“If it were up to me, I would put statins (cholesterol medication) in the drinking water!”
I recently heard a medical doctor make this statement.
His belief is that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease and that by lowering everyone’s cholesterol it will cure heart disease.
But more and more research is disproving that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease!
Imagine this scenario.
In your hometown someone is starting fires all over, every day. The fire department is constantly being sent out to put the fires out. In fact there are so many fire trucks being sent out, they are causing traffic jams and even lots of accidents.
Your city council meets to come up with a solution. They decide that they need to get rid of all the fire trucks. After all, they are the ones causing the accidents.
I know what you are thinking. What a silly solution. Stop the person from starting the fires!
This is no different than lowering cholesterol to treat heart disease. While it may be necessary to lower cholesterol the most important thing is to find out why it is high.
When trying to understand heart disease, it is very important to understand why we have cholesterol in our body in the first place.
Many of us have heard that there is “good” (HDL) and “bad” (LDL) cholesterol but we really don’t know what it is.
First of all HDL and LDL are not even cholesterol. They are the carriers of cholesterol. Cholesterol’s role in our bodies is absolutely vital for life. It is found in all cell membranes. Our sex and stress hormone use cholesterol as the back bone of the hormone. Finally, cholesterol is used to help heal the body.
When our body needs to make new cells, make sex and stress hormones and heal itself it will activate the liver to make cholesterol and send LDL to pick it up and take it where it is needed.
Without LDL cholesterol you would die, quite quickly at that. It can’t be all that bad then, right? It’s when it is too high that there is a problem, but again the cholesterol itself is not the problem.
With heart disease, a blood vessel gets damaged, so cholesterol is sent to the damaged area. Unfortunately, cholesterol is easily oxidized (damaged) and a plaque can start to form. This is the start of heart disease.
If we want to get to the cause and not just get rid of the “fire trucks”, why need to figure out why the blood vessel is being damaged.
If you look at any pathology text book to learn the steps of heart disease, they will all tell you the same thing- inflammation and infections are the two leading causes of damage.
The solution to heart disease is to address inflammation and infections.
There are many causes to inflammation in our body but I think many of us now know that Sugar is a very common one.
But I don’t think many people know that processed grains and even whole grains can cause inflammation.
There can also be foods such as night shade plants which are high in lectins that can cause inflammation.
Due to the fact that so many foods can cause inflammation (including healthy foods), we find that if you are dealing with high cholesterol or other heart risk factors, the best place to start is with an elimination diet or an autoimmune paleo diet (AIP).
We have had patients lower their total cholesterol by 30 – 100 points in as little as 21 days.
Another thing that can cause inflammation is autoimmunity. A blood test is the best way to determine if you are dealing with autoimmunity. Cyrex array 5 is probably the best test.
In dealing with infections, healing a leaky gut plays a large role as a compromised gut lining will allow infections to pass from the gut to the blood.
Heart disease is much more complex than taking a pill for blood pressure or to lower cholesterol. If you don’t get to the cause, certain numbers may be normal but the underlying problem is still there.
It is vital that you work with a health practitioner who can get to the root cause. At Valeo we have been able to help many people dealing with heart disease improve their heart function.
