Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally

For many years now we have thought that high levels of HDL or the good cholesterol were indicative of a healthy lipids profile or blood test. Well, it seems that researchers have uncovered yet another mystery.

Researchers from the University of Chicago challenge the conventional wisdom that simply having high levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and low levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) is necessary for good heath. A study published in the December 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal suggests that you may want to rethink this notion.

Good cholesterol has varying degrees of quality and that poor quality HDL is actually bad for you. Dr.  Angelo Scanu, a pioneer in blood lipid chemistry from University of Chicago points out, “It is now apparent that subjects with high HDL are not necessarily protected from heart problems and should ask their doctor to find out whether their HDL is good or bad.”

The researchers came to this conclusion after reviewing published research on this subject. They found that the HDL from people with chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, kidney disease, and diabetes is different from the HDL in healthy individuals, even when blood levels of HDL are comparable. They observed that normal, “good,” HDL reduces inflammation, while the dysfunctional, “bad,” HDL does not.

A handwriting expert from Wiltshire, England asked 61 heart patients from Pool Hospital in Swindon to provide handwriting samples for her, then compared these to samples provided by people without any cardiovascular disease.
“I’ve found one particular movement in the writing, although I actually believe there’s far more than just the one link, and my research is going to be continuing, looking to see if I can find those other links as well,” said Christina Strang (the Graphologist).
She asked each person to write down 100 words about a holiday or something, but she only analyzed the last 30 words because this is when they are relaxed and write naturally.
Strang discovered that handwriting samples from heart patients contained twice as many “resting dots,” produced when the pen pauses on a piece of paper for mere milliseconds, as the samples from healthy people.

“These resting dots can be because the heart misses a beat or a sudden pain,” Strang hypothesized.
Strang also hopes to see whether the same signs can also be used to detect the early stages of other chronic conditions, such as diabetes and arthritis.
It’s amazing how many different ways people are using as tools to help identify heart disease. Is this possible?

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a synthetic form of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or the “good” cholesterol, which they hope will lead to a clinically useful treatment for the prevention of heart attacks and strokes.
They used nanotechnology to manipulate matter at the molecular level. The synthetic HDL is composed of a tiny core of gold surrounded by fat molecules with an outer layer of the HDL protein ApoA-1.
The resultant HDL particles are similar in size and structure to naturally occurring HDL. The synthesized compound was designed to help prevent the buildup of plaque in the arteries.
The researchers report that studies show that the man-made nanoparticles bind to cholesterol. This suggests that they will act as a sponge in the body to soak up the bad cholesterol (LDL particles) that causes the formation of artery-clogging plaque.
This research effort is nothing but impressive. Instead of using pharmaceuticals to control blood cholesterol levels, a heart doctor would have a more direct, less harmful, and probably more heart friendly approach to deal with high cholesterol.

I have not made it a habit of bad mouthing medications, but sometimes it gets to be too much. On the Orlando Sentinel blog I found an article: ‘Low Cholesterol Linked to Cancer Risk’ http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features_healthblog/2007/07/low-cholesetrol.html .
The reporter quotes lines from Reuters: ‘ Lowering cholesterol as much as possible may reduce the risk of heart disease, but with a price: taking it too low could raise the risk of cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Patients who took statin drugs to lower their cholesterol had a slightly higher risk of cancer, although the study did not show that the statin drugs themselves caused the cancer.’
Statin drugs are used by many to lower their blood cholesterol levels. And I’m sure that is all beneficial to them, but what peeves me is that doctors are treating the symptoms and not curing the disease.
Is it possible that taking statins could cause cancer? We still don’t know. But one thing I can state for sure is that eating natural foods will not cause cancer.
On this blog I try to show how eating natural foods can lower your cholesterol. Admittedly, this approach may have limited effectiveness on people who have abused their cardiovascular system to a point where their cholesterol levels are astronomical. At that point their only option might be a physician and prescribed medication(s). But after surviving that many can get ‘heart healthy’ by following a natural foods diet and exercising. For example: many ex heart attack patients have run marathons.
For most of us eating natural foods will prevent our arteries from accumulating plaque and promote a healthy metabolism. Couple this with regular exercise and you have a healthy prescription for your heart and you can forget about taking a prescribed medication that might cause cancer.

Researchers are getting closer and closer to repairing heart tissue. At Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York,  researchers are successfully growing three types of human heart cells from laboratory cultures derived from embryonic stem cells.

The researchers created the so-called master heart cells by adding a mix of growth factors and other development-related molecules to the laboratory dishes containing stem cells at key times during the experiment. By timing these steps correctly, the researchers encouraged the cells to grow into ancestors, or “progenitors,” of the three specific heart cell types which are: cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, and vascular smooth muscle cells. Each type of cell plays an important part in the makeup of functioning heart tissues.

The second set of cells, the endothelial cells are the first barrier to the invasion of cholesterol. They are on the outer surface of the arteries and touch the bloodstream. When these cells are breached by LDL particles, cholesterol can begin to store inside the artery-cell walls and the process of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries begins.

It looks quite promising that in the near future heart repair will take place. This is one (big) step towards the reversing of heart disease.

Policosanol is a non prescription supplement that is touted as a natural way to treat high cholesterol levels. It is a mixture of alcohols isolated and refined from sugar cane. The main ingredient in Policosanol is octacosanol, but as the name implies, Policosanol is actually a mixture of many (hence the prefix “poli”) alcohols, including hexacosanol, triacontanol and others. Many animal studies with Policosanol, conducted in Cuba by a US based corporation, demonstrate a cholesterol lowering effect, and more recently human studies have suggested that LDL cholesterol can be reduced to a degree similar to that achieved with statins, and that HDL cholesterol can be increased by as much as 10 – 25% (an effect difficult to achieve with statins).
Studies completed in the US have shown no significant cholesterol lowering effect in human subjects after using Policosanol. Policosanol is controversial in that many people outside the United States take it to lower their cholesterol.

If you are considering using this drug, discuss it with your medical doctor first. It hasn’t yet been proven to be effective in US studies.