Don’t break your LDL cholesterol!!

By Kim Marquardt, RN MSN

This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.

*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.

They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.

I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back weekly for the latest post!

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So… the body makes cholesterol. Cholesterol is also available in foods and the more we eat, the less the body has to make on its own. Cholesterol unfortunately has become a “bad word” in the last 50 years. But let’s just take a moment to think about this… does the body make components for the distinct purpose of making itself sick and dysfunctional? That would not be very smart. And the answer is no… it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean things in our body cannot get broken, and that is what we are going to talk about today. How not to break your LDL cholesterol.

And to understand why it is important to have all your cholesterol components – LDL, HDL, and triglycerides – working properly, let’s review some of the things that cholesterol does in the body making it vital to life and health:

• Fights infections
• Neuron function
• Brain tissue repair
• Sex hormone synthesis
• Cell membrane synthesis
• Fat soluble vitamin (A, D, E, and K) absorption 

So… some kind of important things.

Now let’s talk about LDL. LDL is such an adorable little molecule, that is it is willing to sacrifice itself to make repairs in the body. The LDL means well in doing this, but it actually just makes the problem worse. Let’s talk science:

Atherosclerosis mechanism

We used to think that atherosclerosis was a degenerative disease that was inevitable with aging. We now believe it is a chronic inflammatory condition and happens as the result of diet and lifestyle related inflammation inducing activities. Some examples of these are –

• Smoking
• Infectious processes with bacteria or viruses
• Chronically high blood pressure
• Chronically high blood sugar
• Mold or heavy metal exposure
• Immunological events – this could be anything from development of an autoimmune condition or food allergy to the body’s response to getting a vaccine
• Environmental toxins like glyphosate and hormone disrupting chemicals in body care products
• Dietary toxins like food dyes, artificial flavors, synthetic preservatives, etc.
• Polyunsaturated omega-6 seed oils (otherwise known as “vegetable” oils) in processed food

When these inflammatory processes happen in the blood vessels, the blood vessel’s injured cell wall (the endothelial cells) starts to produce more sticky adhesion molecules to attract repair substances like white blood cells (i.e., leukocytes) and LDL cholesterol (yes, it is a repair substance!). When the LDL is diseased and full of oxidized omega-6 (review above list again for where this comes from) instead of the healthy version of LDL, it dies at the site in its attempt to make the repair and adds to the fatty deposit that will eventually become an arterial plaque… I give you, atherosclerosis.   

Omega-6

So… if I told you that...

1. The primary dietary source of Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats is “vegetable” oils, (in quotes because they have nothing to do with vegetables, see previous post for more info), AND

2. The oxidized particles found inside diseased LDL (that contribute to atherosclerosis) are Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, would you tell me I should eat MORE or LESS Omega 6 polyunsaturated fats? 

The answer is obviously LESS! However, our USDA and preeminent cardiac institutions have decided that you should eat MORE Omega 6. Now how does that make sense?

Well, it is true that replacing saturated fat in the diet with Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats will reduce your LDL cholesterol. 

BUT…

Is it really the goal to simply reduce LDL? And all is well? Hey! That rhymes! What about it being diseased and not doing all its important jobs correctly? Isn’t that going to cause other problems?

Oh, and let’s not forget the little fact that the recommendation to reduce saturated fat in the diet because it leads to heart disease has NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO BE TRUE IN ANY STUDY EVER CONDUCTED.

The whole PREMISE for why we started guzzling “vegetable” oils was so we could STOP eating butter, lard, and tallow… natural animal fats we had been cooking in and consuming for ya know… all of human existence. If that premise is incorrect, why are we still doing this? And feeding our LDL the literal culprit (Omega-6) for oxidative disease in the process?

I would argue that we should all GREATLY REDUCE the amount of Omega-6 fats we ingest, thereby reducing the disease causing agent to our LDL particles, thereby keeping our LDL healthy and functioning so we can STOP calling it the “BAD” cholesterol. Which is so absolutely absurd. There is no “bad” or “good” cholesterol. There is healthy and diseased cholesterol.

Let’s help our body make and keep ALL our cholesterol healthy.

Exiting soap box.

What to do?

What’s the easiest way to reduce your “vegetable” oil intake?

• Replace processed foods (with ingredient lists a mile long) like bread, pasta, cereal, cookies, crackers, pretzels, and chips with one ingredient whole foods like beef, chicken, broccoli, apples, potatoes, tomatoes, avocados, etc. (no ingredient label required).
• Replace “vegetable” frying oil with animal fats such as lard, ghee, and butter, or fruit oils such as olive, avocado, coconut, and palm oil.
• Limit your intake of fast food and restaurant food since EVERY restaurant cooks in “vegetable” oils.

Until next week!