Having a “normal” cholesterol level in a society where it is normal to die of a heart attack is not necessarily a good thing.
“Consistent evidence” from various sources “establishes beyond doubt” that so-called bad LDL cholesterol causes atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease—strokes and heart attacks, our leading cause of death. This database includes hundreds of studies involving millions of people. “Cholesterol it is the cause of atherosclerosis’, hardening of the arteries and ‘the message is loud and clear’. “It’s the cholesterol, idiot!” famous its publisher American Journal of CardiologyWilliam Clifford Roberts, whose bio it is more than 100 pages, having published approximately 1,700 articles in peer-reviewed medical literature. Yes, there hectare at least ten traditional risk factors for atherosclerosis, as shown below and at 1:11 in my video How low should you go for ideal LDL cholesterol?but, like Dr. Roberts famous, only one is required for disease progression: elevated cholesterol.
Your doctor may have just told you that your cholesterol is normal, so you feel relieved. Thank goodness! But having a “normal” cholesterol level in a society where it’s normal to have a fatal heart attack isn’t necessarily a good thing. With heart disease the number one killer of men and women, we certainly don’t want to have normal cholesterol levels. We want to have optimal levels — and not optimal by current laboratory standards, but optimal for human health.
Normal LDL cholesterol levels are which are related with the hidden accumulation of atheromatous plaques in our arteries, even in those that have so-called “optimal risk factors according to current standards”: blood pressure below 120/80, normal blood sugars, and total cholesterol below 200 mg/dL. If you went to your doctor with numbers like that, you’d probably get a gold star and a lollipop. However, if your doctor used ultrasound and CT scans to really peek inside your body, plaques would be detected in about 38% of people with those kinds of “optimal” numbers.
Maybe you should determine an LDL cholesterol level as optimal only when it no longer causes disease. What an idea! When more than a thousand men and women in their 40s were scannedhaving an LDL level below 130 mg/dL left them with atherosclerosis throughout their body, and this is a cholesterol level at which most lab tests would consider normal.
In fact, no atherosclerotic plaques were found with LDL levels below about 50 or 60, which happen to be most people’s levels had “before the introduction of the western way of life”. Indeed, before we started eating a typical American diet, “the majority of the world’s adult population had an LDL of about 50 mg per deciliter (mg/dL)”—so that’s the real normal. “The current average prices…should not be is considered as “normal”. We don’t want to have a normal cholesterol based on a sick society, we want a cholesterol it is normal for the human species, which may be reduced by about 30 to 70 mg/dL or 0.8 to 1.8 mmol/L.
“Although an LDL level of 50 to 70 mg/dl it seems extremely low by modern American standards, it is exactly the normal range for people living the lifestyle and eating the diet for which we are genetically adapted.” For millions of years, “through the evolution of human ancestors”, we have is consumed a diet that focuses on whole plant foods. No wonder we have a deadly epidemic of atherosclerosis, given that the level of LDL we were ‘genetically designed’ for is less than half of what is now considered ‘normal’.
In medicine, “there it is an inappropriate tendency to accept small changes in reversible risk factors,” but “the goal it is not to reduce the risk but to prevent atherosclerotic plaques!’ So, how low should you go? go? “In light of the latest evidence from trials investigating the benefits and risks of deeply lowering LDLc, the answer to the question ‘How low do you go?’ is, arguably, a simple ‘As low as you can go!'” “”Down” May indeed it is better’, but if you are going to do it with medication, then you have to balance that with the risk of the side effects of the medication.
Why not just medicine everyone on statins, putting them in the water supply, for example? While it would be great if everyone’s cholesterol was lower, there are the countervailing risks of the drugs. So doctors purpose use statin drugs at the highest possible dose, achieving the greatest possible reduction in LDL cholesterol without the increased risk of muscle damage that the drugs can cause. But when you are using lifestyle changes to lower your cholesterol, all you get are the benefits.
Can we lower our LDL low enough through diet alone? Please some of the country’s top cholesterol experts are gunning for, “and chances are good that many will say 70 or so.” So, yes, we should try avoid saturated fat and trans fat found in junk food and meat, and dietary cholesterol found primarily in eggs, but “it is unlikely that someone will achieve an LDL cholesterol level of 70 mg/dL on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet alone.” Really; Many doctors have this wrong impression. An LDL of 70 is not it is only possible with a fairly healthy diet, but it can be normal. Those who follow strictly plant-based diets can average an LDL as low as you can see here and at 5:28 in my video.
No wonder plant-based diets hectare the only dietary patterns ever shown to reverse coronary artery disease in the majority of patients. And their side effects? You will feel better too! Several randomized clinical trials have shown that most plant-based dietary patterns significantly improve psychological well-being and quality of life, with improvements in depression, anxiety, emotional well-being, physical well-being, and general health.
For more on cholesterol, see the related posts below.
