Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

I have written about nuts and their good effects on the heart. Lately there have been a few articles on pistachios and its positive effects on reducing total cholesterol and LDL or bad cholesterol levels.
According to the American Heart Association, replacing saturated and trans fats with healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats is a major dietary recommendation to improve heart health. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University conducted a randomized, crossover, controlled feeding study to test the effects of pistachios added to a heart healthy, moderate-fat diet on cardiovascular disease risk factors.
Twenty-eight men and women with moderately elevated LDL cholesterol began the study by following a diet designed to mimic the current average American intake, consisting of 35 percent total fat and 11 percent saturated fat for two weeks. The researchers randomly assigned subjects to follow three test diets for four weeks each, with a two-week break between each diet.
All three diets were variations on the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Step 1 Diet, a cholesterol-lowering diet advocated by the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
The three diets included a Step 1 Diet control group without pistachios; a Step 1 Diet with one dose of pistachios a day at 10 percent of total calories (equal to 1.1 to 2.2 ounces of pistachios a day depending on calorie level); and a Step 1 Diet with two doses of pistachios a day at 20 percent of total calories (equal to 2.2 to 4.4 ounces of pistachios a day depending on calorie level).
Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and non-HDL cholesterol levels were significantly lower with the two pistachio diets compared to the control group. The one dose pistachio diet lowered harmful LDL cholesterol by nine percent and the two dose pistachio diet lowered LDL by 12 percent.
In addition, the researchers documented lower amounts of saturated fats in the blood and higher amounts of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in both pistachio diets. Compared to the control diet, HDL-cholesterol levels were higher in women following the two dose pistachio diet. HDL-cholesterol levels were not significantly different across the diets in men.

So about a handful of pistachios a day can make a significant difference in lowering blood cholesterol levels

I read somewhere back there that in the future there would be a method of flushing the plaque buildup out of cardiac arteries. Today in the paper I saw an article on ‘chelation’ – the method has a name.
I looked up the term – Chelation (pronounced key-LAY-shun) is the use of a chemical substance to bind molecules, such as metals or minerals, and hold them tightly so they can be removed from the body. Chelation has been scientifically proven to remove excess or toxic metals before they can cause damage to the body. It was first used in the 1940’s by the Navy to treat lead poisoning.
Although it is not approved by the FDA to treat hardening of the arteries, EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid) chelation is used by some physicians and alternative medicine practitioners to improve circulation and treat this disorder by removing calcium deposits and plaques from the arteries.
The American Heart Association states that there is currently “no scientific evidence to demonstrate any benefit from this form of therapy”.
Recently, a few deaths of patients who received this form of therapy has cast a big shadow of doubt on its value. However, these persons were all recent heart attack victims and after a heart attack there is a good chance of dying from another heart attack. So the jury is out whether the chelation therapy brought about the deaths of these patients.
To me it seems that if chelation worked for heart disease victims – what a great thing it would be! But it still has to go through many definitive trials before it can be accepted.

You may have heard about probiotics and the benefits of live cultures of bacteria. A probiotic is an organism which contributes to the health and balance of the intestinal tract. It is also referred to as a “beneficial”, or “good” bacteria which when ingested acts to maintain a healthy intestinal tract and help fight illness and disease.
There are many yogurts that have live cultures of beneficial bacteria that may be classified as probiotics. Research has suggested that these yogurts may prevent the reabsorption of cholesterol in the intestines back into the blood stream.
Having a healthy balance of probiotic bacteria in the intestine will definitely boost up the immune system. But the jury is still out on whether probiotics will lower blood cholesterol directly. It seems that a more indirect route to lowering cholesterol might be closer to the truth.
The healthful benefits of eating yogurt have been touted for many years. It might have all started when food scientists studied the Masai tribe in Africa. These people eat large quantities of red meat and were observed to have low cholesterol. When researchers studied their diets they found that the tribe also ate large quantities (3 or more liters) of fermented milk (yogurt) each day. The scientists suggested that it must be the yogurt that prevented high cholesterol.

For lunch every day I eat a good two cups of probiotic yogurt. I do believe it does me good. I make a concoction of yogurt, walnuts, chunks of pineapple, and powdered whey. It fills me up and it makes me feel great until supper.

I’ve written about dark chocolate and its benefits to the heart, but I’ve never been able to ascertain the daily dosage. From Italy comes a study that suggests that 6.7 grams or about one-quarter of an ounce daily is sufficient.
Researchers at the University or Campobasso in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute of Milan enrolled 20,000 inhabitants of the Molise region for the study. They found that people having moderate amounts of dark chocolate regularly have significantly lower levels of C-reactive protein in their blood — a biomarker for inflammation.
They report that, “The 17 percent average reduction observed may appear quite small, but it is enough to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease for one-third in women and one-fourth in men.”
The best effect is obtained by consuming an average amount of 6.7 grams of chocolate per day, corresponding to a small square of chocolate twice or three times a week, but beyond these amounts the beneficial effect tends to disappear.
So only a very small amount of dark chocolate daily will lower the risk of heart disease considerably.

A study of more than 111,000 people is one of the first to put real numbers to the risk of obesity and suggests “excess adiposity” – fat tissue – is more dangerous to the heart than smoking.
“The leading theory in cardiology right now is that the fat tissue is actually producing factors that precipitate heart attacks,” says lead author Dr. Peter McCullough, consultant cardiologist and chief of nutrition and prevention medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.
The theory is that cholesterol builds up in the coronary arteries and inflammatory or other chemicals produced by fat cells trigger the plaque to suddenly rupture, causing a blood clot to form and unleashing an acute heart attack.
But until now, earlier studies “simply just didn’t have enough patients of different body sizes having their first heart attack to really evaluate” whether obesity is associated with premature heart attacks, McCullough says.
His team analyzed data from a nationwide U.S. registry of people hospitalized for heart attack and unstable angina, or chest pain, from 2001 to 2007.
A total of 111,847 men and women who had experienced a first heart attack were included in the final analysis. They were grouped according to their body mass index, or BMI, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Researchers found that, the heavier the person, the younger the age of a first heart attack.
The most obese people had their heart attacks on average when they were 59.
The study involved a type of heart attack called non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. They always require hospitalization and have an in-hospital fatality rate of about 10 per cent, and about 20 per cent over the next six months, McCullough says. “They are not trivial events. They account for a leading cause of patients to lose time away from work and actually seek medical disability.”
So keeping one’s weight down adds to the years one is heart attack free and how long one will live. In an age of opulence we still can’t get heart disease under control. More and more of our population is becoming obese which send up red flags portending a future of continued heart problems.

Researchers say rates of teen obesity have nearly tripled over the last two decades. Meanwhile, an estimated 12%-34% of children and adolescents regularly skip breakfast, and that percentage increases with age.
A new study shows that teenagers who eat breakfast regularly are more physically active throughout their adolescence than those who skip breakfast. Follow up years later showed that they also gained less weight and had a lower body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height used to measure obesity.
Eating a healthy breakfast may help adolescents avoid overeating later in the day and disrupt unhealthy eating patterns, such as not eating early in the day and eating a lot late in the evening,” says researcher Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, of the University of Minnesota, in a news release.
In the study, published in Pediatrics, researchers analyzed the dietary and weight patterns of a group of 2,216 adolescents over a five-year period (1998-1999 to 2003-2004) from public schools in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
The researchers write that teens who ate breakfast regularly had a lower percentage of total calories from saturated fat and ate more fiber and carbohydrates than those who skipped breakfast. In addition, regular breakfast eaters seemed more physically active than breakfast skippers.
Over time, researchers found teens who regularly ate breakfast tended to gain less weight and had a lower body mass index than breakfast skippers.
Despite those statistics, the role of breakfast in preventing teen obesity hasn’t been thoroughly studied. But these results suggest that eating breakfast regularly may be an important tool in fighting teen obesity and promoting a healthier diet.

It’s becoming apparent that brushing your teeth may protect you from more than just cavities – it can also cut your risk of a heart disease, a new study reports. In London an international team has found that the body’s own defenses could overreact to the threat of gum disease and destroy its own protective cells, which leads to the buildup in the arteries called atherosclerosis the prime cause of heart attacks.
In recent years chronic infections have been associated with the buildup of plaque in the arteries. Gum disease is one of the most common infections in humans and there are now over 50 studies linking gum disease with heart disease and stroke.
Professor Greg Seymour from New Zealand points out that a number of theories have been put forward to explain the link between oral infection and heart disease. One of these is that certain proteins from bacteria initiate atherosclerosis and help it progress. His group looked at the role of ‘heat shock proteins’.
Heat shock proteins are produced by bacteria as well as animals and plants. They are produced after cells are exposed to different kinds of stress conditions, such as inflammation, toxins, starvation and oxygen and water deprivation. Because of this, heat shock proteins are also referred to as stress proteins. They can work as chaperone molecules, stabilizing other proteins, helping to fold them and transport them across cell membranes. Some also bind to foreign antigens and present them to immune cells.
Because heat shock proteins are produced by humans as well as bacteria, the immune system may not be able to differentiate between those from the body and those from invading pathogens and here lies the rub. This can lead the immune system to launch an attack on its own proteins. “When this happens, white blood cells can build up in the tissues of the arteries, causing atherosclerosis,” Professor Seymour reports.
He found white blood cells called T cells in the lesions of arteries in patients affected by atherosclerosis. These T cells were able to bind to host heat shock proteins as well as those from bacteria that cause gum disease. This suggests that the similarity between the proteins could be the link between oral infection and atherosclerosis.
Our knowledge of heart disease continues to increase. This represents another major step forward.

As its name implies, pre-diabetes is essentially a precursor to diabetes. People with pre-diabetes have blood glucose levels above those considered normal but not yet high enough to qualify as diabetic. This can be considered a gray zone between sickness and health.
Millions of Americans fall into the pre-diabetes category. And people with pre-diabetes already have a 50% higher risk of heart disease and stroke than those with normal blood glucose levels.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 57 million Americans 21 and older have the condition, roughly twice as many as have diabetes itself. Pre-diabetes is not only more common but also more treatable. If it’s diagnosed early, its ill effects can often be averted. In some cases, the condition can be cured.

Mild elevations in glucose levels cause no obvious symptoms but carry significant consequences: A persistent buildup of glucose in the body damages blood vessels and other tissues throughout the body.
Pre-diabetics are also far more likely to go on to develop full-blown diabetes. If left untreated, about 25% of individuals with pre-diabetes progress to diabetes within three to five years, and many more will develop the disease within a decade.

With appropriate treatment, however, individuals with pre-diabetes can prevent — or at least delay — their condition from worsening. Studies suggest that simple lifestyle changes are often enough to overcome insulin resistance and return blood glucose levels to normal.
Diabetes experts speculate that increasing activity levels and losing weight improve the body’s ability to respond to insulin and handle glucose. Just losing 5% to 7% of body weight appears to be sufficient. For a 220-pound man, that amounts to roughly 11 to 15 pounds; for a 160-pound woman, it’s eight to 11 pounds.

In a similar fashion increasing physical activity to 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise such as walking and biking will help to get one out of the gray zone of pre-diabetes.

In some cases medications might be needed, but natural solutions of dieting and exercise work for many pre-diabetics and keep them away from diabetes and the need to take insulin injections daily.