Cholesterol

Dietary cholesterol has very little affect on blood cholesterol. Don't worry about it.

cmriverside wrote: »

There was actually a recent comment thread on this. Honestly, I wouldn't worry much about dietary cholesterol. I would be much more concerned about saturated fat. Study after study after study shows that saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease.

Well...may be a dietary cause.

Obesity and inactivity are huge factors, maybe more so than sat fat. Not sure.

Yeah, there is no 1 study that shows saturated fat causes heart disease and there never will be, too expensive but people seem to believe there is, it's all observational, like, look, those people are really sick and they eat a lot of saturated fat. Actually people are eating a lot less over the last 40 years as well as a 30% reduction in beef consumption.

In my opinion, it's not really obesity that is a main driver of heart disease, it's ultra processed food intake at the high levels that we see in the American diet that drives obesity and diabetes for example which result in heart disease and of course being sedentary doesn't help. It's the same problem again, blaming the symptom which is obesity instead of the cause, which is overeating and creating the inflammatory environment where heart disease and just about every other disease begins or is encouraged. imo Cheers

My pleasure.

neanderthin wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

There was actually a recent comment thread on this. Honestly, I wouldn't worry much about dietary cholesterol. I would be much more concerned about saturated fat. Study after study after study shows that saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease.

Well...may be a dietary cause.

Obesity and inactivity are huge factors, maybe more so than sat fat. Not sure.

Yeah, there is no 1 study that shows saturated fat causes heart disease and there never will be, too expensive but people seem to believe there is, it's all observational, like, look, those people are really sick and they eat a lot of saturated fat. Actually people are eating a lot less over the last 40 years as well as a 30% reduction in beef consumption.

In my opinion, it's not really obesity that is a main driver of heart disease, it's ultra processed food intake at the high levels that we see in the American diet that drives obesity and diabetes for example which result in heart disease and of course being sedentary doesn't help. It's the same problem again, blaming the symptom which is obesity instead of the cause, which is overeating and creating the inflammatory environment where heart disease and just about every other disease begins or is encouraged. imo Cheers

No study? Are you sure? That's a pretty big, not to mention untrue, claim. It's true that fat in general isn't all bad. Poly and mono unsaturated fats are beneficial. But saturated fat is a problem. And yes, they've shown it in studies. Very clearly. Know how they give chimps clogged arteries to prepare for their studies? Feed them pure saturated fat. In fact, it takes about 14% of their calories coming from saturated fat to do it. You won't be convinced by that, but don't straight up lie and say there are no studies. Come on.

neanderthin wrote: »

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

There was actually a recent comment thread on this. Honestly, I wouldn't worry much about dietary cholesterol. I would be much more concerned about saturated fat. Study after study after study shows that saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease.

Well...may be a dietary cause.

Obesity and inactivity are huge factors, maybe more so than sat fat. Not sure.

Yeah, there is no 1 study that shows saturated fat causes heart disease and there never will be, too expensive but people seem to believe there is, it's all observational, like, look, those people are really sick and they eat a lot of saturated fat. Actually people are eating a lot less over the last 40 years as well as a 30% reduction in beef consumption.

In my opinion, it's not really obesity that is a main driver of heart disease, it's ultra processed food intake at the high levels that we see in the American diet that drives obesity and diabetes for example which result in heart disease and of course being sedentary doesn't help. It's the same problem again, blaming the symptom which is obesity instead of the cause, which is overeating and creating the inflammatory environment where heart disease and just about every other disease begins or is encouraged. imo Cheers

No study? Are you sure? That's a pretty big, not to mention untrue, claim. It's true that fat in general isn't all bad. Poly and mono unsaturated fats are beneficial. But saturated fat is a problem. And yes, they've shown it in studies. Very clearly. Know how they give chimps clogged arteries to prepare for their studies? Feed them pure saturated fat. In fact, it takes about 14% of their calories coming from saturated fat to do it. You won't be convinced by that, but don't straight up lie and say there are no studies. Come on.

I see that made your brain fall out and reacted by actually called me a liar. You say there's lots of studies, maybe just link 1 that shows saturated fat is the cause of heart disease. Cheers

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba3683

The first study is about TMAO in mice from a high fat diet on their microbiota and the conclusion was "whether this pathway plays a role in heart disease remains unclear".

Your second link is observational gleaned from (FFQ) food frequency questionnaires.

Well, I'm not surprised you find these convincing. Cheers

DFW_Tom wrote: »

From a study out of China last Fall, based on circulating saturated fatty acids as opposed to food questionnaires:

"Saturated fatty acid biomarkers and risk of cardiometabolic diseases: A meta-analysis of prospective studies"
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.963471/full

Our meta-analysis of existing prospective studies indicated that a higher concentration of total SFAs and even-chain SFAs was associated with an increasing risk of cardiometabolic diseases, which supported the current recommendations of reducing intake of saturated fat as part of healthy dietary patterns. In addition, our finding of protective effects of odd-chain SFAs has potentially important clinical implications for preventing cardiometabolic diseases. Further studies are apparently needed to confirm our findings on these SFAs in relation to cardiometabolic outcomes and to elucidate underlying mechanisms.

Thanks Tom. I'm familiar with this study. Prospective studies are basically longitudinal studies that follow and observe a cohort over a set period of time, gather data and then analyze it. Observational studies like this one can never prove causality only correlation, much like the previous person that provided their link. The problem I have is I don't like the way the question is phrased. Saturated fat is the cause of heart disease, really what does that even mean?

This is part of the conclusion from your link.

Essential to the interpretation of the results from these trials (and the reason for the divergent results in meta-analyses noted above) is the macronutrient composition of the comparator diet. Clinical trials that used polyunsaturated fat to replace saturated fat reduced the incidence of CVD.9,10 In contrast, trials that used mainly carbohydrates to replace saturated fat did not reduce CVD. However, the types of carbohydrate-containing foods were often unspecified and typically included sugar and other refined carbohydrates to maintain energy balance. Evidence from prospective observational studies indicates that carbohydrates from whole grains reduce CVD when they replace saturated fat.


Basically if your replacing saturated fat in the diet they conclude, don't use refined carbs and sugar because it won't reduce risk and can raise risk, but if we use whole grain it reduce risks. Therefore is it saturated fat that increases risk or is it the removal of refined carbs and sugar that reduces risk, that question was never asked in the "asbstract" but it could have and in that respect, where's the cohort that consumes a whole food diet which includes saturated fat, well it's right here. A diet where the focus is on whole grains and whole food in general that includes saturated fat is associated with less cardiovascular disease, simple answer to a simple question.

I don't have this belief that we can eat any food with abandon and not expect there might be consequences, and obviously the SAD diet is a good opportunity to understand that in real time, but the focus and witch hunt needs to stop with saturated fat and focus more on the real issues like ultra processed foods, which imo is a big driver of poor health and how we do that, I have no idea. Yummy food tastes yummy and yummy normally wins, it's a stacked deck. Cheers

DFW_Tom wrote: »

While I completely agree with your statement, "... focus more on the real issues like ultra processed foods, which imo is a big driver of poor health ...", I will still be staying away from things like palm oil - just in case.

That's cool, palm oil certainly has some baggage attached for sure. Personally I stay way from refined seed oils high in omega 6's. Cheers

sherrilynn1985 wrote: »

I have had consistently high bad cholesterol. Looking at my food entries, I was eating chorizo, coconut milk and cashew cheese. I cut these out and have added oats. We'll see. Several doctors have told me that eggs do not cause this.

Fixing the increased incident of heart disease that you may or may not experience in your life is not dictated by reducing coconut milk or cashew cheese, or consuming the eggs doctors have been telling you and are now giving the red seal of approval, do you think they have any clue why that might be the case, no, more than likely not, it's just what they've been told to say and yes they are like the rest of us, human.

A physique where your not overweight, a lifestyle that includes daily increased energy from some kind of exercise, a diet that is predominantly whole foods, and guess what you can consume coconut milk and cashew cheese and feel that your not going to have a heart attack any time soon. Basically don't sweat the small stuff like cholesterol numbers that might be too high if the other major factors like weight, diabetes, high blood pressure, and diet are not addressed because if these aren't looked after first and foremost the lack of chorizo isn't going to factor into it very much or at all. imo. cheers.

sherrilynn1985 wrote: »

My weight is normal, my blood pressure is low, I exercise. I eat whole foods because I have a ton of food allergies. I have a garden. My good cholesterol is normal, my sugar is normal. I fell in love with chorizo from natural grocers and had it almost every day😝 and also cashew cheese almost every day. Bingy for sure! So my bad cholesterol skyrocketed. Her question is about eggs not whether doctors know my situation (they do) and whether doctors know what they are talking about (mine does). Cheers right back atcha!

Perfectly said!

sherrilynn1985 wrote: »

My weight is normal, my blood pressure is low, I exercise. I eat whole foods because I have a ton of food allergies. I have a garden. My good cholesterol is normal, my sugar is normal. I fell in love with chorizo from natural grocers and had it almost every day😝 and also cashew cheese almost every day. Bingy for sure! So my bad cholesterol skyrocketed. Her question is about eggs not whether doctors know my situation (they do) and whether doctors know what they are talking about (mine does). Cheers right back atcha!

The term "bad cholesterol" is a made up phrase by journalists in main stream media and is not a scientific designation now or ever. That began way back 50 years ago when not much was known except, they believed that saturated fat and cholesterol caused heart disease so therefore LDL is bad and was coined the lipid hypothesis. They just forgot to tell the French and all the Scandinavian countries that because those Countries eat the most saturated fat and cholesterol and have the lowest incident of heart disease, while the countries that consume the least, which are mostly eastern Europe, have the highest.

LDL cholesterol is how the body delivers cholesterol to all of our cells and organs, and are crucial building blocks for all cell membranes, helps make bile which is key for food digestion, produces steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone, it's vital for the production of Vit, D basically if there was no LDL we would die, so there actually is a little more to the story.

The nuance is in what type of LDL, because there are different classes of LDL and some that are more atherogenic than others. How do we distinguish that, that's the real question. The quick and easy answer basically, is in the particle size of LDL, the smaller the LDL particle the more atherogenic it is, which is the actual "bad cholesterol".

Can we tell that from the basic blood panel we get at the Dr's office, no, and actually they don't even measure LDL. What is done is they take total Cholesterol and subtract the HDL and what's left is deemed LDL.

What indicated that an LDL particle might be of the smaller variety with some accuracy, well there is a way and that is determined by how much HDL we have and what our circulating triglycerides are. Basically if we have low HDL and high triglycerides then the LDL particles will generally be the small and more atherogenic phenotype. Our C-reactive protein (CRP) which is our inflammatory blood indicator letting us know how much chronic inflammation we have and that will always be elevated when particle size is again, that small phenotype as well as having low HDL and high triglycerides.

Most people that have multiple health issues related to heart disease like obesity, diabetes, fatty liver, high blood pressure actually have what would appear to be normal LDL, and a study done a few years ago indicated that (75%) of the patients admitted to hospital that were actually having a heart related event showed normal and low LDL, and only 2% had HDL in what would be considered the normal range, but had many health issues like obesity and diabetes.

Anyway, I'm glad your eating mostly whole foods and if you don't have many health issue, and like I said people that eat like you do, generally don't have as much risk. Curious did your dr. mention statins?

Information overload, but some people here might find it interesting.

https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

sherrilynn1985 wrote: »

My weight is normal, my blood pressure is low, I exercise. I eat whole foods because I have a ton of food allergies. I have a garden. My good cholesterol is normal, my sugar is normal. I fell in love with chorizo from natural grocers and had it almost every day😝 and also cashew cheese almost every day. Bingy for sure! So my bad cholesterol skyrocketed. Her question is about eggs not whether doctors know my situation (they do) and whether doctors know what they are talking about (mine does). Cheers right back atcha!

a study done a few years ago indicated that (75%) of the patients admitted to hospital that were actually having a heart related event showed normal and low LDL, and only 2% had HDL in what would be considered the normal range

https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391

FYI, this is an interesting paradox. When you have a heart attack, it dramatically drops your ldl levels immediately after the heart attack. So yes, patients who are admitted to a hospital with a heart attack would have lowered ldl levels. It does not mean that they had normal ldl levels prior to the heart attack. Just interesting to know.

Yeah, that's a popular opposing theory and mostly by persons involved with statins, but yet to see the studies, and not from lack of looking. If you have some evidence that I missed could you link it. thanks.

Well, I do agree that a whole food diet is probably the healthier way fwd, the rest of your statement, not so much. Cheers.

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

neanderthin wrote: »

Well, I do agree that a whole food diet is probably the healthier way fwd, the rest of your statement, not so much. Cheers.

https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(16)35525-8/fulltext#:~:text=In patients with acute myocardial infarctions (MIs), cholesterol,lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.

FWIW, here's a study demonstrating that all types of cholesterol dropped equally after myocardial infarctions.

These patients as well had cholesterol levels well within the normal and lower range upon admittance and wouldn't be considered high and confirms the point that people having heart attacks in real time had normal cholesterol levels. Their triglycerides went up, that's interesting. The fact that overall cholesterol levels dropped after 4 days of hospital care isn't unusual, but well after the fact, although the ratio's stayed the same. Good job finding that and Interesting study, thanks for the link. Cheers.