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Tag: LDL

  • ‘Saturated Fat No Link With Cholesterol Heart Attack

    ‘Saturated Fats‘ has been accepted universally as the culprit for the increase in Cholesterol and t=increases the risk of heart Attacks has now been questioned.

    In fact the medicines one takes to reduce the Saturated fats, increases the  risk of a Heart Attack.

    This is how one can understand Cholesterol report
    Reading Cholesterol Levels.

    A couple of days I ago had my Annual Medical Check up.

    The report indicated that there was a slight Liver damage.

    I have no issues with the Liver and I do not Drink nor do I have a History of any problem with Liver Function.

    The Consulting Doctor opined that there i nothing to worry as the slight damage will be self-regulated by the Liver( Liver is an Organ which repairs itself with out our being aware of it, and is also the reason when we come to know of Liver damage , it is late.

    On being asked about the values of the Test Result, the doctor explained that this Liver damage could br due to the Statins medications I have been taking to control  Cholesterol.

    ( please read my post on Understanding your Health reports).

    Now to begin with as far as I could get information Fats i general do not have anything to do with Heart Attacks and Cholesterol has no link with Heart attacks.

    Now information is on that

    ‘

    Scientists universally accept that trans fats—found in many fast foods, bakery products, and margarines—increase the risk of cardiovascular disease through inflammatory processes.1 But “saturated fat” is another story. The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades.

    Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks. Furthermore, the government’s obsession with levels of total cholesterol, which has led to the overmedication of millions of people with statins, has diverted our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia.

    Saturated fat has been demonised ever since Ancel Keys’s landmark “seven countries” study in 1970.2 This concluded that a correlation existed between the incidence of coronary heart disease and total cholesterol concentrations, which then correlated with the proportion of energy provided by saturated fat. But correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, we were advised to cut fat intake to 30% of total energy and saturated fat to 10%.”3 The aspect of dietary saturated fat that is believed to have the greatest influence on cardiovascular risk is elevated concentrations of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Yet the reduction in LDL cholesterol from reducing saturated fat intake seems to be specific to large, buoyant (type A) LDL particles, when in fact it is the small, dense (type B) particles (responsive to carbohydrate intake) that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.4

    Indeed, recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk.5 Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective. The source of the saturated fat may be important. Dairy foods are exemplary providers of vitamins A and D. As well as a link between vitamin D deficiency and a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality, calcium and phosphorus found commonly in dairy foods may have antihypertensive effects that may contribute to inverse associations with cardiovascular risk.6 7 8 One study showed that higher concentrations of plasmatrans-palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid mainly found in dairy foods, was associated with higher concentrations of high density lipoprotein, lower concentrations of triglycerides and C reactive protein, reduced insulin resistance, and a lower incidence of diabetes in adults.9 Red meat is another major source of saturated fat. Consumption of processed meats, but not red meat, has been associated with coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus, which may be explained by nitrates and sodium as preservatives.10“

    ”

    he article points out that saturated fat is believed to raise levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (so-called “bad” cholesterol), which in turn raises cardiovascular risk.

    Yet only one type of LDL cholesterol seems to be associated with saturated fat intake, the article says. This type of cholesterol is called large buoyant (type A) LDL particles.

    The second type of LDL cholesterol – the small, dense (type B) particles associated with carbohydrate intake – is linked to cardiovascular disease.

    Recent studies have found no significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk, writes Dr Malhotra. Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective of the heart.

    He points out that dairy foods provide important dietary sources of nutrients that have beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system, such as vitamin D, calcium and phosphorus.

    Dr Malhotra’s article states that fat has been “notorious” for its higher energy content per gram in comparison with protein and carbohydrates.”

     

    Sources:

    http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6340

    http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/10October/Pages/Saturated-fat-link-with-heart-disease-questioned.aspx

    Related:

    Medicine has no clue about the linkage of Cholesterol and Heart attack.

    Please follow the Link.

    http://www.avoidheartattack.com/755280.html

    Gingely oil has been used by people of India for ages.

    To the best of my knowledge they did not get heart attacks.

    It is said that Gingely oil is good for over all Health including Heart.

    Best is to follow time tested Food Habits that have been arrived at by the society over hundreds of years by the process of elimination, taking into account the climate as well.These will vary from Region to Region.

    Let us follow them.

    A recent large government study found that raising levels of HDL “good” cholesterol using a drug did not reduce the risk of heart disease. ..

    As The New York Times reported:

    Patients taking the medicine along with Zocor had higher levels of H.D.L. and lower levels of triglycerides, a fat in the blood. Despite these seeming improvements, the patients fared no better and may have done slightly worse than those taking Zocor alone. That is why the entire theory behind trying to increase H.D.L. levels in patients with heart disease may need rethinking…

    http://ramanisblog.in/2011/08/14/cholesterol-and-heart-attack-not-linked/

  • Understanding Cholesterol Infographic

    Understanding cholesterol  may even increase your Blood pressure.

    LDL,HDL,Ratio, tend to be on the higher side etc will make you confused.

    Here is an Infographic.

    Cholesterol.
    Understanding Cholesterol. from Tumblr.

    s Cholesterol Good or Bad?

    Just as homemade oil-and-vinegar dressing separates into a watery pool with a fat-slick topping, so also would fats and cholesterol if they were dumped directly into the blood. To solve this dilemma, the body transports fat and cholesterol by coating them with a water-soluble “bubble” of protein. This protein-fat bubble is called a lipoprotein.

    • Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) carry cholesterol to the tissues. This is “bad” cholesterol, since high LDL levels are linked to increased risk for heart disease.
    • High-density lipoproteins (HDLs) carry excess cholesterol back to the liver, which processes and excretes the cholesterol. HDLs are “good” cholesterol: The more HDL you have, the lower your risk for developing heart disease.
    • HDLs and LDLs are found only in your blood, not in food.

    Test Your Cholesterol

    Your risk for heart disease can be assessed with a blood-cholesterol test. In this test, your total-cholesterol reading should approximate the sum of your LDL, HDL, and other lipoproteins. If you have 3.5 milligrams of total cholesterol, or less, for every 1 milligram of HDLs, then your cholesterol ratio is ideal. According to guidelines from the National Cholesterol Education Program:

    • Total cholesterol should remain below 200 mg/dL, unless HDL is high.
    • LDL should be lower than 130 mg/dL.
    • HDL should be 40 mg/dl or higher.

    However, if you have any risk factors for heart disease, you’ll want to get your LDL even lower, less than 100 is optimal, and less than 70 is targeted in people who have heart disease.

    Which Fats Are Saturated?

    Saturated fats increase your total cholesterol levels and are generally associated with an increased risk of heart disease.  In general, the harder a fat, the more saturated it is. Beef and dairy fats are mostly saturated fats. Liquid oils are usually unsaturated fats, including monounsaturated fats in olive and canola oils and polyunsaturated fats in safflower, corn, soybean, and fish oils. Coconut, palm, and palm kernel oils are exceptions to the rule; these liquid vegetable oils are highly saturated fats.

    Fear of Frying

    Eating foods with a lot of saturated fat may raise your risk for heart disease; this causes the amount of bad LDLs in your blood to increase while good HDLs decrease. Cut the saturated fat, and your blood-cholesterol levels and your risk for heart disease can fall, too. Your risk for cancer also decreases. A diet with more polyunsaturated fats, rather than saturated fats, lowers total blood-cholesterol levels, but unfortunately also drops HDL levels, so you lose both good and bad cholesterol. Olive oil is another story. This oil lowers total-blood cholesterol and LDL cholesterol without causing HDL levels to drop. By using olive oil, you can decrease your total-cholesterol levels while maintaining your HDL levels, thus decreasing your risk for heart disease. Fish also lowers heart disease risk. Consequently, olive and fish are the oils of choice.

    Hydrogenated fats are liquid vegetable oils made creamy when manufacturers convert some of the unsaturated fats into saturated ones through a process called “hydrogenation.” This process also rearranges the molecular shape of the remaining unsaturated fats. The resulting shape is an abnormal “trans” shape.

    Trans fatty acids constitute up to 60% of the fat in processed foods containing hydrogenated fats. TFAs raise blood cholesterol levels and increase heart disease risk even more than saturated fats. Knowing your fats gives you an edge when it comes to buying and preparing the right foods to eat. And when you steer away from the saturated fats and trans fatty acids, you can live a heart-healthy life. The bottom line is:

    * I do not believe in Cholesterol Non sense.

    Related Articles

     

  • The Hidden Truth About “Reducing Your Cholesterol”

    Heart.
    Views may be evaluated.
    Story:
    The Hidden Truth About “Reducing Your Cholesterol”

    You may be surprised at the REAL causes of heart disease — and it’s NOT saturated fat or cholesterol

    by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

    We all know that heart disease is one of the leading killers of people around the world, particularly highest in countries such as the US and Australia.

    However, did you know that there are several medical studies worldwide that clearly show that higher cholesterol levels in the body actually increases longevity instead of decreasing it? Yes, you heard that right! People with high cholesterol have been statistically shown to live longer and healthier than people with low cholesterol in several studies. There are multiple references for this phenomenon in Shane Ellison’s controversial book, The Hidden Truth about Cholesterol Lowering Drugs, Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s (MD, PhD) book entitled The Cholesterol Myths, as well as Sally Fallon and Mary Enig’s book, Nourishing Traditions.

    So why in the world are the pharmaceutical and medical industry pushing for practically everyone on the planet to “lower their cholesterol”? Well, the first, and more innocent answer, is flawed medical studies from decades ago that have been accepted as fact and never fully analyzed for their validity. Another answer is that this practice of recommending that half of the damn planet takes a cholesterol lowering medication (currently, statins), regardless of whether they truly have any real risk for heart disease, creates insane multi-squillion dollar profits for the drug companies!

    As a perfectly absurd example of how doctors have been wrongly influenced by the drug companies… a couple years ago, I was a perfectly healthy 28 yr old, in great shape, exercising daily, eating a balanced healthy diet full of antioxidants and quality nutrition, no smoking, and with no real risk factors for heart disease, and just because my cholesterol level has been consistently measured over 200 for my entire life, my doctor recommended I consider using a cholesterol lowering statin drug.

    Consider how outlandish this scenario is! The drug companies have hypnotized doctors into prescribing unnecessary prescription drugs to healthy young people with perfectly normal cholesterol levels that just happen to be over this arbitrary number of 200 that they’ve come up with. Luckily, I refused to be a guinea pig and fork over my hard earned duckets for potentially dangerous drugs, and decided to start researching this whole cholesterol and heart disease connection myself. Consider also that my father, who is now 60 years old, has had cholesterol levels slightly over 200 his entire life also (just like me), yet he is perfectly healthy at his ripe age of 60.

    High Cholesterol is NOT the Villain!

    As time goes on and scientists continue to learn more about heart disease, it has become quite clear over the recent years that inflammation within the body (NOT cholesterol levels) is what causes plaque build up in the arteries and eventual heart disease. Inflammation can be caused by many personal factors such as stress, smoking, viruses, consumption of refined and/or hydrogenated fats (man-made trans fats), an imbalance of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats to omega-3 polyunsaturated fats in the diet, excess refined sugars in the diet, etc.

    Here’s a quick and dirty of how it works in general. Cholesterol is a healing substance within the body (among many other important functions), and responds to arterial inflammation by getting deposited in combination with other substances, forming “plaque” as a healing agent on the artery lining.

    Levels of inflammation in your body can be measured with what’s called a CRP test (c-reactive protein). The accuracy of this test still has room for improvement, as it can vary depending on the time of day and other factors, but it is a much better indication of heart disease risk than a cholesterol test (which is practically useless for determining heart disease risk).

    Another more important test than cholesterol levels for heart disease risk is a test for serum homocysteine levels. The next time your doctor wants you to get blood cholesterol tests, request CRP and homocysteine tests instead. He/she should be well aware of the validity of these tests if they are up to date.

    Basically, if you have significant internal inflammation, this plaque will be deposited as a healing agent regardless of whether you have high or low cholesterol. On the other hand, if you don’t have inflammation, high cholesterol levels just keep circulating without getting deposited on the artery linings. Therefore, it is more important to control inflammation rather than trying to lower your cholesterol.

    Lowering your cholesterol doesn’t attack the root of the problem (what is actually causing the inflammation in you). Lowering your cholesterol does nothing except to make the drug companies rich, and possibly leave you with a whole assortment of possible negative side-effects.

    The good news is that preventing heart disease is about living a healthy lifestyle, not about throwing down a drug pill everyday. Controlling your inflammation to prevent heart disease is as easy as reducing the stress in your life (try deep breathing exercises, Qigong, yoga, etc.), maintaining a healthy weight, eating a high-antioxidant, highly nutritious unprocessed diet (as recommended in my Truth about Six Pack Abs program), and avoiding smoking and other causes of heavy free radical production in the body.

    I hope this article has given you some helpful info about the real causes of heart disease and not the propaganda that has been shoved down your throat for years, based on flawed medical studies from 40-50 years ago, making drug companies filthy rich.

    If you or anyone you care about is currently taking statins, or if you just want to learn more about cholesterol and the scandal that is revolving currently around statin drugs, please see The Cholesterol Myths.

    On a related topic, were you aware that there is also quite a controversy these days in the health industry over the fact that saturated fat is not necessarily bad for you, and can actually be downright good for you in some cases? I posted this article a few months ago, but thought I would mention this article again
    http://www.truthaboutabs.com/cholesterol-myths.html

  • Low cholesterol may be sign of undiagnosed cancer

    Yet another finding.At this rate we will not know which causes cancer.That which is said to cause, may, turn out to be a cure, let’s hope-so much for medicine.Any way let us read and file in memory until another study comes along.
    Story:
    By Julie Steenhuysen

    CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) – Low total cholesterol may be a sign of cancer rather than a cause, as some researchers have suggested, and men who have low cholesterol actually have a lower risk of developing high-risk prostate cancer, two teams reported on Tuesday.

    Both studies, reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, shed new light on the role of cholesterol and cancer.

    For years, researchers had noticed that people who have lower total cholesterol — a combination of both low-density lipoprotein or LDL, the “bad” kind, and high-density lipoprotein or HDL, the “good” kind — appeared more likely to have certain types of cancers than other people.

    That was worrisome because having low cholesterol, and particularly low levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, has been shown to protect against heart attacks and strokes.

    “Our study affirms that lower total cholesterol may be caused by undiagnosed cancer,” Dr. Demetrius Albanes, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5A256I20091103?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth1100