Gezzabelle there's a medical misunderstanding about the whole cholesterol thing. I'm a retired nutrition therapist and something I learnt in naturopath college was that taking medication to interfere with your body's cholesterol production is often the wrong thing to do, though there may be extreme cases where it is warranted.
Sometimes elevation of blood cholesterol is a normal desirable body function. If you eat fat, drink caffeine, or get sexually turned on, you'll need extra cholesterol to produce bile, adrenalin, or sex hormones. Your blood test if taken at that time will show a raised level of total cholesterol and LDL, incorrectly labelled "BAD" cholesterol.
Apart from those functions, if you have some atherosclerosis your blood test will show elevated LDL and total cholesterol. But the cholesterol isn’t causing the atherosclerosis, it’s part of the healing process. Cholesterol is a necessary component of the cells being fabricated to patch up the blood vessel wall damage seen in atherosclerosis. It is one of the building blocks of our cells.
It also acts as an antioxidant, to help stop the progress of the atherosclerotic changes.
The only truly bad cholesterol is oxidised cholesterol in animal foods that have been excessively heated and/or aerated. Oxidised cholesterol will act as a free radical molecule in your body, giving rise to atherosclerosis and other tissue damage.
The cholesterol in LDL in your bloodstream has been oxidized in the process of protecting your body’s tissue by staunching free radical particles that you’ve inhaled, eaten, drunk or absorbed through your skin. The LDL detected in your blood test is packages of oxidized cholesterol being shipped to your liver. There it will be recycled to make more fresh cholesterol, to go into HDL, and the dangerous free radical electrons will be escorted out of your body, by other lifesaving antioxidant chemicals.
In case that’s not clear: The HDL detected in your blood sample is delivering fresh cholesterol to the artery damage sites. The LDL is carting away used cholesterol, the part of the cargo that was used as an antioxidant and as a result is now oxidized.
So it’s misleading to think of your LDL as bad. It would be bad if it wasn’t in the process of being turned into the stuff that ends up once again in HDL. That process is definitely good and LDL is a vital part of that good process.
It’s like poop. Would you take a drug to stop you pooping because someone tells you poop is “bad”?
Similarly, fresh, unoxidised cholesterol from clean, organic, animal sources - egg yolks, raw milk, and beef slow-cooked in a crockpot, is very healthy food. Apart from the many vital nutrients those foods contain, the cholesterol acts as an antioxidant, the same way your own internally manufactured cholesterol does. Like all antioxidants, once it’s done it’s job it becomes oxidant and needs to be processed and the oxidant radical escorted out of the body.
Finally – anyone with multiple signs of advanced atherosclerosis, not just high fasting LDL levels; high blood pressure, overweight, diabetes, angina, … should consult a naturopath, someone who is not going to prescribe cholesterol lowering drugs as a first line treatment. They’ll need crucial life-style changes and in the meantime to guard against foods that will make their blood thick and more prone to clotting when swirling through badly damaged arteries. But simply interfering with cholesterol production is not the way to go.
I hope that’s of some help Gezzabelle.
You would come so handy.....
