The Heart of Cholesterol

The greatest nourishment we can ever take in is that of love. Love infuses every morsel of food we ingest. Without it, we starve our hearts, and ultimately, our soul. --Deanna Minich

The fat and cholesterol conversation has been coming up a lot for me lately. There is so much misinformation in the medical community about cholesterol and heart disease. The notion that high cholesterol levels (levels above 200 mg/dL) are responsible for heart disease is based on poor and outdated science. In fact, as many as 50% of people who suffer heart attacks have normal or low-normal cholesterol levels. My intention here is to clear up a bit of the confusion.

First, let’s talk about cholesterol’s role in the body. Cholesterol is found in every cell of your body and is imperative for cell structure, integrity and function. Further, cholesterol is the starting material your body uses to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight. Low vitamin D levels have been linked to just about every chronic disease including osteoporosis, cancer, multiple sclerosis and depression. Our body makes all of our steroid hormones out of cholesterol. These include the stress hormone, cortisol, and our sex hormones including estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Cholesterol is also the precursor to bile salts, which we need for digesting and absorbing dietary fat.

So, as you can see, cholesterol is a very important molecule for the health and balance of our body. I’m more interested in the conversation about where our cholesterol is coming from, rather than the push to avoid this important nutrient. Healthy sources of cholesterol include meat from 100% grass fed cows, meat and eggs from pastured chickens, wild game, wild fish, organic raw dairy products and other sustainably raised animals such as goat and pig. In the Boulder area, I've been quite happy with eggs and meat from Windsor Dairy.

Most of the cholesterol that circulates in our body is made by our liver with the help of the necessary enzymes and cofactors. This means we need to be eating a diet that provides adequate protein, vitamins (such as niacin) and minerals (such as magnesium) for the system to work. When we eat more cholesterol, our body makes a little less, and vice versa, but it is important to note individual variation along this continuum. When speaking of diet, foods such as refined grains and sugars that create a high insulin response, will signal our body to turn on HMG CoA reductase, the key enzyme in the liver’s cholesterol production. This is the very enzyme that statin drugs (the cholesterol lowering drugs) work to block.

So, we’ve all heard the story of LDL is the “bad” cholesterol and HDL is the “good” cholesterol. Actually, these lipoproteins are transport mechanisms for cholesterol. LDL takes cholesterol from your liver and delivers it to the cells of your body that signal for the need. HDL goes around and scoops up excess or unused cholesterol and brings it back to the liver. But there is more to the story than this. There are several types of LDL and HDL that doctors can now measure. The small, dense LDL particles, primarily of genetic origin, seem to be the ones that produce a higher risk of atherosclerosis (inflammation of the arteries).

Our cholesterol levels fluctuate during the day, with the seasons, with trauma or any time the body is under stress. So one blood measurement at the doctor’s office doesn’t really tell the whole story. And if cholesterol is high, the question to ask is why is it high? There is likely a natural way for the body to achieve balance without the use of statin drugs and their insane side effects. And let’s not even get started on the unfounded idea of the use of pharmaceutical drugs—in this case statins—for “prevention.” Or, even more enraging, in children, which is becoming an increasingly common protocol.

I’m not here to say eat as much bacon as you want and don’t worry about heart disease: I’m saying that we have been led to believe that cholesterol numbers are the number one factor when the story is much more complex. If these are concerns for you, I urge you to find a heath care practitioner who will test your cholesterol profile and assess it along with other factors such as smoking, mercury and lead toxicity, insulin levels (and other diabetes risk factors), homocysteine and C-reactive protein. If it is important to work on your diet in terms of heart health, seek a nutritionist who will not simply put you on an unmanageable low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, but rather sees the value of these nutrients in the context of a whole-foods balanced diet that works for your individual physiology at this time in your life.

The story continues beyond these medical tests and what we as a nation put into our mouths, and thank goodness it does! We live in a culture that teaches us to suppress our emotions of compassion, gratitude, love and forgiveness; and as a consequence, our heart charkas become blocked. How you process emotions of the heart as well as the presence of loving relationships and fulfilling sexual experience also plays a role in the health or disease of the heart. Our emotions are perhaps the most important piece of the story. What would it be like if our nation shifted focus from cholesterol scare tactics to cultivating love and compassion for our selves and each other? This is where the healing begins.

And if it strikes your fancy, please enjoy some high quality, nitrate-free bacon from time to time. Minus the side of guilt.