Says who? There are SO many opinions to hear. We need to decide who to listen to.

I’ve been to have a look at whether my cholesterol levels are fine or not?

We (the Western ‘developed’ world) started avoiding eggs and saturated fat after listening to flawed research in the 1950s!

What follows is a quote from the guy who got us throwing out the best part of an egg (the yolks) to save our hearts and cardiovascular system. In a 2004 editorial in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, Sylvan Lee Weinberg, former president of the American College of Cardiology and outspoken proponent of the diet-heart hypothesis, said

The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet… may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations.

one of my favourite meals

I found this site very heartening (excuse the weak pun) in how it neatly debunks the heart health myths we’re peddled, daily.

Even if we eat NO cholesterol our liver makes cholesterol, this is a good thing as we need it to make hormones that are essential for our wellbeing. that FACT is mentioned less on heart healthy websites!

I can’t help but wonder whether our increasing talk of stranger danger is keeping our children from exercising and being able to deal better with whatever we throw into our stomachs?

It’s being proposed that children from the age of 9 ought to have their cholesterol levels regularly checked?

It’s now been established that eating cholesterol has little if no bearing on the fat levels in our blood. Thanks go to Chris Kresser for the link further up.

Continuing to make low fat margarine and low fat other stuff, has created a mighty industry to keep up. You would have thought this would be especially tricky in the face of uncomfortable truth!

Eggs and butter REALLY don’t cause high cholesterol!

I repeat, dietary fat and cholesterol are not our enemy but we have a huge industry interested in keeping us misinformed.

 

I’ve been using coconut fat in place of butter. It has  an equivalent amount of saturated fat to butter but I have been reading recently that butter is a ‘safe’ dairy food. It doesn’t contain as many of the proteins that other dairy products contain? Our bodies can get confused

Since I was little I’ve not liked the idea or taste of consuming another species’ growth fluid (breast milk from another animal) but apparently, because butter is higher fat there’s little space for the rest of the casein I’ve been avoiding by ditching dairy.

I’ll talk about avoiding dairy in another post, soon. Here is another post where I talk about lots of things that go into how our bodies function.

This nutrition lark and high cholesterol (?) is not straightforward!

I refer again to the link near the top of the page which had a number of myth busting bullet points (Myth No.5).

People who have heart attacks have LOWER cholesterol levels than those who DON’T have heart attacks!

I’ve gathered, if we want to live longer then let’s not be concerned with cholesterol levels? On the other hand, our weight and an out of control insulin response to sugar (and everything that contains it) WILL contribute to heart disease and possibly a shorter life!

Eggs are good!

An image of a poached egg on gluten free toast with lots of freshly cracked black pepper, sea salt and coconut oil in place of butter. I’ve used this image as it represents the various changes I’ve made to my diet over the years but perhaps even more since investing in a medical procedure in 2012?

I’m not healed… yet but I firmly believe a positive, open mind that attempts to stay aware of what’s going on around it is going to form the cornerstone of any recovery (no matter how large or small).
  • Eggs have had a bad rap in times past but I choose to aim for about one a day… but without the whites. the runny yolk has a similar consistency to the phospholipid liquid I take every morning (I mention it first, here). Rather than avoid cholesterol containing foods we should seek out clean versions of them. Our body’s use cholesterol for so many essential processes (not least turning sunshine into vitamin D.The whites are the most allergenic part of the egg apparently (and the part I like least) so I don’t find it a problem to avoid but if I’m offered scrambled eggs by a loved one? I’ll take it!
  • Gluten free toast was the first change I made as grains can cause tiny holes in the gutlining letting food into the bloodstream before it’s ready (intestinal permeability) and then can go on to create an immune response from an already confused immune system. gluten free some argue is not much better than gluten containing.
  • Pepper I just like very much and have been eating more of it whilst avoiding members of the nightshade family (dried chili flakes in this instance) to try and heal the leaky gut I spoke of in an earlier post.
  • I use Himalayan, Rock or Sea salt as they taste nicer and choose to avoid the free running granules/table salt as much as possible. It’s when salt is processed and stripped of its naturally occurring minerals (sometimes showing up as colour) that we can end up with problems. Also I have low BP so, at the moment have no need to worry about it rising a little. Increased blood pressure may help a sluggish circulatory system?
  • Coconut oil I also like very much which is also lucky as many people say it’s so damned good for you. Originally we came from the tropics where we’ve gotten used to eating coconuts (is one version I’ve heard to explain why they’re so good and easily digested). The fats from them are quickly turned to energy without needing to use the liver or bile salts, first. The fatty acids it gets quickly broken down into (lauric and caprylic acid) are anti-fungal, anti-microbial and just all sorts of good especially if you’re dealing with fatigue for any number of reasons eg malabsorption lingering infections all stuff that tires the body.

poached egg on gluten free toast

These four approaches represented by the poached egg are me trying not to rock the boat. I want stuff that’s in my gut to stay there til I’ve absorbed everything from it and it’s good and ready to leave! Obviously this isn’t the main part of my diet, that’s non nightshade veg but I find the protein sets me up for the day (with some sprouted seeds in the egg sandwich) future post on sprouts to follow but before that, a post will soon follow on the results of that medical procedure that I think I’ve noticed.

 

as ever, I’m not a doctor and the food choices I’ve made have made sense for me – that’s not to say they’ll make sense for you but it’s still worth paying attention to how our bodies react to the stuff we put in it.