Recently, I was asked about cholesterol so I thought I’d write a short article on cholesterol.
Lowering cholesterol is a massive money making market for Industrial Medicine. Statins are very widely prescribed. Once again great profits are being made by making people less healthy!
Most people think that cholesterol is unhealthy since it clogs arteries. In fact, higher cholesterol levels are associated with greater longevity. The opposite of what Industrial Medicine tells the world.
Cholesterol repairs your blood vessels, so what is important is to stop the damage to your blood vessels, not eliminating cholesterol.
Diagnostic test results, like cholesterol levels, can give us information about our metabolism. It’s our job to properly interpret that information. Instead of treating the symptom (high cholesterol), we should be investigating why it is high.
Is there damage to your blood vessels (perhaps due to oxidative damage or high blood pressure – take more Vitamin C, stop supplementing with iron)? Or is there a problem with your hormone levels?
All (steroid) hormones, like pregnenolone, testosterone, cortisol, DHEA, estrogens, etc are build from cholesterol. Without cholesterol you’d die!
So perhaps you have high stress and there is a high demand to produce cortisol? Perhaps your hormone levels are dropping off as you age? Your body is intelligent. It knows it needs those hormones, so a very logical thing to do is to ramp up production of cholesterol.
Another related item is ubiquinol (CoQ10). Statins work by impairing a metabolic pathway that also produces CoQ10. CoQ10 is vital to energy production (think your muscles and brain). This is why taking statins is associated with muscle cramps and fatigue in many people.
I considered putting in a photo of a clogged artery, but a pretty woman seemed much more attractive to me.
You kinda beat me to the punch. Been planning a piece on cholesterol and statins. May still do it. We'll see.
Good piece John.
This humorous video gives some insight into the "science" of diet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA