Effective nondrug ways to lower LDL cholesterol....

Today's Post: Monday, 8-8-2011

If for any reason, the inner surfaces of your blood vessels are slightly injured, your body then patches the damage. But if small particle LDL or oxidized LDL or large particle LDL with sticky excess sugar or high triglycerides are present, the patches get so badly overdone that your blood vessels begin to be stiff and narrow from the plaque build up this causes.

This causes high blood pressure and reduced circulation to the brain and other key parts of you. And, it dramatically increases the risks you will have a heart attack or stroke.

1. One way to prevent this is to avoid the things that make it so much worse such as not exercising most days of every week, eating too much sugar, eating refined grains, and ingesting any high fructose corn syrup.

If you do the opposite instead, all the things we spoke of that make it worse tend NOT to be in your blood to worsen this damage.

Not exercising most days of every week, eating too much sugar, eating refined grains, and ingesting any high fructose corn syrup each tend to lower your HDL and increase your triglycerides. That makes the LDL you do have into the small particle LDL that causes heart disease three ways.

Small particle LDL is the tiny size that literally is smaller than the healthy surface of your blood vessels molecules. So it tends to stick in there like gunk gets stuck in between your teeth when you eat. Unfortunately that causes damage itself and inflammation.

Then too any time there is damage to the inside of your blood vessels your body sends in extra LDL to patch the hurt. When your LDL is the tiny size, this tends to make things worse instead.

Third, that set of bad health habits tends to cause excess blood sugar levels and high triglyceride levels. And excessive blood sugar tends to make ALL your LDL, even the normally harmless larger particle kind, into super sticky glue like particles that themselves cause damage in your blood vessel walls and even tends to destroy your capillaries by plugging them up too!

2. One way to make all these problems better as far as causing blood vessel and heart disease is to simply remove any extra LDL. If there is less of the small particle kind that is quite protective. And, if there is less of the large particle kind to have glue-like excess sugar stuck on to the particles, the excess sugar creates less damage.

That’s why if your LDL cholesterol is over 160, doctors know that’s a danger signal. And, it’s why if your LDL cholesterol about 100 or well under 100 they are much less worried.

(Statin drugs are a poor solution for most people to lower LDL cholesterol.

Only about a seventh of the population have the genetic pattern for which they do the most good first of all. Everyone else they found gets better results from niacin.

And, statins also have so many serious side effects, even for the seventh of the people where they are effective, they should only be used after trying other methods and/or for people who are in bad and immediate trouble such as those recovering from a first heart attack.

Statin side effects include loss of energy, muscle pains, muscle damage, fatal muscle damage, insomnia, nerve pains, nerve damage, memory loss, cataracts, and heart failure!)

Niacin slightly lowers LDL and also increases HDL and lowers triglycerides. So does regular exercise. This means that you have less of the small particle LDL that is most dangerous too. Neither niacin nor exercise are not risk free. But they are far safer and more effective than statins when used well and carefully.

But what about just having less of all kinds of LDL?

You can do that 3 ways. (That too can help you not need statins for the job.)

a) You can eat foods high in soluble fiber. Oatmeal, oat bran, beans and lentils, and apples and applesauce with no sugar added are the best sources.

b) You can take sterol supplements.

(Sterols, like soluble fiber, are in many foods.

These first came out added to margarines. But since margarines are not that good for your heart -- usually having either partially hydrogenated oils or corn oil in them -- taking the supplements only is much more protective.)

Beta sitosterol and the sterols found with it also help prevent prostate enlargement. So that’s the kind I take. Natrol makes the inexpensive beta sitosterol supplement I now take. I take 3 a day.

c) But what if even inexpensive supplements are too expensive or you don’t like taking anything whether supplements or drugs every day?

What if the FDA succeeds in removing sterol supplements from the market or makes them cost over 10 times as much as they are now threatening to do?

For sterol supplements at least, there is good news. Many foods are high in sterols. And virtually all of those foods have other health benefits!

Best of all, several of these foods have soluble fiber too!

Let’s start with those.

Apples, oat bran, beans and lentils and dried peas, all are high in both sterols and soluble fiber.

Nuts and seeds for those not allergic to them are high in sterols.

(Since hummus is a combination of ground up chickpeas which are high in both sterols and soluble fiber plus ground up sesame seeds which are high in sterols, hummus is a great food for heart health. And if you eat the kind of hummus that also has garlic and extra virgin olive oil, that does your heart even more good!)

Eating nuts also boosts your HDL cholesterol. Even better, they are high in magnesium which has heart benefits. Best of all, they taste good enough to eat instead of sugary snacks that tend to be bad for your heart.

The other foods high in sterols often make superfoods lists because they protect your health in so many other ways.

These include: Wheat germ, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, avocados, guacamole, tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, tomatoes, and blueberries!

This means that you can literally eat your way to good heart health by removing the foods that harm it and eating these foods instead.