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episode #120

Is Cholesterol Good or Bad?

February 8, 2022 in Podcast

Intro

There is a lot of confusion regarding cholesterol, LDL, HDL and the abundant use of statins throughout the world. Bottom line - We all need cholesterol to survive and if we don’t consume cholesterol, our body will make it on its own. In fact, your liver makes the bulk of it. Only about 25% of our total circulating cholesterol—LDL or HDL—is tied to what we eat. The amount we absorb from our diet varies widely depending on the food itself, our state of health, and even our genetics. In this episode I discuss: - 4 measures/ratios to look at when you have a lipid panel - The difference between small and large dense LDL - Importance of HDL - The overuse of statins - and if you have high triglycerides, low HDL, or high total cholesterol, getting off sugar and refined carbs becomes the best way to fix this problem.

0 (1s): Hello, and welcome to the get lean and eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin. I'm a certified health coach, trainer and author. And this podcast is for middle-aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long-term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I hope you had a great weekend. Enjoy those four football games, probably the best football games I've watched in a long time. 0 (43s): All coming down to the last second and yeah, highly enjoyable. So anyways, hope you had a great weekend. It's snowing, snowing in Chicago here and it's Tuesday. And hopefully you'll listen to also to my interview with Barton Scott from upgraded formulas, got some great information regarding mineral testing and heavy metal testing and the likes. So check that out. If you haven't and today we're going to touch on a topic we haven't talked too much about and that's cholesterol, but I think it's something that we could really dive deep into. I want to give you some high level things that you could take away from you perhaps to your doctor. 0 (1m 24s): If you're going to have a, a lipid panel test and you want to look at some ratios, we're going to talk about the four, the best ratios to look at, or markers per se, and yeah, and just, we're going to touch on status as well. So I think this is a really relevant topic and hope you enjoy it. First and foremost, let's just give a definition of cholesterol. It's a waxy substance known as a lipid, and it travels in your bloodstream carried by proteins. So we all need cholesterol to survive. And if we consume cholesterol, excuse me, if we don't consume cholesterol, our body will make it on its own. It's that important? Okay. I think a lot of people think that if we're just eating high-fat things that our cholesterol is just going to shoot through the roof, but really only 25% of our total cholesterol is tied to what we eat. 0 (2m 14s): And so the amount we absorbed from our diet varies widely depending on first of all, the food itself, our state of health, and even our genetics and cholesterol mainly comes from animal based foods. So there's been this rhetoric for a long time, that cholesterol is bad, which it's not, and there's this fear and, you know, rightfully so the media and a lot of well-meaning doctors had this rhetoric of a low fat diet because they, you know, just directly had this link between cholesterol and heart disease. And it's definitely more complicated than that. And more nuanced. It's not the only factor. There's a lot of important other factors that can contribute to risks of getting heart disease. 0 (2m 58s): So when you get a lipid panel at a doctor's office, you know, a lot of times doctors will look and say, oh, hi LDL. Well, let's get you on a statin. And I'll just quote, Lustig's book metabolically. If you haven't taken a look or read it, and you're interested in health and wellness, it's a great one. One of the better ones I've read. And I'm, I'm working on getting Dr. Lustig on the podcast. But the bottom line is when it comes to Statens, $1 trillion worth pharma companies sold PA PA patients and doctors globally close to $1 trillion worth of Statens, 400 billion in the United States alone. 0 (3m 45s): So to say, it's, there's a lot of money behind it there sure is. So you got to do your own research and make sure that it's right for you and don't just go off. Oh, I have high LDL. I should just put me on a stat anyways. So that's my little soapbox regarding that. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go, but you want to look at more, you have LDL HDL, but LDL cholesterol comes in various sizes and densities. Okay. And there's actually two patterns. And, and I got some of this information also from upcoming guests. This is a good preview, Dr. Beakman, Dr. Beakman and he'll be coming up on Friday. What a great interview that was, but he talks a lot about, and there's these two patterns with LDL. 0 (4m 30s): So you got to dig a little bit deeper. You got pattern a, which is a larger, less dense LDL molecule Cule. And you have pattern B, which is smaller and denser sometimes called small dense LDL. So you want to know which what's that ratio. What do you have more of and what do you have less and big, according to Beekman, there's a connection between particle size and metabolic health. Okay. So insulin select selectivity drives the production of LDL pattern B, which is the small dense ones, which you don't want a lot of from the liver. 0 (5m 11s): And so as insulin deadly climbs increasing your chances of insulin resistance deliver, it gets a signal to shift toward a pattern of B LDL profile. Now, the thing about these different profiles is you have pattern B in pattern a and a lot of times people get on statins and you don't even know if you have which pattern you have, because a lot of times the statins and this is according to Dr. Lustig, but the stands actually are bringing down the wrong, the wrong pattern of your LDL. 0 (5m 51s): So you really want to dig a little bit deeper and you're probably, well, what is causing what is causing these lipoproteins these, these smaller dense ones to build up, and I'm going to touch on things that you can do to help that. But on the other hand, you also have HDL and you want to keep an eye on those levels as well. So let me give you four things to keep an eye on. One of them is triglyceride to HDL. Okay? You want to know that ratio and you want to know that you want to know that ratio. 0 (6m 31s): And essentially if it's less than two, you probably have more prevalent, larger LDL, which is good. As opposed to the smaller ones. If the ratio climbs up, then you might have higher LDL B. And actually during my interview with Dr. Beakman, I went and got grabbed my blood tests, and I had a very low ratio, which was really good. So you want to look at the triglyceride to HDL ratio. You also want to look at your HDL. You want, you want to hire the you of over 60, and that's a sign of good cardiovascular health. You don't want an under 40 for men or under 50 for women. So HDL is another one, also LDL, which we've talked a lot about. 0 (7m 15s): You just want to keep an eye on that. If it's, if it's like, let's just say over 300, you might have some rare genetic disease. And that's called familial HyperCloud cluster. Say this 20 times, familial hypercholesterolemia, you might have high. You might have some type of rare genetic disease if it's over 300, but if it's between 103 hundred, you need to know, look at your triglycerides, which is a really important number. So lastly, also the ratio of your cholesterol to HDL should be less than three. So those are the four things that you should look at, for sure. If you're getting a lipid profile test and hopefully I didn't confuse you too much, but those are the four things you want to look at now, what could cause your liver just producing the wrong type of LDL. 0 (8m 10s): And this is particularly sugar. Now, Dr. Lustig talks a lot about in his book, when you eat sugar, particularly fructose or high fructose corn syrup, it causes the cholesterol producing factor in your liver to turn on. And so this whole rhetoric around a low fat diet, well has nothing. You know, you could go low fat, but if you're high sugar, ain't going to do any good. So if you have high triglycerides, low HDL and a high total cholesterol getting off sugar and flour, because flour converts to sugar, this is the one of the best ways to fix this problem. So a low fat diet may lower your LDL, but it's not going to do it in a beneficial way. 0 (8m 56s): In the sense that a low fat diet will only reduce the large, a type LDL, not the small B LDL. Okay. So the small ones is the ones that we don't want as much. This was a quote I found from Dr. Lustig in his book metabolically, and it was discussing a study that was done called the Lyon diet heart study. I thought it would be beneficial to hear this. He goes, in fact, small dense LDL rises because they are responsive to dietary refined carbs. And that's mainly Fiberless food and especially sugar consumption. So small dense LDL rises because of dietary refined, carbs and sugar consumption. 0 (9m 44s): One of the most compelling arguments against LDL as the primary target of cardiovascular and heart disease prevention is this Lyon diet, heart study the adoption of a Mediterranean diet for secondary prevention. After you've had a heart attack reduced the risk of recurrence. It's clear that eating a real food diet devoid of processed foods delivered far more impressive results compared with stats, then compare to stats without the side effects editor at a much lower cost. And this diet is decidedly, not low fat. The Mediterranean diet given that Stanton's can give you the illusion that you're getting protection. 0 (10m 26s): It can cause serious side effects. So stopping Statens and eating real food, may paradoxically save more lives and improve quality of life. And that's from his book, Dr. Robert Lustig metabolically. I thought that was a very interesting study that looked at people who already had a heart attack and there, and by going on a Mediterranean diet, how it works a lot, a lot better than just being on status. So I think the main takeaway from this not to dive too deep into it is you just want to dig deeper into the numbers. And it's all know the regarding LDL it's context dependent, you know, what's your triglycerides levels, you know, do you have small dense, or do you have high, higher, less dense LDL particles? 0 (11m 15s): So really digging deep into it. And so I think for the most part, you know, this is things you want to look into and, you know, there's a lot of literature out there already regarding cholesterol and standards that you can look up. That's a lot more dated than, or less outdated than a lot of the information that's out there. So in order to, you know, you'll do a lot more to improve your health by paying attention to the quality of the food that you eat and the amount of sugar and refined carbs than worrying so much about cholesterol. So hope this helps and just gave you a little bit of background regarding LDL HDL statins. And I think the main takeaway is yes, eat real foods. 0 (11m 57s): Focus on that. Dig deeper when you get a lipid panel, look at different ratios and you'll be a lot more informed and better off. So hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions, Brian, at Brian green.com and yeah. Bring them to your doctor and ask it never hurts. Have a great day. Hey, get lean equally nation. Are you a man between the ages of 40 and 60 years old looking to lose inches around your waist have significantly more energy throughout the day and gain muscle all while minimizing the risk of injuries? Well, I'm looking for three to five people to work one-on-one with in my fat burner blueprint signature program, which I've developed by utilizing my 15 years experience in the health and fitness space. 0 (12m 44s): This program is designed specifically for those committed, to making serious progress towards our health goals. Over the next six months, we will focus on sleep stress, nutrition, meal, timing, and building lean muscle. If this sounds like a fit for you, email me@brianatbriangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. That's brian@briangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member is looking to get their body back to what it once was. 0 (13m 35s): Thanks again, and have a great day.

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