What does a high cholesterol diagnosis mean?

The 21st century health paradigm has been built on illusions and conflicting information. How else can we explain why so many of us are sick? One of the greatest and most controversial… that we must maintain low cholesterol numbers to limit our risk of heart disease. In response, millions are popping dangerous statin drugs (more below), and we have denatured food by separating yolks from eggs, fat from meat, and ushering in processed oils to cook with in place of time-honored saturated fats.

Modern day cholesterol tests were archaic to begin with - they don’t account for vital info like LDL particle size. LDL cholesterol (the villain in conventional wisdom’s heart disease hypothesis) is only potentially problematic when combined with a high insulin diet, or other risk factors.

The truth is that cholesterol is one of the most important molecules in the body, present in the membrane of every cell, and responsible for critical internal processes like metabolizing fat soluble vitamins, producing bile to digest fat, and synthesizing many hormones including sex hormones. Cholesterol is a life force!

When someone says they have high cholesterol, is it really a bad thing?

People with cholesterol below 140 die of other things far more than those with a cholesterol above 200. In one report, 75% of heart attack victims had a “safe cholesterol” level.

We have reason to believe that the actual cause of heart disease is inflammation and oxidation - caused by poor dietary & lifestyle choices – not dietary cholesterol.

Dietary cholesterol does not impact blood cholesterol… only in a small population, and in doing so the ratio of LDL to HDL stays the same, so risk of heart disease does not go up.

As far as statins, they are prescribed drugs used to lower "bad" cholesterol to supposedly mitigate heart attack risk; more than 35 million Americans are estimated to be on them.

Statins have been shown to have minimal impact on the most important heart disease risk factors, and come with numerous problematic side effects. Dietary & lifestyle changes can quickly and dramatically reduce heart disease risk, as revealed in blood values for HDL, triglycerides, and assorted inflammation markers.

Statins effectively reduce the level of all forms of cholesterol in the bloodstream – as mentioned earlier, cholesterol is critical for many bodily function. When we intentionally lower it artificially with statins, we are interfering with an elegant balancing process at the cellular level. One heart disease catalyst is insufficient HDL, which we contribute to by intentionally lowering it through statin use.

Statins can interfere with healthy serotonin balance (resulting in less energy, alertness, and mood consequences), disrupt vitamin D synthesis, create issues regulating blood sugar, and cause disturbances in a number of hormonal processes.

Cardiovascular disease and heart attacks can, and frequently do, appear in individuals with “normal”, or even low total cholesterol and total LDL.

Regardless of the decisions you make, always be well-informed. As with all questions of health, the first plan of attack should be to optimize our diet lifestyle. Has that been completely exhausted before so many have been prescribed statins? 

This is not medical advice.

Jared

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