HDL Cholesterol – 2HealthyHabits

Saturated Fat Part Two: Gauging Your Heart Disease Risk

You are at risk of a heart disease if you have 3 out of the following 5 indications of metabolic syndrome:

A fasting insulin level above 3

A triglyceride to HDL ratio above 2

Low HDL

A waist circumference indicating overweight or obesity

High blood pressure

Another major risk factor for heart disease that receives virtually no attention is high iron levels. In menstruating women, this is not an issue since they lose blood on a monthly basis. This is actually part of why premenopausal women have a decreased risk of heart disease.

In men, iron levels can rise to dangerously high levels. In my experience, the majority of adult males and postmenopausal women have elevated levels that put their health at risk. Checking your iron levels is easy and can be done with a simple blood test called a serum ferritin test. If your levels are high, all you have to do is donate blood a few times a year.

The Connection Between Saturated Fats and Diabetes

Malhotra cites a 2014 Lancet study looking at the association between dietary saturated fat, plasma saturated fat and type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, while dietary saturated fats found in dairy products were strongly inversely associated with the development of type 2 diabetes (meaning it was protective), endogenously-synthesized plasma-saturated fat was strongly associated with an increased risk.

Endogenously-synthesized plasma-saturated fats are fatty acids produced by your liver in response to net carbohydrates, sugar and alcohol.These findings suggest eating full-fat dairy products may protect you against type 2 diabetes,whereas consuming too many net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) will increase your risk of type 2 diabetes –in part by raising the saturated fat levels in your bloodstream.

Healthy Fat Tips

Here are a few tips to help ensure you’re eating the right fats for your health:

Use organic butter made from raw grass-fed milk instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads.
Use coconut oil for cooking. It is primarily a saturated fat and more resistant to heat damage than other cooking oils. It will also help improve your ability to burn fat and serve as a great source of energy to help you make the transition to burning fat for fuel.
Sardines and anchovies are an excellent source of beneficial omega-3 fats and are also very low in toxins that are present in most other fish.
To round out your healthy fat intake, be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.

Why Statins Are a Bad Idea for Most People

In addition to the recommendation to follow a low-fat diet, many doctors are still avid prescribers of statins, which help lower your cholesterol.

“This is a drug that was marketed over the last three decades as being a wonder drug. We’re only now realizing that the benefits of statins have been grossly exaggerated and the side effects underplayed. One of the reasons for that is that most if not all of the studies that drove the guidelines were industry-sponsored studies.

One of the things we have neglected in medicine is this issue around absolute risk and relative risk. The reality is if you look at the published data … if you have heart disease and you’ve had a heart attack, then taking a statin every day for five years, there’s a 1 in 83 chance that [statin] will save your life.

That means in 82 of 83 cases, it’s not going to save your life.

People with low risk should know that if they haven’t had a heart attack, according to the published literature, they’re going to live one day longer from taking statins.”

Statins Are Associated With Serious Side Effects

Then there’s the issue of side effects. According to Malhotra, between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 patients suffer unacceptable side effects (that interfere with or diminish the quality of your life). Muscle pain is the most significant side effect reported followed by fatigue (mostly in women) because statins are essentially a metabolic blocker and mitochondrial poison.

They inhibit an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. This is how they lower cholesterol. But that same enzyme is also responsible for a number of other things like making coenzyme Q10, which is why muscle pain and fatigue are so common. This is in fact a sign that your CoQ10 is being depleted, and you don’t have enough cellular energy.

Statins also block the formation of ketones, which are an essential part of mitochondrial nutrition and overall health. If you can’t make ketones, you impair the metabolism in your entire body, including your heart, thereby raising your risk for heart problems and a variety of other diseases. It’s also recently been established that within a few years of taking statins, the drug causes type 2 diabetes in one out of 100 patients.

That too can be a significant tradeoff that needs to be taken into account, as diabetes is a risk factor for heart disease and other chronic diseases. Dr. Michel De Lorgeril, a well-respected French cardiologist at Grenoble University recently reopened the debate about statins after publishing a review in which he questions whether statins actually have any benefit at all.

“He pointed out several discrepancies in the original trials … statistical manipulation, conflict of interest … ” Malhotra says. ”He’s actually suggested that maybe nobody benefits from statins; even people on statins for prevention.

He says that unless we get access to the raw data, independent analysis, the actual claims about the benefits of statins are not evidence-based.”

In case you missed it, please read

Saturated Fat Part One: Great Britain’s Most Outspoken Cardiologist Sets the Record Straight

Is saturated fat dangerous to your health?

Hospitals and Medical Personnel Are Far From Paragons of Health

For Past 60 Years, the Wrong Fats Have Been Vilified

What Are the Real Risk Factors for Heart Disease?

Here is the link https://2healthyhabits.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/saturated-fats-part-one-great-britains-most-outspoken-cardiologist-sets-the-record-straight/

Part One and Two have been condensed from Dr. Mercola’s post: Great Britain’s Most Outspoken Cardiologist Sets the Record Straight on Saturated Fats

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/05/saturated-fat-heart-disease-risk.aspx

Please see the original for the Footnotes and Citations for the scientific studies.

May you Live Long Healthy.

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Lydia Polstra

Email: lpolstra@sympatico.ca

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Saturated Fats Part One: Great Britain’s Most Outspoken Cardiologist Sets the Record Straight.

Saturated fat and cholesterol have little to do with the development of heart disease. Data shows two-thirds of people admitted to hospitals with acute myocardial infarction have completely normal cholesterol levels.
Fats that contribute to heart disease are primarily trans fats and highly refined and/or heated polyunsaturated vegetable oils (PUFAs), which are high in damaged omega-6.
For optimal health, seek to get 75 to 85 percent of your total calories as healthy fat, primarily monosaturated and saturated. Limit PUFAs to 10 percent and omega-6 fats to 5 percent.

Is saturated fat dangerous to your health? Dr. Aseem Malhotra an interventional cardiologist consultant in London, U.K. seriously challenges the conventional view on saturated fats, and reviews how recent studies have failed to find any significant association between saturated fat and cardiovascular risk.

Malhotra reports that two-thirds of people admitted to hospitals with acute myocardial infarction have completely normal cholesterol levels.

“As an interventional cardiologist, we can do life-saving procedures with people who have heart attacks through heart surgery. What we can do in medicine is really quite limited at the treatment end and actually the whole ‘prevention is better than cure’ phrase is very true.”

Hospitals and Medical Personnel Are Far From Paragons of Health

Malhotra’s epiphany that something was wrong with the system came rather early. While working as a resident in cardiology, he performed an emergency stenting procedure on a man in his 50s who’d recently suffered a heart attack.

“Just when I was telling about healthy diet, how important that was, he was actually served burger and fries by the hospital. He said to me, ‘Doctor, how do you expect me to change my lifestyle when you’re serving me the same crap that brought me in here in the first place?’”

Looking around, he realized that a lot of healthcare professionals are overweight or obese, and hospitals serve sick patients junk food.

“The hospital environment should be one that promotes good health, not exacerbates bad health,” he says.

Diet and lifestyle changes are particularly important in light of the fact that medical errors and properly prescribed medications are the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Overmedication is a particularly serious problem among the elderly, who tend to suffer more side effects.

“Part of that is because there are very powerful vested interests that push drugs,” Malhotra says. “They even coax academic institutions and guideline bodies. People aren’t getting all the information to make decisions, whether or not they should take medications…

For Past 60 Years, the Wrong Fats Have Been Vilified

For the past 60 years, the conventional wisdom has dictated that saturated fat is dangerous and should be avoided. This flawed notion was originally promoted by Dr. Ancel Keys, whose Seven Countries Study laid the groundwork for the myth that saturated fat caused heart disease.

It’s true that heart disease rates began spiking in the beginning of the 20th century, and for the last 50 years, heart disease has been progressively increasing. It really wasn’t an issue prior to the 20th century. Saturated fat wasn’t the problem. It was all the other harmful fats people were eating.

In the 20th century, the average person probably had less than 1 pound a year of refined, processed omega-6 vegetable oils. By the 1950s, probably about 50 pounds a year, and by year 2000, it increased at about 75 pounds a year. It seems “fat” in itself isn’t the issue; it’s the type of fat that’s crucial.

This massive amount of highly refined polyunsaturated fat is far in excess of what we were designed to eat for optimal health.

In the United States, between 1961 and 2011, 90 percent of the calorie intake has been carbohydrates and refined industrial vegetable oils.

The heart disease epidemic peaked between 1960 and 1970. When we look at our data, it’s quite clear that the so-called fats responsible for that are trans fats and very likely polyunsaturated vegetable oils high in omega-6 fatty acids. We know now that they oxidize LDL and are pro-inflammatory.

What Are the Real Risk Factors for Heart Disease?

By failing to differentiate between trans fats and saturated fats, massive confusion has arisen. There’s also confusion about the relationship between saturated fat and cholesterol. Adding to the complexity, there are also different types of saturated fats, which may have different biological effects.

Many saturated fats will raise LDL, the so-called “bad” cholesterol. But LDLs come in various sizes. Large type A particles arelessatherogenic (form fatty plaques in the arteries) and are influenced by saturated fat. Saturated fat also increases HDL, the “good” cholesterol.

“What’s interesting is the saturated fat, even though it may raise LDL, your lipid profile may actually improve [when you eat more saturated fat], especially when you cut the carbs. On top of that, LDL has been grossly exaggerated as a risk factor for heart disease, with the exception of people who have a genetic abnormality (familial hypercholesterolemia),” Malhotra says.

So what is the major issue when you look at heart disease and heart attacks? Insulin resistance. The reason it’s being neglected is partly this flawed science on cholesterol. But, also because there’s never been any effective drugs that target insulin resistance.

Therefore, because [there isn’t a] big market around something to sell, there aren’t many people that know about it. As you and I know, if you target insulin resistance through the right kind of diet and lifestyle changes, stress reduction, right kind of exercise, that’s going to have the biggest impacts on your health.”

Check back next week for –

Saturated Fat Part Two: Gauging Your Heart Disease Risk:

Gauging Your Heart Disease Risk
The Connection Between Saturated Fats and Diabetes
Healthy Fat Tips
Why Statins Are a Bad Idea for Most People
Statins Are Associated With Serious Side Effects

Today’s Post has been condensed from: Great Britain’s Most Outspoken Cardiologist Sets the Record Straight on Saturated Fats