The Truth about Cholesterol
One of the most maligned of all nutrients is cholesterol.
Even sodium is not so greatly feared.
Cholesterol is the most highly-decorated small molecule
in biology. Thirteen Nobel Prizes have been awarded to
scientists who devoted major parts of their careers to
cholesterol.
Ever since it was first isolated from gallstones in 1784,
cholesterol has exerted an almost hypnotic fascination
for scientists from the most diverse areas of science and
medicine.
Doctors like to blame all cardiovascular problems on
cholesterol.
Medical doctors are like color-blind art critics when
they look at cholesterol.
Although there are diseases that can elevate cholesterol
or triglycerides, there’s not a single disease caused by
elevated blood cholesterol or triglycerides.
Most of the cholesterol information that populates
through mainstream medical society today is based on
faulty research and assumptions that have been passed
down and then propagated by drug company
propaganda.
People with Low cholesterol become just as
atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is High.
Cholesterol is extremely important to the human
body—so important that your liver makes it.
That’s how Statin drugs work. Statin drugs inflame the
liver so it can’t make cholesterol. That’s why if your
taking statin drugs, you have to have your liver enzymes
checked every six months to make sure the drug isn’t
giving you hepatitis.
Statin drugs stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb
functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and
pregnant women taking Statins may give birth to
children with malformations more severe than those
seen after thalidomide.
All of the insulation that wraps around our nerves
(myelin) is made from cholesterol.
The building blocks for the manufacture of cholesterol
are 2-carbon fragments called acetate, which are
hooked end-to-end until 30 of them are chained
together.
Through many steps involving many different enzyme
catalysts, this chain is cyclized, and finally 3 carbons are
clipped from different parts, to arrive at the 27 carbon,
cholesterol molecule.
The 2-carbon acetate
fragment come from fats
and oils (fatty acids)
being broken down for
energy, and are broken
into 2-carbon fragments.
Since the body conserves
the essential fatty acids
for other vital functions,
saturated and
monounsaturated fatty
acids are the main source
of acetate fragments
from fats.
When carbohydrate
(sugars and starches) is
broken down for energy,
they too produce the 2carbon fragments.
Protein (amino acids) also can be broken down to
produce acetate fragments, but the body conserves
amino acids for building important structures, so protein
is burned for energy only in extreme circumstances such
as fasting, some disease states and when inordinately
large amounts of protein are consumed.
All tissues containing nucleated cells can produce
cholesterol and the regulation of cholesterol
biosynthesis is very complex.
Stage 1–Three molecules of acetyl-CoA combine to form
mevalonate.
Stage 2–Mevalonate combines with three phosphate
groups, loses a carboxyl group and two hydrogen atoms
to yield isopentenyl pyrophosphate.
Stage 3–Six isopentenyl groups combine, lose their
pyrophosphate groups and yield squalene.
Stage 4–In a series of enzyme reactions, squalene is
cyclized to form lanosterol.
Stage 5–Lanosterol, after four biochemical reactions, is
converted into cholesterol.
This is one of the most complex biochemical processes
elucidated to date. The body really goes to an awful lot
of trouble to produce cholesterol–the killer!
The usual mean cholesterol levels for both sexes is
considered to be:
AGE
30 - 39
40 - 49
50 - 59
CHOLESTEROL
150 - 280
160 - 325
140 - 340
A cholesterol level in your blood over 340 mg/dl is a
symptom of an underlying nutritional deficiency and/or
x-radiation and metal toxicity that damages the arteries,
rather than the cause.
The daily turnover is about 1100 mg, or just over 1 gram.
Anxiety and/or apprehension–like dropping a book–can
elevate serum cholesterol 100 points. Fear of cholesterol
can do the same.
The same enzymes that are involved in the production of
cholesterol are also required for the production of an
essential compound called coenzyme Q10.
Coenzyme Q10–also called ubiquinone–plays an
important role in the manufacture of ATP, the fuel that
runs cellular processes.
Though it is present in every cell in your body, it is
especially concentrated in the very active cells of your
heart.
Depriving the heart of CoQ10 is like removing a spark
plug from your engine–it just won’t work.
Low levels of CoQ10 are implicated in virtually all
cardiovascular diseases, including angina, hypertension,
cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure.
Merck knew that statins deplete CoQ10 and knew that
this could contribute to heart disease in 1990.
In the time that statins have been on the market, the
incidence of congestive heart failure has tripled.
MDs are making things worse at the same time that they
are trying to make things better.
Vitamins C and B3 lower blood cholesterol levels, as do
the minerals calcium, zinc, chromium and selenium.
The essential and other highly unsaturated fatty acids
are important.
As early as 1858 Virchow, the father of modern
pathology, clearly showed that cholesterol does not start
the process but that it is the end product of
degeneration.
The final Framingham reports in 1970 showed no
relationship between eating cholesterol and saturated
fats and the incidence of heart disease.
Far from being a health destroyer, cholesterol is
absolutely essential for life.
Elevated cholesterol is like a warning signal; like a fever.
Cholesterol is a very important substance that makes it
possible to transport life-giving soluble substances
throughout the body using the water of the blood
stream.
If you don’t have enough cholesterol, you won’t make
enough sex hormones.
The body uses over sixty steroids derived from
cholesterol for hormones.
Cholesterol is the main component of bile acids, which
aid in the digestion of foods, particularly fatty foods.
Although most people think of it as being “fat in the
blood,” only seven percent of the body’s cholesterol is
found in the blood.
In fact, cholesterol is not really fat at all; it’s a pearlycolored, waxy, solid alcohol that is soapy to the touch.
The bulk of the cholesterol in your body, the other 93
percent, is located in every cell of the body, where its
unique waxy, soapy consistency provides the cell
membranes with their structural integrity and regulates
the flow of nutrients into–and waste products out of–
the cells.
Cells manufacture cholesterol in response to demand.
Without cholesterol we would lose the strength and
stability of our cells, rendering them much less resistant
to invasion by infection and malignancy.
In fact, a grave sign of serious illness is a falling
cholesterol level. Understanding this should dispel any
notion that it is a destroyer of health to be feared and
avoided.
Besides the cells’ production of cholesterol, the liver,
intestines, adrenal glands and sex glands all make
cholesterol for the other functions in which cholesterol
is involved.
During pregnancy, the placenta also makes cholesterol,
and from it manufactures progesterone, which keeps the
pregnancy from being terminated.
So important is cholesterol that the body has
maintained its independence from external sources:
cholesterol can be synthesized from a variety of
important materials.
The greater part of cholesterol of the body arises by
synthesis (about 1 g/d), whereas only about 0.3 g/d are
provided by the average diet.
Extra cholesterol is hooked up (esterified) with linoleic
acid and shipped off to the liver to be changed into bile
acids, provided that the vitamins and minerals necessary
for this change are present in a biologically usable form.
The bile acids are dumped into the intestine and help
there with fat digestion, and are then removed from the
body with the wastes in the colon, provided that the
food contains sufficient fiber, and that bowel action is
regular enough to prevent the bile acids from being
reabsorbed and recycled.
All tissues containing nucleated cells are capable of
synthesizing cholesterol, particularly the liver, adrenal
cortex, skin, intestines, testes and aorta.
Acetyl-CoA is the source of all the carbon atoms in
cholesterol.
A diet high in nonessential fatty acids and
refined carbohydrate
produces an excess of
acetate fragments in the
body, and thus ‘pressures’
the body into increased
cholesterol production.
Without cholesterol we could not absorb the essential
fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K from the food we eat.
Cholesterol is necessary for normal growth and
development of the brain and nervous system.
In man, the brain and spinal cord make up only 2% of
the body weight; still 23% of the cholesterol is in the
nervous system.
Cholesterol coats the nerves and makes the transmission
of nerve impulses possible.
Cholesterol gives skin its ability to shed water.
Cholesterol is a precursor of vitamin D in the skin. When
exposed to sunlight, this precursor molecule is
converted to its active form for use in the body.
Cholesterol plays a major role in the transportation of
triglycerides through the circulatory system.
Without it you would die.
Although cholesterol consumption has remained about
constant during the last 100 years, cardiovascular
disease has risen 350% and cancer 600% in the same
time period.
Cholesterol consumption cannot be the cause of these
disorders. Factors which appear to be more closely
related to cardiovascular disease than cholesterol levels
are consumption of sugar, oil, additives, trans-fatty
acids, drugs which lower cholesterol, deficiencies of
vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids.
Autopsies consistently show no relationship between
the blood cholesterol level and the amount of plaque in
the arteries.
Dr. Michael DeBakey’s studies showed that 80% of heart
patients have normal cholesterol levels.
Hypertension (high blood pressure) is the cause of the
damage, not cholesterol.
Arterial plaques begin as mutations to smooth muscle
cells in the artery, which then proliferate, become
fibrous, and eventually manufacture their own
cholesterol.
Arterial plaque contains a complex mixture of
cholesterol, calcium, lipoproteins, mutated arterial cells,
and fibrin, as a part of the repair process of lesions in
the intima (muscle layer) created by high blood
pressure, mercury, and x-rays.
Hypertension, mercury, and medical x-rays damage the
artery and set in motion some of the processes leading
to narrowing of artery channels for blood flow and
thickening and hardening of the blood vessel walls.
Damage to the tissue becomes evident first, and then
comes an accumulation of fat, and finally, as the scar
tissue is formed, a high content of cholesterol appears.
It is part of the healing process of a wound from damage
caused by something else.
Cholesterol and triglycerides are natural body fats with
definite roles to play. They are produced in the liver to
serve their functions in the body.
In 1998 the American Medical Association held a press
conference and told doctors that public concern over
elevated cholesterol is not warranted, and in the same
year, the AMA also warned that all members of the two
most popular classes of lipid-lowering drugs (the fibrins
and the statins) cause cancer in rodents, in some cases
at levels of animal exposure close to those prescribed to
humans.
Read any university biochemistry text. If cholesterol
metabolism is discussed, in the first three or four
paragraphs it will say “The more cholesterol-rich foods
eaten, the less cholesterol the body makes.”
Because of the involvement of the National Heart, Lung
and Blood Institute, the American Heart Association and
advertisements of low cholesterol products,
practitioners have shown a tendency to ignore the new
studies, showing that eating cholesterol does not cause
heart disease, and evidence showing that avoiding
cholesterol does not prevent heart disease, considering
them to be exceptions to the rule.
If you have elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, it
might be an indication of a weak functioning thyroid
gland (hypothyroidism).
It could mean you have diabetes.
It could mean you have deficiencies of niacin, chromium,
and vanadium, or the essential fatty acids.
It could mean you have liver disease.
There are all kinds of reasons why you might have
elevated blood cholesterol and triglycerides.
The Eskimos above the Arctic Circle have a traditional
diet that’s 98% red meat and blubber.
There’s not a single Eskimo above the Arctic Circle that
has a Mr. Juiceman juicer and eats organically-grown
broccoli.
Their average cholesterol ranges from 250 – 350 and
their legendary for not getting cardiovascular disease—
until they come down to the lower 48 and eat like us…
Then when they get the cardiovascular disease and go
back, North of the Arctic Circle to die, and they start
eating whale blubber again—it goes away!
One of the best sources of cholesterol is the lowly
chicken egg, the yolk of the egg is loaded with
cholesterol—and it is GOOD!
Another myth is that there’s Good Cholesterol and Bad
Cholesterol. It’s nonsense!
Cholesterol is transported through the blood by
lipoproteins.
HDL – high density lipoproteins – very small size
LDL – low density lipoproteins – small size
VLDL – very low density lipoprotein – largest size
People will tell you that the HDL is GOOD cholesterol
and LDL or VLDL is BAD cholesterol
More nonsense!
There is nothing inherently bad about LDL or good about
HDL.
Total cholesterol is adding up the HDL, the LDL and
triglycerides. No real magic here.
LDL doesn’t cause any problems, but an elevated LDL is
an indication that oxidative damage, caused by freeradicals, is happening in the body.
This means you have to take more antioxidant nutrients
and clean up your diet so you’re not eating foods loaded
with free-radical formers.
If your LDL is elevated, you need to eat more chocolate,
take more selenium, take more antioxidant-rich foods
into your diet and your LDL will come down.
Every MD in the world believes that cholesterol causes
arteries to clog up.
That’s like thinking that ash causes forest fires!
Or that maggots cause garbage,
or that mosquitoes cause stagnant water!
This is a completely lopsided view of what’s happening.
There are two types of clogging in the circulatory
system.
One is calcium deposition in the arteries (hardening of
the arteries). This is caused by a magnesium deficiency.
When you have too much calcium relative to
magnesium, calcium will precipitate out of solution and
deposit in the arteries.
The other form is cholesterol deposition. Caused by freeradical damage to the artery wall.
If cholesterol were the cause, it would pile up in the
veins as well, but it doesn’t.
It only happens in the high-pressure arteries where the
artery walls start to tear.
When you unwittingly eat the wrong foods: oils and
fried foods, well-done red meat, nitrates in meats, the
skins of baked potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, your
bloodstream is loaded with free-radicals.
Free-radicals are like metabolic Velcro. They stick to
everything, and what they stick to oxidizes and is
destroyed.
Free-radicals accumulate at the bends in arteries.
This causes oxidative damage to the artery walls and
they start to tear from the high pressure.
In an attempt to repair the compromised artery, the
body lays down a patch that contains cholesterol.
Cholesterol is the bandage that’s keeping you alive, it’s
not the cause of clogged arteries.