Image credit: rajmtx
This article was submitted by reader Kyle Peabody.
Cholesterol is a lipid found in the membranes of animal cells and transported by blood plasma. In today’s society, cholesterol is a hot topic: media bombards you with messages to keep your cholesterol levels low to stay healthy.
Unfortunately a lot of myths & misinformation surround cholesterol. As this post will explain you, lowering your cholesterol won’t improve your health. Here are 7 things you should know about cholesterol.
1. Dietary Cholesterol Is Not Bound to Blood Cholesterol. Your liver produces 3-6 times more cholesterol than you can eat. There’s no relation to cholesterol & saturated fat intake to higher cholesterol levels.
2. There’s No Such Thing As Good and Bad Cholesterol. Many people call HDL “good cholesterol” and LDL “bad cholesterol”. This is false.
- LDL Cholesterol. Carries proteins from your liver throughout your whole body into your cells.
- HDL Cholesterol. Goes from your cells back to your liver, where it’s recycled. Why? Recycling is more efficient than reproducing.
3. High Cholesterol Doesn’t Increase Risks of Heart Disease. Cholesterol gets dangerous when you have small cholesterol particles. These particles can lodge in the ribs of your blood vessels and build up as plaque.
This becomes dangerous as cholesterol oxidizes and solidifies in your arteries, causing blockage. A simple solution to this is to get you antioxidants. Eat lots of berries, drink real green tea, etc.
4. You Need Cholesterol to Make New Cells. Cholesterol is one of the building blocks of cells. This is important in strength training.
- Your muscles are tired post workout. In an effort to adapt & strengthen, they’ll create new muscle cells and fibers.
- You need cholesterol for the production of steroid hormones like testosterone. These hormones are essential to health.
- Stress, inflammation and strain on cell causes damage. You need cholesterol to repair and build new cells in these areas.
5. Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Don’t Affect Particle Size. Your diet influences cholesterol particle size most. Eating healthy keeps LDL particles acting normal.
Big pharma don’t want you to know this: millions of people would realize they don’t need their drugs. Knowing that these drugs are harmful to your health in the long term — specifically your liver — makes it a no-brainer to avoid them.
6. Cholesterol Isn’t The Most Dangerous Particle. Think of teenagers drinking soda and their acne. What does your body produce to combat the inflammation from the high sugar levels? Cholesterol to repair cells.
High sugar diets and junk food raise your cholesterol. The damage to your cells & blood vessels, can cause heart attacks, strokes or clogged arteries. Doctors notice you have high cholesterol, hence the causation myth.
7. High Cholesterol Has Many Benefits. High cholesterol levels will actually improve your health. Some of the benefits:
- Protects From Infections & Disease. Studies show that people with high cholesterol are more immune to infectious diseases.
- Makes You Live Longer. Studies also show that people with high cholesterol levels live longer than those with low cholesterol.
- Raises Testosterone levels. Anabolic Diet, Ultimate Diet and other high fat/low carb diets are linked with high cholesterol. This helps hormone production such as testosterone, a muscle building steroid.
Bonus Tip: How to Protect Yourself Against Heart Disease. More things you can do to reduce your risk for heart diseases:
- Exercise. Strength training, weight lifting, cardio, … Any physical activity will increase your muscle mass and lower your body fat.
- Eat Healthy. Avoiding artificial trans-fats and refined sugars. Balance your Omega 3/6/9 intake. Eat whole, unprocessed food 90% of the time.
Great article that says it all… It’s about time to break all those dietary myths.
Don’t listen to this guy.
If you have read anything published in Heart, Circulation, Blood or even Nature, you’d realize that this guy doesn’t know what he is talking about.
What is in hot contention right now is the debate that raising HDLs may be more beneficial at decreasing adverse cardiovascular events than lowering LDLs.
Don’t listen to people like this. Do the research yourself.
D
So you’re telling me the stuff I read about cholesterol from Kaiser Permanente (http://members.kaiserpermanente.org/kpweb/healthency.do?hwid=hw115432) is wrong?
Also, the only ‘dead sure’ way of increasing life expectancy (no pun intended) is through something called ‘caloric restriction’. By dramatically decreasing the calories in a diet, you can substantially increase the lifespan of humans, primates and rat in controlled studies.
Cholesterol is needed to maintain proper cellular membrane anatomy, but that doesn’t mean we should consume it ad libitum.
D
@D Rod:
As stated in the article, HDL brings cholesterol to liver to be recycled, while LDL brings it to cells to create new cells, if you want cell recycling and regeneration, which is essential to health, you need a healthy balance.
@SoyNinja:
Not all of it…do research, experiment with yourself, and draw your own conclusions…its your health.
That is their function, yes. And the key is ‘a healthy balance’.
You can’t come onto a thread like this and make claims 1, 3, 5 and 7 because people that read this will believe you. Literature published in good journals by excellent researchers contradict much of your claims. You back up your arguments with conjecture, or a ‘common sense’ approach. Unfortunately, controlled experiments are necessary to back up any of your claims. The fact of the matter is that high plasma LDLs correlate with increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
D
@D Rod
The point of Kyle’s article (which I published on StrongLifts.com, thus which views I agree with), is that dietary cholesterol is not bound to blood cholesterol. If you need proof: get on the Anabolic Diet for 6 months, follow the diet strictly, do a blood test before/after, compare results. You’ll see with your own eyes whether dietary cholesterol influences blood cholesterol or not.
I agree with D Rod. Sorry Mehdi, but if the point of the article was that dietary cholesterol is not bound to blood cholesterol, then Kyle should have stopped at point number 1. Points 2, 3 and 7 are completely misinformed and points 5 and 6 don’t belong.
@Bryan
No need to appologize. All 7 points are valid. I invite you to do some research: start with the links included in the article, get “the great cholesterol con” by Anthony Colpo or “cholesterol myths” by Uffe Ravnskov, or better: try the Anabolic Diet so you see the truth with your own eyes.
Good read although I really have never worried about it
I am disappointed with this article — based on all the research I have read in scientific and medical journals (peer reviewed), it is completely misleading and wrong vis-a-vis cholesterol; however, exercise definitely reduces cholesterol. Therefore, if one exercises, one will see a reduction in cholesterol but this does not mean that a person should eat high cholesterol foods to excess.
I know a lot of people on here will be smart and do their own research, but I too am a little unnerved when your articles stray into medical science. The rule with these things is “exceptional claims require exceptional proof”.
What I love about this site is the no-BS simplicity of the diet and exercise articles, but I don’t think you can afford to be so black and white on this sort of stuff. If the best medical experts in the world can’t agree on this then I don’t really feel it is for the likes of you and me to make absolute statements on the subject. Most people don’t have the required base knowledge to tell if a study is sound or not (there are a lot of unsound ones) so “making up your own mind” can take you down dangerous roads. Just my 2p as a reader, not an expert.
Responses to critics, in order from top to bottom:
1) (D Rod) - What’s in hot contention in the mainstream medical community isn’t in question here. Whether or not there’s any real reason for them to be debating it when the premise they’re using with the Lipid Hypothesis is highly suspect would be a lot more relevant.
2) (D Rod) - Claim #1 has been recognized for a long time by most of the respected researchers on both sides. #3 is a relatively recent idea that has been validated and recognized, though predictably not in the mainstream (both public and medical communities). #5 is based off of #3, and has been verified. I’ve seen significant debate over all three points of #7, with reasonable evidence on both sides, so I’m not going to comment on it.
3) (Bryan) - #2 may be a slight oversimplification, and #3 doesn’t account for the higher general likelihood of having more small particles if you’ve got more particles in general, but the foundation is still correct. As to #7, see my previous note.
At D Rod’s 2nd Post
To say on a website devoted to strength training and lifting that the only “dead sure” way to increase life expectancy is to decrease caloric intake is a bit contradictory, seeing as for strength training you generally speaking need more calories.
The idea that particle size is a critical physical characteristic of LDL does not hold a lot of water with me … yet. The are a myriad of physical properties that govern the adhesion of particles to endothelial cells (or any surface for that matter). What about chemical functional groups on the periphery of the particles? What about the particle shape? What about the lyophilic/lyophobic nature of the particles? There are a number of changes one can make to a particle that will change the way it behaves, particle size being a minor one.
This is all well and good, but in the beginning of the post you describe how the media is leading us astray with incorrect information,which leaves me wondering, why should I believe this post over anything I’ve heard in the common media? You haven’t cited any studies, or references to reputable sources.
Just offering some constructive criticism. Unreferenced articles are essentially a ‘my word against yours’ business.
@Stork
There are citations, check #7 and the “studies” link.
Plaque build-up in blood vessels consists of macrophages (white blood cells), lipids and other ‘particles’ that become entrapped within the plaque structure. The reason for adhesion of the plaque to the endothelial cells is due to inflammation. Sure, there are many potential sources of inflammation (eg. stress), but whether LDL is directly responsible for heart disease is inconsequential. That fact that there is an abundance of this substance that could potentially lead to build-up and blockage of blood vessels is a serious concern. While high cholesterol may not be the cause of heart disease, we cannot ignore the effect that more particles in the blood stream will have on the vessels.
Sorry to post another negative comment, but with technical articles like this, I wish you would add better references under each point (not commentaries in low impact journals, such as the article in QJM in point 7, or lame websites written by non-experts like the chiropractor in point 1). Otherwise, it looks like you have nothing better to support your theories. If you think your point has merit, don’t you want to cite the best sources you can find? It is hard to back up your point with second-rate sources…is there no peer reviewed reasearch? Is there no commentary from experts in the field? This is pretty disappointing work. If these are your standards for research and if you truely don’t care if people agree with you, it would be better not to provide any references at all…it would look less naive.
I have to pile on here as well. Let’s leave the medical articles to the medical websites. I come here to read strength training and dietary tips.
Furthermore, “Myth #6″ contradicts your “Myth #1″…you can’t claim in one that diet has no effect on your cholesterol levels and then use dietary sugars raising cholesterol as an example in debunking another myth. So, which is it? Does your diet affect your blood cholesterol or doesn’t it?
gary
@Hadley V. Baxendale: Actually, athletes have been found to have higher cholesterol levels.
Excellent post! Cholesterol hysteria is good business for pharma companies. Real saturated fat is very expensive, hence the fast food industry lobbies against it while making big bucks with sugar and trans fat. Do your research, drop processed (low-fat, sugar etc.) food and lift some weights!
Could you please quote or link any scientifical research related?
Especially point “7. High Cholesterol Has Many Benefits” seems quite astonishing to me. I’m not an expert, but I won’t suggest to eat more cholesterol than in a “normal” diet. Of course, we could discuss about what “normal” mean
Stay fit
I’m intrigued by this, as my mother was put on cholesterol-lowering drugs, although she was plaque-free. As I recall she asked the docs, ‘what evidence have you got to show that high cholesterol in itself causes disease?’ and was met with a blank response.
From my own bitter experience, I’ve come to have the greatest distrust of mainstream medicine. Big Pharma has a vested interest in our ill-health and they run the whole show.
Mehdi, you have a great site here. In fact, I learned proper squatting technique form from this site. However, this article does not belong here.
Anthony Colpo is a prime example of why we have to be skeptics about what we read. First of all, he has no academic ranking on his papers or website, i.e. MD, PhD or even MSc. He calls himself an ‘independent researcher’. The review article he published in 2005 is not Pubmed linked. The impact factor of the journal isn’t even listed because it is so low.
Fact 1 of the article, which is perhaps the crux of this whole post, is sadly untrue. As early as 1994, dietary cholesterol consumption was linked to blood cholesterol. Pubmed search this article: “A dose-response study of the effects of dietary cholesterol on fasting and postprandial lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in healthy young men.” Arterioscler Thromb. 1994 Apr;14(4):576-86.
TJ, Bryan, Stork, Jim and Hadley have it right. You are presenting what researchers like to call ‘pseudo-science’. I suggest that you remove this article from your website, Mehdi. People turn to you for support, and it is unethical to provide them with misinformation that is potentially deleterious to their health.
(And as per the ‘caloric restriction’ diet, I was just countering the author’s claim that increased cholesterol increases lifespan. )
Here is a link which should help to clear up this issue, it is to the Harvard School of Public Health, they offer some good things to know about dietary cholesterol…
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/fats-full-story/index.html
@All Non-Believers
* Read the Anabolic Diet by Mauro Dipasquale. I don’t care about medical science, but since you do, he’s a B.Sc., M.D., M.R.O., M.F.S. All the research on cholesterol/saturated fat is in his book for you to read.
*If you didn’t read the Anabolic Diet: it’s a high fat, high cholesterol diet where you eat 200g fat per day and more, with lots of red meat, whole eggs, etc. And it is proven to lower cholesterol _although_ it’s a high cholesterol diet. +350 pages practical evidence on the diet for you here: http://www.t-nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=658379
*Get on the Anabolic Diet, eat 200g fat per day with huge amount of dietary cholesterol the way outlined in the diet, and get back to me 6 months later whether your cholesterol went through the roof or not. I can assure you that if you do the diet as laid out, your cholesterol will go down while eating huge amounts of cholesterol.
*If you don’t want to give this a try to see it with your own eyes, then you are close minded.
You can give a lot of pros & cons, but until you walk the talk on this, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Get on the Anabolic Diet, and see for yourself if dietary cholesterol influences blood cholesterol, if cholesterol raises test levels, etc. Then go back reading your peer reviewed/medical science/whatever and see if they still make sense after what you experienced on the A.D.
Not trying to get into the argument with anyone. I’ve checked the links to authors that promote the view that cholesterol and saturated fat are not bad.
Dr. Ben Kim is a chiropractor.
Sally Fallon has a MA degree in English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Fallon#Sally_Fallon
Mary G. Enig is a Nutritionist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_G._Enig
Dr. Uffe Ravnskov specialty is Nephrology (kidney diseases). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffe_Ravnskov
Uffe Ravnskov’s book The Cholesterol Myths… was published by Weston A. Price Foundation that was founded by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig.
So when it comes to scientific credentials the above authors don’t impress me.
Studies in #7 are linked to the same Dr. Uffe Ravnsov.
Obviously big pharma has financial interests but so are people above in promoting their books, websites and supporting each other.
I am a recreational athlete that is interested in improving health through exercises. My livelihood does not depend on winning competitions.
There is so much conflicting info about diets that makes ones head spin. It seems like every month there is another diet. I am not interested in experimenting on myself only to find out that experiment went wrong. If there is any doubt in my mind, I’ll go with the prevailing consensus.
That is just me. Everyone should make up their mind.
anabolic diet is scientific in nature, but it involves a “metabolic shift” and severe restriction of carbohydrates. this is in my opinion, the same as the “rat study” where the cut calories. caloric restriction (sort of).
my understanding has been that food does affect cholesterol, but not _eating_ cholesterol itself, beyond an insignificant amount anyway… and therein lies the rub with what people consider to be common sense. it seems like common wisdom is “high cholesterol, stop eating eggs”, when in fact, you should probably eat those eggs, and put down the toast with jam and replace it with berries.
When I copied and pasted the Kaiser Permanente address given by soyninja, there was none of the information provided in the article. To the contrary, the page I arrived at specifically mentions good and bad cholesterol (HDL being Healthy and LDL being “Lousy”)..
I can attest from personal experience, that while being on a diet high on natural saturated fats (butter) and eggs (4 of them daily, with the yolk)… my cholesterol levels were only slightly higher (about 180) than my previous blood test 2 years before, and now, 2 more years later, they’re about 150. Perhaps I am the exception… or maybe not.
1) If by “bound” you mean having a strict proportional relation then you are right. However, dietary cholesterol is one of the factors that influences total serum cholesterol as it is proved by at least this two observations:
a) cholesterol measured during fasting is lower than after a meal (obviously)
b) drugs that inhibit cholesterol uptake in the gut are effective in lowering total serum cholesterol (although not as effective as statins that block “de novo” generation)
2-Yes, those are not scientifical valid terms. However, it has been established that high levels of LDL cholesterol are a strong risk factor for adverse cardiovascular events and that high HDL levels count as “negative” risk factors, which means that they countar a “bad” risk factor. Using “good” and “bad” is acceptable for laymen.
3- Yes it does. The “size” of the cholesterol is not related to the cholesterol molecule (which as a single molecule is fixed) but to the density of lipoproteins. LDL means “Low Density Liporotein” and the H in HDL means “High”. Thus, the size/density of these lipoproteins DOES relate increase risk of atherosclerosis and health hazards. That is explained (in a simplistic way) by the following: LDL brings cholesterol to the atheroma plaques in the arteries and HDL takes it away.
4-True! But that doesn’t mean you have to eat lard… A balanced diet suplies more than is needed and you liver can make most of the cholesterol you need.
5-Actually, some recent studies contradict this. statins can rise them 5-9% (and more if you add nicotinic acid) and a new range of drugs are being tested for this. However, aerobic exercise is the best measure to achieve a significant elevation in HDL cholesterol.
6-I agree that cholestrol may not be the most dangerous particle. Acording to my Biochemistry teacher that would be O2…
7-Live longer? In industrialized contries death from cardiovascular diseases ir far far grater than that from infeccious ones.
Bonus tips:
a)The best thing you can do for your health right now is stop smoking if you are a smoker. Period.
b)Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Even if the writer puts “M.D.” in his crapy site. And here numbers count big time: a lot of doctors/scientists (journals, guidelines, etc) largely offset the opinion of an obscure individual.
For those who place blind trust in the mainstream medical community and peer reviewed articles, isn’t it the medical community (American Heart Association?) who gives us the high-carb diet and recommends eating a lot of grains?
That is not a healthy diet, but it is a way to ensure a steady stream of patients to sell pharmies to. And what the heck, why not invest a bunch of money in the pharmaceutical companies and continue the cycle?
Seriously, mainstream does not equal correct. Mainstream fitness advocates cable crossovers and bosu-ball curls. I read a PEER REVIEWED article claiming that a person’s 1RM bench press is the same, whether the person is benching on a flat bench or a swiss ball! Seriously, how many 600 lb bench presses do you think have been performed on a swiss ball? The article clearly was an attempt to legitimize the use of those balls…perhaps because the fitness industry is now invested in stupidity (like swiss balls and cable machines).
Anyway, the above comparisons are not dead-on, but the point is that peer revied and mainstream do not equal correct. Sir Isaac Newton was peer reviewed and “correct” for centuries…
I agree with Mehdi. The only way to know is to try it on yourself. Either that, or cling to dogma.
This article is full of contradictions. I’m no expert, but even the experts haven’t figured this one out completely. What I do know, is that {fruit, veggies, whole grains, legumes}=GOOD, and {butter, bacon, mayonaisse, PHiP}=BAD.
Great, the Anabolic Diet works, but this post does more than promote a high fat, high cholesterol diet. To claim that high cholesterol improves health (point 7), that is just ridiculous. What I heard here is that high cholesterol is not linked to dietary cholesterol, has no effect on cardiovascular disease, LDLs plays an important role in cellular regulation and high cholesterol can even improve health. And if you want to lower it (why would I lower it if it is so great for my health?), you can use the Anabolic Diet.
Well, the part about the anti-cholesterol medicine is true. The poison that big pharm sell to you to lower cholesterol is absolutely absurd.
I finally got my grandmother to get off of them, and she’s gotten much healthier since. And my great uncle lowered his naturally using rice and niacin.
And there’s a wonderful 10 page article about Tim Russert and his cholesterol as well as 2 months in a row discover has had things about how we’ve lowered cholesterol and it has shown that it doesn’t actually protect against a heart attack.
Raising HDL cholesterol is a ton more important than lowering LDL cholesterol.
@bret k
“Seriously, mainstream does not equal correct. ”
Reminds me of a quote I like:
A person is smart. People are stupid.
“1. Dietary Cholesterol Is Not Bound to Blood Cholesterol. Your liver produces 3-6 times more cholesterol than you can eat. There’s no relation to cholesterol & saturated fat intake to higher cholesterol levels.”
From what i understand there is a relationship to saturated fat intake and high levels of LDL cholesterol. But this is omitted when you have balanced or greater levels of mono unsaturated fats in your diet. High levels of saturated fat trigger your liver to generate more LDL cholesterol.
Also having too much cholesterol is bad because that is more arteriosclerotic plaque to build up.
@ the point about testosterone levels. DO NOT USE THIS AS A EXCUSE TO EAT TONS OF CHOLESTEROL OR SATURATED FATS! Yes high levels help test production, but your body can only produce so much. The key is to find optimal levels.
Everyone, just eat healthy, exercise, and you probally wont have problems in the future.
I also find it unfortunate that an article like this has been given a forum by publishing it through stronglifts.com. An article about the question how dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol might have been in scope. the author goes much further. he spreads a lot of half-truths and draws incorrect conclusions based on his faulty understanding. He then outright encourages unhealthy practices by advocating high cholesterol levels. i do not see the point of debating the pros and cons of cholesterol in a forum that does not target medical professionals. there is abundant peer reviewed research available (and before making fun of peer reviews please consider what peer means in the medical field versus the peer reviewed swiss ball bench press mentioned above). while i understand the attraction of conspiracy theories and the evil ways of big pharma I invite you to consider this: 1. the majority is not always wrong. 2. there is not a single topic in medicine that does not have its share of dissenters. That does not mean that they are right. 3. there are very few areas in medicine where there is such widespread agreement. not surprisingly, cholesterol lowering drugs have become by far the most prescribed drugs in the world (lipitor alone has been the world’s #1 prescription drug). is it all the biggest scam in the world with the vast majority of the world’s cardiologists as accomplices? follow the science, check credentials and the conclusion will be surprisingly simple.
I’m a Health and Exercise Science student at the University of Oklahoma and from the research I have read, there are good and bad cholesterol in terms of the build of up fat within the arteries. HDL (high density lipids) pulls fat from the walls, while LDL (low density lipids) bring fat to the arteriole walls.
I’d like to know the sources of your information. You never post sources.
My sources come from a variety of places, mainly from my professors who hold PhDs. If you’d like me to give you a list of names and courses where I’ve learned this information, feel free to ask.
@Mehdi
You’ve provided quite a comprehensive answer up above. I doubt many will listen though…crabs :\
A question about body colesterol - I have read somewhere that If one does not take in food cholesterol, the body will manufacture it instead - is that true?
@All others:
This article is [b]not[/b] focusing on eating more cholesterol-based foods, rather it is focusing that [b]just[/b] lowering cholesterol [b]won’t[/b] solve the heart disease issue - a good diet full of antioxidants and unprocessed foods will. It’s always been aligned with Mehdi’s principles in training.
To all the non-beleivers, I’d like you to explain me one thing.
Explain why the French, the Swiss, Pacific Islanders and certain tribes in Africa (such as the Masai) eat a LOT of saturated fats and cholesterol (the Masai alone can drink up to 5 liters of full fat milk a DAY) and yet have amazingly low heart diseases incidence?
I have read all the comments so far, and there are a few that I will address here:
@Gary
I said that dietary cholesterol is not bound to blood cholesterol, I said nothing about diet in general, in fact I state that diet regulates particle size ans shape. Basically, eating a lot of cholesterol will have minimal effect on your cholesterol levels.
@Ricardo Cardoso
Like Mehdi said, try anabolic diet, run tests yourself.
@Eric
Who says that? Look at what humans have been eating in all of time. Meats and animals, then only recently farm grown carbs.
@Bryan
If you don’t want to experiment yourself, don’t, but don’t discourage others.
@everyone
check fathead-movie.com, a new documentary on high fat, cholesterol.
@Over70
I guess I should have been more specific:
1. Dietary Cholesterol Is Not Bound to Blood Cholesterol.
Kaiser: “Diet. Eating too much saturated fat and cholesterol can raise your cholesterol.”
2. There’s No Such Thing As Good and Bad Cholesterol. Many
people call HDL “good cholesterol” and LDL “bad cholesterol”. This is false.
Kaiser: “It may help to think of HDL as the “Healthy” cholesterol and LDL as the “Lousy” cholesterol.”
3. High Cholesterol Doesn’t Increase Risks of Heart Disease.
Kaiser: “Your body needs some cholesterol. But if you have too much, it starts to build up in your arteries….This can lead to serious problems, including heart attack and stroke…. Borderline-high is 200 to 239. Even borderline-high cholesterol makes you more likely to have a heart attack.”
7. High Cholesterol Has Many Benefits. High cholesterol levels will actually improve your health.
Kaiser: “Even borderline-high cholesterol makes you more likely to have a heart attack.”
@Hibiki Joji
Yes, your liver will produce cholesterol but you still need to supply your body with enough, as with all things.
I’ve only scanned briefly through the comments but I have to say that there are some “incorrect” statements here.
Yes I work as a pharmaceutical rep for a cholesterol lowering drug and I’ve got plenty of studies in the boot of my car that can show you that taking chol-lowering drugs WILL potentially extend your life (ie not let you get a heart attack) especially if you are in a high risk category (Type 2 diabetic, morbidly obese, elderly etc).
This statement is true: “millions of people would realize they don’t need their drugs”. But the background behind that statement is “You don’t need your drugs, IF YOU LOOK AFTER YOURSELF.”
That’s where the biggest problem lies. People don’t care about what they shovel into their mouths and hence they screw their bodies up and then need drugs to help them avoid heart disease.
Believe me, I don’t like it. It sickens me. But we’ve evolved into what we are today –> LAZY. Hence exercising properly and eating properly are too much of a hassle. I have to promote/educate to doctors about my medicines but sometimes it’s hard when the dr you are talking to is also bloody obese –> how the hell is a patient meant to take serious advice from a guy like this??
Cholesterol:
HDL = Good
LDL = Bad
Triglyceride = Ugly
These are all VERY necessary cholesterols for our body to function correctly. We need cholesterol for cell wall structure, signal transduction, hormone synthesis etc. I admit that cholesterol is necessary and “technically” there is no good, bad and ugly cholesterol. But it is when these fractions get out of whack (low HDL, high LDL and high TG) that it becomes dangerous. The labels are there more for the layman’s sake to help everyone understand that when you get your cholesterol test back from the dr, certain types of cholesterol levels should be at certain levels.
I love this site for the weight lifting and exercise advice. It has helped me get to places I never thought I could. However, some of the other advice I have to take with a pinch of salt.
Uncle Barbbell says: “Remember kids, just because it is on the internet doesn’t mean it is true.”
It’s disturbing to me that as proof of his claims on cholesterol the site director challenges us to undergo a high-cholesterol diet, which heretofor for decades has been widely claimed to have negative effects on cardiovascular health. You’ll forgive us if we’re not willing to risk our health just to prove you right. You made the claim. You back it up.
And don’t take me wrong, I love the site and have gotten some great ideas from here, but you’re making what is to most people an extravagant claim that goes against conventional wisdom (which, granted, is usually bullshit). Most people will need a little more convincing. Maybe you’re just a little ahead of your time, who knows…
@Marc (number 41)
Because of genetics.
Unfortunately the majority of people aren’t blessed with those kind of genetics.
If you displaced a Masai from his natural environment and stuck him in front of a TV at home and a computer at work and he still stuck to the same diet, you’d have one very fat Masai in no time.
The Masai are very very active people. 99% of westernised society is not unfortunately.
I’ve read all the comments and found myself smiling quite a few times.
There are quite few here who think that having PHD or some other letters after a name or having some study that has ‘proven’ something means that what they have to say is the ‘truth’.
In my younger days, I had faith in the’experts’.
Having experienced the lack of ‘expertise’ in many ‘experts’ down through the years, I now know better.
Incidently, I work a gym in Central London frequented by some of the greatest minds in medicine today, and the health or lack of, in many of them is remarkable. Many are overfat, weak, have postural problems and so on. Brilliant minds, sick bodies.
The Basques have a saying, ‘When you have learned how to eat, you will have learned how to live’
For me, I’ve learned that a high saturated fat diet suits me(and yes I have had my cholesterol checked recently- a little higher than average, which I’m happy with as I do go through periods of very intense training).
For as long as I remember I’ve not trusted the ‘Low Fat’ is good dogma. I remember there were many studies by ‘experts’ with Phd’s who ‘proved’ that ‘low fat’ diets were healthier.
I’ve no studies to quote from, or letters after my name. I know what works for me. I suggest to anyone who is concerned about colesterol, not to be. Like calorie counting, it’s not worth the effort. A varied whole food diet coupled with a variety of gentle & intense exercise is a no brainer - no study needed to tell you that you feel better and get sick less often on that one.
@Marc
Here is from Wikipedia about dietary reasons that Masai have lower cholesterol
Saponins are believed to be useful in the human diet for controlling cholesterol. The Maasai eat soup laced with bitter bark and roots containing saponins. Heart disease is nearly nonexistent among the Maasai, and their cholesterol is one third lower than the average U.S. citizen. Urban Massai who don’t eat the traditional soup, do develop heart disease.[1] [7] Bile cholesterol is secreted into the intestine. Much of it is later reabsorbed into the body. Saponins bind to bile acids and cholesterol, so much of it is not reabsorbed, and instead excreted from the body. [8] Digitalis-type saponins strengthens heart muscle contractions, causing the heart to pump more efficiently.[9]
This acts like some of the cholesterol lowering drugs.
@all who say this is against recent knowledge
what is the recent trend? Humans are getting fatter, shorter, and heart disease is a growing problem.
Here are some people who are on the bandwagon with cholesterol:
* Dr. Eric Westman from Duke University
* Dr. Mary C. Vernon from the University of Kansas
* Dr. Jeff Volek from the Univeristy of Connecticut
* Dr. Richard Feinman from SUNY Downstate
* Dr. Steven Phinney from the University of California-Davis
* Dr. Jay Wortman from Canada
* Dr. Annika Dahlqvist from Sweden (who succeeded in changing government dietary guidelines)
* Drs. Mike & Mary Dan Eades from Protein Power
* Gary Taubes - Science Journalist, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories
* Dr. John Briffa in the UK
* Adam Campbell at Men’s Health magazine
* Cassandra Forsythe at the University of Connecticut
* Dr. Larry McCleary, a brain surgeon who wrote The Brain Trust Program
* Dr. Barry Groves in the UK
* Dr. Richard Bernstein working with diabetics
* Dr. Gil Wilshire, reproductive endocrinologist in Missouri
* Dr. Donald Layman from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
* Dr. Keith Berkowitz in New York City
* Dr. Fred Pescatore from the Hampton’s Diet
* Dr. Barry Sears from The Zone Diet
* Dr. Jonny Bowden from California
(Thanks to Jimmy for this list)
@ Roo
Then How do you explain that at the same time the research on the Masai was being done, they did research on a population of lumberjack in Finland that ate very little fat and a lot of carbs and had a very high rate of heart disease? Don’t try to tell me these aren’t physical, hard-working chaps! Or that in Britain people are more active and less overweight than the french yet also have higher rates of heart diseases? They eat more carbs BTW.
And on the genetic issue, that’s a total cop-out. TOTAL. You can’t explain everything by genetics alone. Even now, the French are starting to eat less fat and more carbs and lo and behold, their rates of heart diseases are going up. So much for genetics. Also, during WW2, Britains needed to eat less meat and fats because of the war and, incredibly, their rates of heart diseases went up, not down. Same genetics, different diets.
When a theory says that people with high cholesterol have shorther lives and more heart attacks, and yet Empirical AND researches prove that this statement is untrue, I think it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rethink the possible causes. To not do that is mind-boggling, unreasonable and quite simply unscientific. Now I agree that the BIG problem is laziness.
But hey, Big Pharmas wouldn’t want that now would they?
The BIG problem in my eyes is that People eat stuff that our digestive system has not evolved with. For 2.5 millions years, men lived of meat (LOTS of meat), fruit, vegetable and nuts they foraged and milk when they were young. Now since 6000 years ago, men started eating more and more carbs because of farming. And anthropologists found that population moving from hunter/gatherers lifestyles to farming had a LOWERED general health and shorter lives. When you don’t fed an organism what it should eat, it’s normal that organism will have problems.
Someone may have mentioned this already but I didn’t see it in my scan of the comments: Point 2 is just plain wrong!
- I’d like to start with the fact that LDLs and HDLs are not cholesterols they are carriers of cholesterol.
- LDLs (Low Density Lipoproteins) do not carry proteins, they carry cholesterol from the liver to the body after synthesised fats (triglycerides) have been extracted from VLDLs (Very Low Density Lipoproteins) in body fat stores (adipose tissues).
- HDLs (High Density Lipoproteins) pick up cholesterol from the bloodstream and carry it back to the liver. So, HDL is the good guy if blood cholesterol causes CV disease.
FYI, proteins don’t need carriers to be transported in the bloodstream. They are broken down to amino acids which are transported into the bloodstream to where they are needed.
My girlfriend is a physician assistant and this is her response to this article:
As far as I know this is all correct except for #2. I have done a test called a ‘VAP’ which will break cholesterol down into particle size since this seems to be the most important factor. I can explain that to you later if ya like.
1- is correct since we all know that genetics play a much larger role than diet, but diet will play a small (I have heard around 15-20%) and since that is the only factor that we can alter it’s better than nothing.
2- as far as I know is incorrect. I have done tons of cholesterol research (I used to work in cardiology) and unless there is new data that I haven’t seen I am sure there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’. At least some types are more closely related to heart disease and illness and the others seems the be related to a decreased risk in those
3- true since TOTAL cholesterol numbers are not at all important and anyone who knows anything about cholesterol will not look at total cholesterol numbers- only the components and types
4- of course we need cholesterol, that is why our bodies make it. But as noted, genetically some people make way more than is needed
5- true but they do tend to reduce all cholesterol, including the small particles, which are thought to be the most dangerous. Everyone knows that cholesterol meds can be hard on the liver. That is why you have to have liver tests done every 3 months while you are on the medications. This is not a secret.
6- seems to be oversimplifying. This isn’t taking into account tons of other factors such as free radicles, inflammatory markers, the build-up of plaque causing harmful ‘foam cells’ ……
7- cholesterol, like everything else, has benefits in moderation and in the correct balance.
Thanks for trying to bust some myths about a difficult topic, Kyle. I for one have never really worried much about my cholesterol levels and now I think this is the best thing to do.
What I can extract from your article is -
1) Eat healthy
2) Don’t do any fad diets
3) Don’t start popping pills
Keep these guest articles coming Mehdi! We need more straight talking on difficult topics and there should be controversy - hell, this is an academic debate is it not? It’s not a medical journal, true, but then most people don’t have the time or the training to read medical journals. A couple of citations would be welcome though…
Bear in mind that well over half the world’s medical research carried out by respected scientists and doctors is privately funded, for-profit research. Remember that the next time you read an impartial medical journal!
@ Marc (41)
One way to raise HDL levels is to exercise. That may the reason why the Masai, and the others you mentioned have low instance of heart disease. Not to mention, anything else in their diet that may help prevent heart disease in ways we don’t know.
-YoY o
I like a lot of what Dr. Agatston says about heart disease. He lists particle size as a concern. I don’t know how important that is but ultimately it seems plaque buildup is the real concern. From what I understand, Ca deposits are indicative of plaque buildup and so heart scans looking for Ca deposits are great for detecting damage in its earliest stages. I had mine recently and my “score” was very low which is good.
Dr. Agatston uses the heart scan to determine whether lifestyle changes are needed (diet and exercise - hence his South Beach Diet program) rather than automatically calling for angioplastic surgery like many other cardiologists when only blood cholesterol levels or other typical factors are considered.
Normally, I prefer a preventive approach which essentially is what us StrongLifters do with diet and exercise. The main issue with regards to potential heart disease is whether dietary cholesterol is good or bad. My answer is yes? This article mentions that it is not so bad. I agree that that is true for a lot of people but not for all. We can argue what the mechanisms are but it is what it is for people that are “cholesterol-sensitive”.
So, my approach is to eat 400-800mg of dietary cholesterol, 1g per lb of bodyweight protein and 12mg fish oil per day. Lots of fruit, vegetables, lean meats, legumes, oats, nuts and other good oils. Limited amounts of whole wheat. And of course, strength training and cardio.
I will periodically have heart scans and if there are increased Ca deposits, then I will need to reconsider something in my approach whether it is the dietary cholesterol levels or something else.
I suspect that years from now we will find that high blood cholesterol, poor diet and sedentary lifestyle are a deadly combo. Low blood cholesterol, good diet and active lifestyle are a good combo. High blood cholesterol, good diet and more active lifestyle are a great combo.
I also believe that we will find that high blood cholesterol is symptom and not a cause. Remember when protein was considered bad? Then fat was bad and led to foods with low fat and high sugar! Now carbs are bad. Guess I can still drink water….:)
D Rod
I read about caloric restriction’ and fasting to improve ones health, i completely agree with them, as my self i fasted for 7 days but prior to my body building hobby. However, I don’t think it gonna do any good with strength training.
“2- as far as I know is incorrect. I have done tons of cholesterol research (I used to work in cardiology) and unless there is new data that I haven’t seen I am sure there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’. At least some types are more closely related to heart disease and illness and the others seems the be related to a decreased risk in those”
obvious point, but showing a correlation doesn’t show causation. Else zimmer frames and wheelchairs cause ill-health
@Kyle
Thanks kyle for that clarification. Looking forward to other articles.