3 news stories to protect your heart....

Today's Post:  Friday, 3-8-2013

These 3 news stories have important information on protecting your heart.

1.  Medical News Today had a story that was really about:

How oxidized cholesterol & trans fats cause heart disease

They called it:

The Dietary Causes Of Heart Disease 

(I’ll quote his key points and add my comments after that. 

He does a good job of showing what are some of the things you must turn off, stop doing, and stay away from to stop giving yourself heart disease.

This set of things is MUCH more protective than taking drugs after the fact.

And, I’ll add some important ways to add to your protection based on his insight.)

Main Category: Cholesterol

Also Included In: Heart Disease

Article Date: 01 Mar 2013 - 0:00 PST

A 98-year-old researcher argues that, contrary to decades of clinical assumptions and advice to patients, dietary cholesterol is good for your heart - unless that cholesterol is unnaturally oxidized (by frying foods in reused oil, eating lots of trans-fats, or smoking).

The researcher, Fred Kummerow, an emeritus professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois, has spent more than six decades studying the dietary factors that contribute to heart disease. In a new paper in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Disease, he reviews the research on lipid metabolism and heart disease with a focus on the consumption of oxidized cholesterol - in his view a primary contributor to heart disease.

"Oxidized lipids contribute to heart disease both by increasing deposition of calcium on the arterial wall, a major hallmark of atherosclerosis, and by interrupting blood flow, a major contributor to heart attack and sudden death," Kummerow wrote in the review.

Over his 60-plus-year career, Kummerow has painstakingly collected and analyzed the findings that together reveal the underlying mechanisms linking oxidized cholesterol (and trans fats) to heart disease.

Many of Kummerow's insights come from his relentless focus on the physical and biochemical changes that occur in the arteries of people with heart disease. For example, he has worked with surgeons to retrieve and examine the arteries of people suffering from heart disease, and has compared his findings with those obtained in animal experiments.

He and his colleagues first reported in 2001 that the arteries of people who had had bypass operations contained elevated levels of sphingomyelin (SFING-oh-my-uh-lin), one of several phospholipids (phosphate-containing lipids) that make up the membranes of all cells. The bypass patients also had significantly more oxidized cholesterols (oxysterols) in their plasma and tissues than people who had not been diagnosed with heart disease.

Human cells incubated with the blood plasma of the cardiac patients also picked up significantly more calcium from the culture medium than cells incubated in the plasma of healthy patients. When the researchers added oxysterols to the healthy plasma, the proportion of sphingomyelin in the cells increased, as did the uptake of calcium.

Earlier research, including studies conducted by medical pioneer Michael DeBakey, noted that the most problematic plaques in patients with heart disease occurred at the branch-points of the arteries of the heart. Kummerow followed up on these reports by looking at the phospholipid content of the arterial walls in pigs and humans. He found (and reported in 1994) that the branch points of the arteries in humans and in swine also had significantly more sphingomyelin than other regions of the same arteries.

For Kummerow, the increase in sphingomyelin was a prime suspect in the blocked and calcified arteries of the cardiac patients. He had already found that the arteries of the newborn human placenta contained only about 10 percent sphingomyelin and 50 percent phosphatidylcholine (FOSS-fuh-tih-dul-COH-lean), another important phospholipid component of cell membranes.

"But when we looked at the arteries of people who had had bypass operations, we found up to 40 percent sphingomyelin and about 27 percent phosphatidylcholine," Kummerow said. "It took us many more years to discover that when you added large amounts of oxysterols to the cells, then the phosphatidylcholine changed to sphingomyelin."

Further evidence supported sphingomyelin's starring role in atherosclerosis. When Kummerow and his colleagues compared the blocked and unblocked arteries of patients needing second bypass operations, they found that the arteries with blockages contained twice as much sphingomyelin as the unblocked arteries. The calcium content of the blocked arteries (6,345 parts per million) was also much higher than that of the unblocked arteries (182 ppm).

Other studies had demonstrated a link between increases in sphingomyelin and the deposit of calcium in the coronary arteries. The mechanism by which this occurred was unclear, however. Kummerow's team searched the literature and found a 1967 study that showed that in the presence of certain salts (in the blood, for example), lipids like sphingomyelin develop a negative charge. This explains the attraction of the positively charged calcium to the arterial wall when high amounts of sphingomyelin are present, Kummerow said.

"So there was a negative charge on the wall of this artery, and it attracted calcium from the blood until it calcified the whole artery," he said.

Oxidized fats contribute to heart disease (and sudden death from heart attacks) in an additional way, Kummerow said. He and his collaborators found that when the low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the so-called "bad cholesterol") is oxidized, it increases the synthesis of a blood-clotting agent, called thromboxane, in the platelets.

If someone eats a diet rich in oxysterols and trans fats and also smokes, he or she is endangering the heart in three distinct ways, Kummerow said. The oxysterols enhance calcification of the arteries and promote the synthesis of a clotting agent.

And the trans fats and cigarette smoke interfere with the production of a compound, prostacyclin, which normally keeps the blood fluid.

"And that causes 600,000 deaths in this country each year," Kummerow said.”

(My comments:

After reading this it’s clear that just from his research, that no one in their right mind who is at all knowledgeable would ever ingest trans fats or ANY of the hydrogenated oils they are contained in NOR would they ever allow themselves to be exposed to tobacco smoke!

(AND, both of these cause heart disease in other ways!  Tobacco smoke and ingesting hydrogenated oils are heart attack starters!  Tobacco smoke adds a bit to the plaque in your blood vessels with every exposure. 

Some smokers escape cancer; but NONE, even light or new smokers, escape the build up of heart disease! 

Can you just eat less hydrogenated oils and be safe?  NO!  Your body can only get rid of half what you ingest over many days of this stuff.  That means that anyone who has just a little bit a few times a week will build up enough in their bodies to cause heart disease!)

It’s abundantly clear that eating foods and taking supplements that prevent oxidation from the anti-oxidants they contain will help prevent this process of oxidation.

Oxysterols are oxidized derivatives of cholesterol.  So the more antioxidants you have to prevent them from oxidation, the less of them you will have.

Taking beta carotene, taking a safe amount of retinol the animal based vitamin A, and eating many kinds of vegetables high in carotenes all increase your level of antioxidants.

So does taking 500 mg to over 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C and eating many kinds of vegetables and whole fruits from organic sources several times a day for vegetables and several times a week for fruit.  Even better, organic blueberries have even more antioxidants than the vitamin C in them.  And, so do many kinds of vegetables!

So also does taking 200 iu a day of natural vitamin E since the synthetic is harmful in high, regular doses and eating foods such as extra virgin olive oil and avocados and raw unsalted nuts such as walnuts, pecans, and almonds since they are high in the entire vitamin E complex.

So too does taking 200 mcg a day of selenium and occasionally eating Brazil nuts which have 100 mcg of more bioavailable selenium.  Note that it is important to not go much over 350 mcg a day since more begins to be toxic.

Alpha lipoic acid and the supplement n-acetyl cysteine release a natural antioxidant, glutathione in your body which is extremely potent.  So taking those every day can also help.

AND, spices and coffee and tea and green tea have massive amounts of antioxidants.

There is also some evidence that cooking for long periods or anything but very short periods  with high heat tends to oxidize the cholesterol found in animal foods and fats.  The implications of this are significant.  Boiling or slow cooking food it’s then clear are MUCH safer than grilling or frying using a high heat.  Sautéing at low temperature is also safer.

There is direct evidence of this with dairy fat.  Melting a small amount of butter over hot food can add a lot of wonderful flavor and is actually reasonably safe.  Frying foods in butter using high heat does indeed tend to cause heart disease. The same things are true for full fat cheese.

Lastly this article does NOT mention that the inflammation you want to avoid is also caused by ingesting oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy and safflower and canola AND any fats from animals fed corn or soy.  The two cures for this are to trim or drain almost all the fat from animals fed grains or only eat fats from animals fed only grass or their natural foods such as wild caught salmon. Taking omega 3 supplements that get them from fish or algae and NOT the harmful synthetic version or eating fish or seafood high in omega 3 oils also helps.

Is there a safe oil you can use instead? Yes indeed there is. It’s extra virgin olive oil. 

The last of the 3 news stories is that people who eat olive oil often even, if they are already a bit ill from heart disease, have less strokes and heart attacks!

Similarly taking curcumin or turmeric and eating ginger or the spice made from it also directly lower inflammation.

Does this mean there is a lifestyle that CAUSES heart disease and one that virtually always prevents it?

THAT is exactly what this research and the info I’ve just added DO show!

Decide to pick the protective one if you’d like to avoid heart attacks and strokes.

Is this more important to do and more protective than taking statin drugs?

For most people, yes it is and it isn’t even close.  Most people have the heredity such that out of every 100 people who take statins only one heart attack is prevented.

Switching from a lifestyle that causes heart disease to the one that prevents it if you do it early enough, can drop your heart attack risk from well over 50 % or far more to something like 10% or less.

What about the people in the genetic group who statins do offer some protection? 

The lifestyle switch is still more important and far more protective. 

And as the second news story shows, statins have a side effect that should prevent all but the very sickest of them to use statins.

Here it is:

2.  Study: Statins Damage Muscle   from article by:  David Brownstein, M.D.

Statin drugs are the most commonly prescribed medication for elevated cholesterol levels. Researchers recently assessed the effect of statins on the inflammatory process induced by injury to the muscles, and published their findings in the December 2012 issue of the journal Muscle and Nerve.

The researchers divided rats into four groups: a control group, a statin-treated group, a group treated with statins and subjected to muscle injury, and a group subjected to injury only.

The results showed that the animals treated with statins exhibited significantly greater structural muscle damage compared to the control group and the injured group not given statins.

This is far from the only story on this effect.

Effective strength training or well done burst style interval or variable cardio doing some of each every week is one of the most heart and health protective things you can do besides this lifestyle switch.

In people, it has also been shown that people who exercise in this way and take statins particularly the stronger ones or in higher doses almost always get permanent muscle damage and some die.

Yes you did read that correctly. They exercised to protect their heart and took statins for the same reason and the statins caused them damage!

That makes statins a very undesirable drug for anyone to take.  They are usually not needed, often ineffective, and often NOT safe to take.

The only exception is that this effect research found likely does come from statins depleting CoQ10 and ubiquinol in the body. So for people with existing heart disease and test in the group that statins do help and are bed-ridden or not able to exercise and have sky high LDL cholesterol AND take 200 mg a day of ubiquinol, then and likely only then are statins desirable.

Meanwhile millions of people who don’t fit this protocol are taking statins.  Oops!

If you are in that group, this research suggests that you will be far safer and more protected if you immediately begin taking 200 mg a day of ubiquinol and make the lifestyle switch above and get the $150 genetic test to see if you are even being protected enough to justify the risks.

3.  What if you already have significant heart disease and want protection from getting a stroke or heart attack?

It was already known that people who eat the Mediterranean diet and use almost only olive oil have fewer heart attacks.

But would switching to almost only olive and eating some walnuts cause people who already had significant heart disease and want protection from getting a stroke or heart attack to have less?

That is a different question.  Based on what is earlier in this post it certainly looks like that’s the way to bet!  But a direct test to confirm that would be nice. 

We now know the answer to the question!  The answer is definitely YES.

Recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a group of over 10,000 such people who had not been using almost only olive oil and eating some walnuts did so over time when asked to do so, had about 30% less heart attacks and strokes!