Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

In 1999, according to a study by IMS Health Global Services, world prescription medication consumption amounted to $342 billion. In 2006 that figure doubled to $643 billion. A significant proportion of the drugs consumed are excreted by the human body in urine and end up in municipal wastewater.
A study conducted by Université de Montréal researchers on downstream and upstream water from the Montreal wastewater treatment plant has revealed the presence of chemotherapy products and certain hypertension and cholesterol medications.
Bezafibrate (cholesterol reducing medication) and enalapril (hypertension medication) have been detected in the treated water leaving the wastewater treatment plant and in the surface water of the St. Lawrence River, where the treated wastewater is released.
The quantities of bezafibrate and enalapril detected in the raw wastewater, treated wastewater and surface water at the treatment station outlet are respectively 50 nanograms per litre, 35 ng L and 8 ng L for bezafibrate and 280 ng L, 240 ng L and 39ng L for enalapril.
Fish are ingesting cholesterol and high blood pressure drugs. Makes one wonder if their cholesterol levels are affected. Maybe just maybe they have lowered cholesterol levels.
“All in all, these quantities are minimal, yet we don’t yet know their effects on the fauna and flora of the St. Lawrence,” Professor Sauvé explains. A cheap method of collecting more data and analyzing them is needed.
When I apply for a fishing license they usually give me a listing of how much fish flesh I can eat. To my understanding this had to do with herbicides and pesticides collecting in the fish meat. Now I wonder if we have to worry about medications when we eat river fish – especially chemotherapy medications. This gives another reason to release fish after catching them.

Yesterday my post concerned testing for inflammation. I have posted an article about belly fat and how it might double death risk. Well now researchers have confirmed that fat cells inside the abdomen are secreting molecules that increase inflammation. It’s the first evidence of a potential link between abdominal fat and systemic inflammation.

For years, scientists have been aware of a relationship between disease risk and excess belly fat. “Apple-shaped” people, who carry fat in the abdomen, have a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and other problems than “pear-shaped” people, who tend to store fat in the hips and thighs.

Too much abdominal fat is associated with a defect in the body’s response to insulin.

Using liposuction to remove excess belly fat won’t help either. In 2004, investigators found that removing abdominal fat with liposuction did not provide the metabolic benefits normally associated with similar amounts of fat loss brought about by dieting or exercising.
“Despite removing large amounts of subcutaneous fat from beneath the skin — about 20 percent of a person’s total body fat mass — there were no beneficial medical effects,” said Samuel Klein, M.D., the Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science and the senior investigator on both studies. “These results demonstrated that decreasing fat mass by surgery, which removes billions of fat cells, does not provide the metabolic benefits seen when fat mass is reduced by lowering calorie intake, which shrinks the size of fat cells and decreases the amount of fat inside the abdomen and other tissues.”
A body stores fat as two basic types: subcutaneous and visceral. Liposuction, as mentioned above, removes fat from beneath the skin or subcutaneous fat. This fat does not secrete molecules that affect inflammation. Visceral fat – fat found close to the intestines and other internal organs – was found likely to secrete molecules that contribute to increases in systemic inflammation and insulin resistance.
The researchers sampled blood from the portal vein in obese patients undergoing gastric bypass surgery and found that visceral fat in the abdomen was secreting high levels of an important inflammatory molecule called interleukin-6 (IL-6) into portal vein blood.
Increased IL-6 levels in the portal vein correlated with concentrations of an inflammatory substance called C-reactive protein (CRP) in the body. High CRP levels are related to inflammation, and chronic inflammation is associated with insulin resistance, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis, among other things.

A simple test could show if you might have future heart problems. The C-Reactive protein (CRP) has been shown to be a marker of inflammation in the body particularly for inflammation due to atherosclerosis of hardening of the arteries.

Atherosclerosis is a systemic disorder and involves the injury of our arteries’ glistening and responsive lining tissue called the endothelium. This lining allows the underlying muscle layer to expand and contract in order to regulate and fulfill the expanding or decreasing needs of the tissues supplied by the blood vessels. Atherosclerosis can stiffen and distort this layer causing it to behave differently.

Atherosclerosis begins with whitish streaks being deposited in the arteries. Depending on diet and physical activity, overtime these streaks may become plaque deposits which can block blood flow through the artery.

As the plaques accumulate, part of the unstable outer surface may break off and cause a blood clot blocking flow to heart muscle and causing a heart attack.

Inflammation is a key component in the atherosclerotic process. The body produces C-reactive protein during the general process of inflammation. When atherosclerosis damages arteries around the heart, they become inflamed, which triggers CRP production, so increased levels of CRP may indicate that a patient is at risk for heart attack.
This has become particularly important since a surprising number of heart attack victims do not have high cholesterol or other risk factors of heart disease – seemingly healthy people have heart attacks.

The American Heart Association has recommended using the CRP level to determine a patient’s risk of heart disease. This simple, inexpensive blood test (high sensitivity C-reactive protein or hs-CRP test) takes the traditional cardiac check-up a step further, pinpointing those people who are at a much higher risk than others for heart disease.

From hs-CRP results, doctors gain crucial insight into inflammation of the blood vessels around the heart.
Results:

Less than 1.0 mg/L = Low Risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD)
1.0-2.9 mg/L = Intermediate Risk for CVD
Greater than 3.0 mg/L High Risk for CVD

The hs-CRP test may help you avoid a heart attack when you think you don’t fall in the high risk category.

This post blows my mind. Now gastric bypass surgery is being been done on our children! But with the rise of childhood obesity, I guess it was only a matter of time that this would be considered. Wow! Our society has to wake up and stop the madness.
Researchers say type 2 diabetes has traditionally been considered an adult disease. But with the rise of childhood obesity, the rate of type 2 diabetes among children has increased more than tenfold in the last two decades, from 3% to nearly half of all new pediatric diabetes cases.
A small new study shows Roux-en-Y gastric bypass weight loss surgery halted the use of medications for type 2 diabetes in 10 out of 11 obese adolescents treated with the procedure. And the surgery reduced their risk factors for heart disease.
Previous studies have shown that weight loss surgery can prompt the remission of type 2 diabetes in adults, but this is the first study to show that the treatment may have the same effect in adolescents.
In the study, researchers examined the effects of the gastric bypass surgery on 11 extremely obese adolescents with type 2 diabetes and numerous heart disease risk factors.
A year after the weight loss surgery, researchers found evidence of remission of type 2 diabetes in all but one of the patients.
Specifically, the average BMI (body mass index, a measure of obesity) was reduced by 34% and fasting blood glucose and insulin concentrations decreased by 41% and 81%, respectively. Improvements in blood pressure and cholesterol levels, two major risk factors for heart disease, were also observed.

Research has found that people are now drinking almost 50 additional calories of sweetened beverages daily compared to two decades ago, for an average of about 300 calories per day coming from such drinks. At this rate it doesn’t take long before more pounds are packed on.

So, even if you have the exact same diet as you did 20 years ago and your activity level hasn’t changed, those seemingly harmless 50 extra daily calories could cause you to gain five pounds every year.
Super sizing is one contributor to this increase. One 12-ounce can of soda has about 10 teaspoons of sugar. However, today the old can of coke looks small, but the 20-ounce bottle looks normal.
And another problem is sugar-sweetened beverages which include soda, sport drinks, fruit drinks, punches, low-calorie drinks, sweetened tea and other sweetened drinks can be found anywhere.
Drinking something that tastes good and gives you an energy boost is hard to put down. But the fact that those drinks can contribute to you becoming overweight, obese, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Soda pop has been shown to remove calcium from bones as well as weaken stomach acid making proper digestion difficult.
Say you are drinking 300 calories a day in sweetened beverages (which is quite easy) – if you stopped you could lose 2.5 pounds a month.