Undeniable Cholesterol Data

Nutrition
21

My limited knowledge of the whole “cholesterol issue” is this…

High carb/sugar diets are very inflamatory to the arteries (high blood glucose/high insulin response). The body uses cholesterol to create a “band-aid” over the inflamed areas within the arteries.

If you cause enough inflamation by eating junk or even many “healthy” foods/sugars, you build up too many cholesterol “band-aids” and start to clog the artery with what SHOULD be a harmless protective response.

It’s kinda like running through a thicket of thorn bushes. You get cut to shreds right? So you apply several band-aids on your wounds so they can heal. The problem occurs when you keep on running through the thorns and keep piling up the band-aids.

Soon enough you appear to have a “band-aid issue” but the truth is you need to quit running through the thorn bushes (quit eating junk carbs).

Doctors who advise patients to cut/medically reduce cholesterol levels equals them telling you to cut your band-aid usage. It’s merely a RESULT not the cause. And from what I can see, rather harmful.

Make any sense?

22

[quote]T-Nick wrote:
I just had my bloodwork done about a month ago. My cholesterol numbers came back as excellent. So did my glucose and sodium, not to mention all of my electrolytes, and cell counts.

I eat anywhere from 21 to 30 something large eggs per week. I also eat tuna probably 3 times a week.

I eat at least 8 ounces of red meat every single day, sometimes double that. Thats not including at least a pound or two of bacon per week.

I also eat alot of fats like butter, peanutbutter and lots, and I mean lots, of cheese. I go threw a whole bottle of olive oil in a week.

This is how our body is designed to eat. We are meat heavy omnivores, meaning at least half, if not more like 75 percent, of our daily intake of food for thousands of years was some type of live game.

I know Im never going back to any other diet. [/quote]

Great post! Congratulations.

23

[quote]derek wrote:
My limited knowledge of the whole “cholesterol issue” is this…

High carb/sugar diets are very inflamatory to the arteries (high blood glucose/high insulin response). The body uses cholesterol to create a “band-aid” over the inflamed areas within the arteries.

If you cause enough inflamation by eating junk or even many “healthy” foods/sugars, you build up too many cholesterol “band-aids” and start to clog the artery with what SHOULD be a harmless protective response.

It’s kinda like running through a thicket of thorn bushes. You get cut to shreds right? So you apply several band-aids on your wounds so they can heal. The problem occurs when you keep on running through the thorns and keep piling up the band-aids.

Soon enough you appear to have a “band-aid issue” but the truth is you need to quit running through the thorn bushes (quit eating junk carbs).

Doctors who advise patients to cut/medically reduce cholesterol levels equals them telling you to cut your band-aid usage. It’s merely a RESULT not the cause. And from what I can see, rather harmful.

Make any sense?
[/quote]

that was the best analogy i have ever heard for this.

24

[quote]derek wrote:
My limited knowledge of the whole “cholesterol issue” is this…

High carb/sugar diets are very inflamatory to the arteries (high blood glucose/high insulin response). The body uses cholesterol to create a “band-aid” over the inflamed areas within the arteries.

If you cause enough inflamation by eating junk or even many “healthy” foods/sugars, you build up too many cholesterol “band-aids” and start to clog the artery with what SHOULD be a harmless protective response.

It’s kinda like running through a thicket of thorn bushes. You get cut to shreds right? So you apply several band-aids on your wounds so they can heal. The problem occurs when you keep on running through the thorns and keep piling up the band-aids.

Soon enough you appear to have a “band-aid issue” but the truth is you need to quit running through the thorn bushes (quit eating junk carbs).

Doctors who advise patients to cut/medically reduce cholesterol levels equals them telling you to cut your band-aid usage. It’s merely a RESULT not the cause. And from what I can see, rather harmful.

Make any sense?
[/quote]

I’ve been thinking about this alot lately. I’ve been curious wether it is the chronic hyperinsulinemia or the elevated glucose itself that is responsible for the inflammation. I don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg in this scenario, but I’ve got a hypothesis.

It took quite a bit of pondering for me to stumble on one reason glucose itself is inflammatory. It can glycosylate proteins (as the Schiff base). Now, it’s not very good at it compared to other sugars, thanks to it’s stereochemistry, but the fact remains. Glucose is a reactive, not particularly friendly molecule to have floating around your system. I think this is one of the reasons caloric deprivation is beneficial, it simply decreases the total amount of glucose we’re exposed to, lowering the area under the curve, if you will. I also think this is why exercising and eating lowish, paleocarbs is so anti-inflammatory, you’re keeping blood sugar levels lower/more stable and disposing of the glucose you have, so it can’t run around interfering with cell surface proteins.

Systemic inflammation is an incredibly interesting topic, so I couldn’t help the hijack. I think an inflammation thread may be in order…

25

Derek,
Great analogy. But that’s WAAAY to simple to possibly be true. Unfortunately it is true.

TNT

26

I’ve been drinking whole milk (sometimes 2%) and eating omlettes/whole eggs daily for months now. And I also ate sausages and scrambled eggs on the day of the test (long story, I didn’t know I was getting it done until I went to the doctor’s). And my numbers were great. It’s funny cause my friends always rag on me for eating those things.

27

Thanks for the back-up guys!

All this is why (IMO) fish oil lowers cholesterol levels… It decreases inflamation therefore decreasing the need for cholesterol "band-aids in the first place.

And that’s where the medical field should be throwing money toward. The problem is, that there’s not billions to be made by reducing inflamation when fish oil, Flameout etc. is so cheap.

Big Pharma makes too damn much money selling you shit that gets rid of your band-aid issue.

They’re either stupid or evil, Your guess.

28

Oh oh, I feel a lowered carb consumption period coming on (right after christmas).

29

[quote]vroom wrote:
Oh oh, I feel a lowered carb consumption period coming on (right after christmas).[/quote]

Maybe New Years ;^)

30

Anybody else’s theories are probably better than mine. I would love to see an informal study at a place like this where people get tested and see where they’re at instead of sedentary half dead processed food junkies like they usually do them on.

I’d bet money we’d have a hard time finding anybody who eats a quality low carb/high fat/whole eggs/meat/butter/cheese etc. diet, who also trains seriously with a cholesterol problem.

Are you talking about for you Vroom or in general?

31

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I’d bet money we’d have a hard time finding anybody who eats a quality low carb/high fat/whole eggs/meat/butter/cheese etc. diet, who also trains seriously with a cholesterol problem.

[/quote]

I don’t see how the vast majority of the west can think that ignoring hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution is OK and without serious health risks.

Well, I take that back. The vast majority never gives it a first thought, let alone a second thought.

32

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

I’d bet money we’d have a hard time finding anybody who eats a quality low carb/high fat/whole eggs/meat/butter/cheese etc. diet, who also trains seriously with a cholesterol problem.

[/quote]

How about a quality, moderate carb, moderate fat, plenty of protein diet with a good training routine?

I suspect may be just as beneficial.

There seems to be a tendency to compare low carb diets to high carb/low protein diets and ignore the more balanced approach.

33

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:

I’d bet money we’d have a hard time finding anybody who eats a quality low carb/high fat/whole eggs/meat/butter/cheese etc. diet, who also trains seriously with a cholesterol problem.

How about a quality, moderate carb, moderate fat, plenty of protein diet with a good training routine?

I suspect may be just as beneficial.

There seems to be a tendency to compare low carb diets to high carb/low protein diets and ignore the more balanced approach.[/quote]

Fair enough, I bet those individuals wouldn’t have a problem either, but they’re not supposed to. People who eat like me are supposed to be typing this post with one hand while clutching their chest with the other waiting for the paramedics to show up.

So the next question’s gonna be “why do it then?” Because I’m firmly convinced that adaptation to a fat dominant metabolism is anabolic in ways that moderation is not. I’m not jumping on you, but I know you aren’t a fan of AD type diets from other stuff you’ve posted.

All I know is I’m the healthiest I’ve been in years and I’ve gained about 20 pounds since beginning the AD in August and I can pinch nary a hair more next to my belly button now than I could then.

34

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
There seems to be a tendency to compare low carb diets to high carb/low protein diets and ignore the more balanced approach.[/quote]

I’m thinking the more usual comparison would be to a high carb/high protein/low fat approach, no?

35

Well, I meant for me only, but you never know.

I’m leery on the balanced carb approach, though it is being proposed a lot these days.

If I want to get into paleo mode, I’m going to think that fruits and vegetables are fairly hard to come by. They grow here and there, not in nice little rows that get harvested and bagged. We’d get a little of this and a little of that here and there, if and when we found it first.

It leads me to think that they should be kept low and fibrous, with small spikes here and there when things are “in season”, if you know what I mean.

Also, keep in mind, before farming, fruits and vegetables were scraggly tough little things, not the big fat irrigated and bug free stuff we get in the supermarket. Hell, it’s like comparing apples to oranges… :wink:

36

I read somewhere a while back where somebody was postulating the theory that the Apaches became the strong ferocious warriors they were through generations of eating lots of wild game all the time.

I’ve heard of accounts of those guys taking 3 or 4 rounds center mass, getting back up after each hit and continuing to pursue their assailant before finally dying.

Sounds like the manjuice was pumping through those guys pretty hard.

37

Trib, way to go man!

On Wednesday I’ll have my lab results back and will post my cholesterol numbers. I’ve been on the AD exactly 3 months and have pre-AD lab results for a comparison. The pre numbers were already pretty good and it will be interesting to see what’s happened.

38

Dietary cholesterol has been known to only affect serum cholesterol by 35%. The other 65% is produced naturally by the body with its own enzymes and foundation.

Thus it makes sense for people to have a homeostatic regulator that curbs the amount of body cholesterol being made when dietary cholesterol is high.

39

[quote]derek wrote:
My limited knowledge of the whole “cholesterol issue” is this…

High carb/sugar diets are very inflamatory to the arteries (high blood glucose/high insulin response). The body uses cholesterol to create a “band-aid” over the inflamed areas within the arteries.

If you cause enough inflamation by eating junk or even many “healthy” foods/sugars, you build up too many cholesterol “band-aids” and start to clog the artery with what SHOULD be a harmless protective response.

It’s kinda like running through a thicket of thorn bushes. You get cut to shreds right? So you apply several band-aids on your wounds so they can heal. The problem occurs when you keep on running through the thorns and keep piling up the band-aids.

Soon enough you appear to have a “band-aid issue” but the truth is you need to quit running through the thorn bushes (quit eating junk carbs).

Doctors who advise patients to cut/medically reduce cholesterol levels equals them telling you to cut your band-aid usage. It’s merely a RESULT not the cause. And from what I can see, rather harmful.

Make any sense?
[/quote]

Great post. Don’t forget that the inflammatory response can fuel cancer cells!

40

[quote]HoratioSandoval wrote:
Great post. Don’t forget that the inflammatory response can fuel cancer cells![/quote]

Absolutely! That’s another avenue we need to explore. Scary huh?