Cholesterol and Heart Disease #1 Killer MYTHS
... You Need To Know!
What Can You Do Naturally to
Prevent this Killer?
© 2018 Health Realizations, Inc.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for more than one in every four deaths. Each year, 785,000 Americans have a first heart attack, while another 470,000 have a second (or third, etc.), which amounts to one heart attack occurring every 34 seconds, according to CDC statistics.

Most commonly, Americans suffer from a type of heart disease known as coronary artery disease, which involves a hardening of the arteries that provide oxygen and nutrients to your heart. It’s a serious condition, one that can easily turn deadly … but it’s also a condition that can often be prevented.

In fact, while a family history and advancing age are known risk factors that you can’t control, there are multiple heart disease risk factors that are completely within your power to influence. But first it’s important to get to the bottom of the underlying causes, which may be very different from what you’ve been told.

Does High Cholesterol Really Cause Heart Disease?

Cholesterol has been blamed as a leading cause of heart disease by public health agencies, physicians and health “experts” to boot. But is cholesterol, a waxy substance that’s found in every cell in your body, really the villain it’s made out to be?

According to many natural health experts, not even close.

Cholesterol is actually an essential part of your body used to produce cell membranes, steroid hormones, vitamin D and the bile acids your body needs to digest fat. Your brain needs cholesterol to function properly, as does your immune system, and if a cell becomes damaged, it needs cholesterol in order to be repaired.

So cholesterol is not only beneficial, it is a vital part of your body.

The Lipid Hypothesis May be Flawed

Yet, the “lipid hypothesis,” the one that claims foods high in saturated fats drive up your cholesterol levels, which clog your arteries and lead to heart disease, is widely accepted in conventional medicine. If you dig a little deeper, however, you’ll learn that this theory may be based on entirely flawed science.

In his book The Cholesterol Myths, Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD explained that Ancel Keys, who performed the study upon which the Lipid Hypothesis is based, used cherry-picked data to prove his point that countries with the highest intake of animal fat have the highest rates of heart disease.

According to Keys this is what the data showed, but Dr. Ravnskov revealed that the countries used in the study were handpicked, and those that did NOT show that eating a lot of animal fat lead to higher rates of heart disease were left out of the study, leading to entirely skewed, and faulty, data.

High Cholesterol May Not Even be “High”

According to the American Heart Association, your cholesterol levels should be below 200 mg/dl while levels of 200-239 mg/dl are borderline high, and anything over that is considered high. However, according to lipid biochemistry expert Mary Enig, PhD in the Weston A. Price Foundation quarterly magazine:

“Blood cholesterol levels between 200 and 240 mg/dl are normal. These levels have always been normal. In older women, serum cholesterol levels greatly above these numbers are also quite normal, and in fact they have been shown to be associated with longevity.

Since 1984, however, in the United States and other parts of the western world, these normal numbers have been treated as if they were an indication of a disease in progress or a potential for disease in the future.”

Many natural health experts believe in this latter explanation of cholesterol, pointing out that many Americans may be taking statin cholesterol-lowering drugs unnecessarily, believing their cholesterol is dangerously high when it is not.

According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “… Total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330.”

Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Often Unnecessary … and Dangerous

Enig continues:

“As a result of some of this misinformation, which was purposefully planted by the leadership of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in 1984, many hundreds of thousands of people are treated with expensive medications to prevent the development of a non-existent illness.

If the medications were only expensive and not life threatening, their use could no doubt be shrugged off as a harmless snake oil pharmaceutical scam; but, in fact, these are thoroughly dangerous medications for both physical and emotional reasons—for physical reasons because their use can lead to serious untreatable diseases such as liver cancer, and for emotional reasons because their use perpetuates the myth that cholesterol is dangerous and evil.”

In fact, statin drugs have been linked to serious muscle problems, cognitive problems and peripheral neuropathy, increases in blood glucose levels, tendon problems and an increase in liver enzymes, leading to permanent liver damage.

Statin drugs are also known to block the production of important nutrients in your body, including CoQ10, which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. If CoQ10 levels become depleted, it can actually cause heart failure.

Further, there are serious question over whether statins actually work to lower heart disease risk. While numbers touted often make it seem like the drugs are beneficial, when examined by a little-known statistic called “number needed to treat” (NNT), the benefit is questionable at best.

For instance, the cholesterol drug Lipitor’s NNT is 100, which means that in order for one person to benefit, 100 people need to be treated with the drug for more than three years. In other words, in a 3.5-year trial, there was one fewer heart attack per 100 people on Lipitor equaling a reported whopping 1%. One person had a benefit, while 99 did not.

What’s A Better Option for Your Heart?

So if cholesterol is not a major factor, and statin drugs may be dangerous and ineffective, then what IS the best solution to prevent heart disease?

A healthy lifestyle!

Healthy Diet …

For starters, your heart is very much tied to your diet, along with the rest of your body. By now most of you probably know that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in unhealthy fats, like trans fats, will help protect your heart. But what you may not know is just how damaging seemingly innocuous foods like white bread, rice, pizza and other processed foods can be.

In reality, women who eat more carbohydrate-rich food like white bread and rice are more than twice as likely to develop heart disease as women who eat less of these items, according to Italian researchers.

These high-glycemic index carbs turn quickly into sugar in your body, which leads to unhealthy spikes in blood sugar. This is the same mechanism that, in time, can also lead to the development of type 2 diabetes, which a new study also found can double your risk of developing blood vessel diseases or suffering from a heart attack or stroke.

So if you want to keep your heart healthy, one of the best choices you can make is to replace processed foods in your diet with fresh, whole foods, and ideally raw foods, including healthy recipes like those found in the wonderful, "Alive in 5". Raw Gourmet Meals in Five Minutes cookbook.

In the book "The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will" provides 100 recipes for preventing and reversing heart disease.

Bestselling health authors Jonny Bowden, Ph.D. and Stephen Sinatra, M.D. provide "a 4-part strategy based on the latest studies and clinical findings for effectively preventing, managing, and reversing heart disease, focusing on diet, exercise, supplements, and stress and anger management."

They share the "emerging science showing that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as ineffective low-fat/highcarb diets and serious, side-effect-causing statin drugs, obscure the real causes of heart disease. Even doctors at leading institutions have been misled for years based on creative reporting of research results from pharmaceutical companies intent on supporting the $31-billion-a-year cholesterol-lowering drug industry."

The Great Cholesterol Myth Now Includes 100 Recipes for Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease This book "reveals the real culprits of heart disease, including: Inflammation, Fibrinogen, Triglycerides, Homocysteine, Belly fat, Triglyceride to HCL ratios, and High glycemic levels."

Plus enjoy delicious, heart-healthy meals from nutritionist Deirdre Rawlings, Ph.D., N.D.

Along with a diet that focuses on fresh, raw foods, you’ll also want to be sure you’re consuming plenty of omega-3 fats. The omega-3s found in fish and fish oils cut the risk of blood clots and thus lessen the chance of a heart attack.

Based upon a full assessment there are supplements that we may prescribe to help support heart health.

Exercise …

Next, you will want to exercise regularly, aiming for 30 minutes of exercise each day to reap the benefits. Ideally, include a range of activities in your routine, including aerobics, strength training and flexibility work like daily stretches.

Stress Relief …

Finally, out of control stress levels can contribute to heart attacks and strokes.

You can reduce your stress levels by practicing relaxation techniques such as listening to calming music or trying Tai Chi or yoga.

The Inflammation Connection

By eating healthy, exercising, and managing stress in your life, you’ll lower your heart disease risk substantially, in part because you will also reduce your body’s level of inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a leading cause of many diseases, both physical and neurological, including heart disease.

Making excess cholesterol is actually your body’s response to inflammation, so if you have high cholesterol you probably have high inflammation levels too.

Pharmaceuticals, should be the last onsideration vs the first and only!

It's true, "Pfizer made a chewable version of Lipitor for children with high cholesterol" and according to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon "... you can find it at CVS in the OH MY GOD, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO US AISLE!". The European Union approved the new chewable form of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor for children 10 and up... !

We simply suggest ... if you eliminate the cause of a disease ... then there is no need for a cure. And progressively no resulting need for Sick-Care when one’s good health Well-Care becomes "the victor... vs. victim!"

We advocate natural methods to lower cholesterol for our patients by determining WHY the body is making more cholesterol. Determining the cause of the inflammation, which often is due to poor diet and the consumption of processed foods or lack of live healthy raw foods, and taking steps to address it not only reduces cholesterol to naturally healthy levels, it also reduces your risk of heart disease.

Sources

CDC.gov Heart Disease Facts

WestonAPrice.org Cholesterol and Heart Disease: A Phony Issue

WestonAPrice.org The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov

WestonAPrice.org Cholesterol: Friend or Foe?

Mercola.com Making Sense of Your Cholesterol Numbers

BusinessWeek.com

AmericanHeart.org