By Denise Baker, M.D.
Did you know that more than half of adults in America have unhealthy blood cholesterol?
These floating particles of oil/lipids, day in and day out, are silently depositing microminature droplets of stickie oil along the 60,000 miles of vessels in your body. A build up over time will cause problems and potentially disastrous events to your body. These problems are usually preventable!
Here are The 15 “Good… The Bad… and The Ugly”… of Cholesterols
1. Whether you have have low or high cholesterol, you feel the same. This is why it’s important to get your cholesterol checked regularly and “Know Your Numbers.” High cholesterol is an indicator for heart attack, brain attack, and circulatory issues. If you know in advance, you can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
2. Good cholesterols have different features. Know which portions of good HDL YOU have.
3. Always have your vitamin D level checked when your lipid levels are evaluated. (Remember that sunshine converts cholesterol to vitamin D!)
4. Brain health requires saturated fat and cholesterol to remain strong for the young and not so young in age.
5. The body does need some particular dietary cholesterol each day in the form of lineolic acid.
6. Fats we eat have twice the calories (KJ or energy amounts) per gram than protein or carbohydrates. ——–[You may want to eliminate ABC]. Substituting monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats tends to improve blood cholesterol measurements
7. High Cholesterols have no side effects nor symptoms of which you can be aware until a health event occurs–the traffic light turns instantly from green to red.
8. I commend those who, after a heart attack, will change their behavior and live a low(er) risk lifestyle. Having pain with exercise may give you the warning time to see you doctor and change what you do. But having a heart attack kills part of your heart muscle pump with permanent damage even if it does not kill you. Better late than never to change.
9. An interesting perspective from Dean Ornish to consider: “I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced and vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open (or journey through their arteries & veins) and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
10. Simply identifying HDL as the good Cholesterol and LDL as the bad cholesterol is like using eyeglasses from the 1950’s-1960’s. We now ask for fractionations/sub populations and descriptions of different types of cholesterol. If your physician doesn’t, you should consider asking for more information such as Boston Heart Lab Panel® or Cleveland Heart Labs®. These are the gold standards of cardiac tests for prevention.
11. Have you ever heard this? A man goes to the doctor and says, “My latest blood test said my cholesterol was very high and my doctor recommended some medicine for it. I said “no” to his recommendation and he said “what are you going to do?” I said I ate my way into this and I’m going to eat and (and exercise) my way out of it!” Can this be you? If you take this approach, start TODAY and never stop. Make an appointment today with your naturopath, dietician, acupuncturist, functional medicine physician and exercise physiologist today to begin your recovery. Then…guide your family and loved ones with your knowledge!
12. Eating cholesterol and bad fat and extra calories will contribute to high blood pressure and heart (coronary) disease. This is because if you bathe them in overdoses of dietary fats and glucose that will overpower your liver and pancreas.
13. If you fail to prevent, (or fail to act when you know) you’re prepared to falter and fail in your future life.
14. What is the strongest risk factor tied to early death? LOW FITNESS! Even more so than smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or even obesity! The #1 behavior to adopt is to exercise because these three things in the unhealthy triad leading to disability and death: cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes are each deflated by exercise.
15. If you don’t act on you abnormal cholesterol every day, you are following Steve Wright who says “I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
LONGEVITY WELLNESS CLINIC
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