Cholesterol, Heart Disease, and What You Should Do

4 Comments

Coronary Heart Disease is our single most common cause of death and it is caused by something called atherosclerosis.  Atherosclerosis is a fancy term for “your vessels get more narrow due to plaques and that reduces the blood flow to whichever organ that vessel is going to.”  IF you have atherosclerosis of the coronary artery, then you have obstruction of blood flow to the heart…..hello, coronary heart disease: the number one killer.  Most people people are familiar with the most common form of coronary heart disease known as a HEART ATTACK!

Symptoms of the early stages:

  • During physical activity, people may experience chest pain that may go into the neck and left arm.  The pain goes away after rest in the early stages.
  • Fatigue during normal activities.  This is due to the lack of blood supply to the heart, so you feel fatigued doing normal activity.

Symptoms of heart attack:

  • Severe chest pain not connected to physical activity.
  • Fear, cold sweats, nausea

Given the fact that autopsies show that by the age of 60, 100% of people have some signs of atherosclerosis, it’s not surprising that people want to know what to do when the doc starts talking about this when they go in for their exam!

What causes atherosclerosis?

People have been led to believe that cholesterol and dietary fats are the root of all this nonsense. We’ve all had someone we know quit eating meat and eggs and opted for non-fat products in attempts to correct the cholesterol issues on their labwork. This is a myth you need to get comfortable rejecting, so keep an open mind here.  Atherosclerosis is an INFLAMMATORY condition! The plaques on the wall of arteries are not cholesterol stuck; it’s actually more like a damaged portion of the artery wall that is covered with a bunch of stuff, but the main component is actually tissue trying to repair that is mostly made from collagen.  The fat part of the plaque is mostly UNSATURATED FATS. This is complex, but the gist is:

  • Something in the bloodstream attacks the artery tissue
  • Immune cells come to the rescue to destroy whatever is attacking the artery tissue
  • Those immune cells call for more help by sending out the bat signal known as inflammation
  • As the body is trying to repair the damage, it grows more collagen and creates a cap on top of the plaque
  • When the inflammation stops, it becomes hard and calcium may take up shop there.  This is like a scar. THIS WOULD BE NORMAL AND WE ALL HAVE SOME SCARS IN OUR ARTERIES.
  • In atherosclerosis, the inflammation doesn’t stop and it forms something similar to puss in a wound.
  • Inflammation is driving the production of enzymes that break down collagen and if the cap over the area gets weak? Boom. Rupture.
  • Within second, the blood tries to thicken to stop bleeding, a clot forms, and the artery is blocked or a portion of it can break off and float downstream and stuck in another location.  This is what we all really fear.

Why avoiding cholesterol isn’t helpful:

The body uses fats and cholesterol as the building blocks for creating new cells and tissues in any healing process.  This is because a huge part of a cell is the membrane and it acts sort of like your skin.  Without it, what would hold in your insides?!  Those membranes are made out of fat and cholesterol and if you want to get geeky, many cells in the body have 50% of the membrane made from cholesterol. THE REASON WE SEE CHOLESTEROL IN AREAS OF PLAQUING IS BECAUSE THAT IS YOUR BODY’S ATTEMPT TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE TO THAT TISSUE!  It’s like saying umbrellas must cause it to rain, because every time it rains, I see all these people holding umbrellas.  Cholesterol is the umbrella.  It’s there BECAUSE OF THE TISSUE DAMAGE, not causing it.

Ok, so let’s cut to the chase.  You understand what I’m saying, so now you want to know what causes that arterial damage that starts this whole thing in the first place.  Without further adieu, let’s look at a list…

  • Chemicals: chemicals in your beauty products, medications, home cleaning products, cigarettes, pesticides, water, processed food.  I bet you had no idea that even what you slather on your skin goes straight to the bloodstream and could be contributing to heart problems!  Stay woke. (If you don’t know what that means, it’s ok, just keep reading)
  • Infections: if you have issues with the barriers between the outside world and inside of your body like gum disease, leaky gut, sinus infections, etc, then you basically have a highway for pathogens to get into your bloodstream and wreak havoc wherever they see fit, which means not just your arteries.  This is also a huge problem with autoimmune diseases and cognitive issues.  I bet you didn’t have any idea your oral hygiene could be a part of your heart disease.
  • Nutrient deficiencies: in order to repair, your body needs adequate building blocks and deficiencies in things such as b-vitamins, vitamin c, vitamin D and amino acids set you up for failure.  If you have b-vitamin deficiencies, you may see elevation in markers like homocysteine on your labs.  If your doc runs complex labs, you may also see vitamin C deficiency pop up as elevated Lipoprotein A. (you have a 70% greater chance of having a heart attack if you have elevated lipoprotein a!)

So, let’s simplify this into some actionable things you could do to help yourself:

  • Eat a healthy diet including lots of plants and good sources of healthy fats
  • Stop eating processed foods and excessive amounts of sugar
  • Clean out your beauty drawer from all the chemical crap (check out this website for information)
  • Work with a physician to get off as many medications as possible.  This is ironic when it comes to statins because statins cut off your ability to produce cholesterol, ultimately lowering your cholesterol numbers.  Knowing what you know now, is cholesterol trying to help heal or trying to hurt your vessels!  Bye, Felicia.
  • Take B-Vitamins, omega 3 fatty acids (1g for prevention or 3g for someone with active conditions), CoQ10 (100mg for those taking statins and want to prevent issues or 500mg if you are experiencing issues of statin use like forgetfulness or muscle/joint pain).  (If you want specific recommendations for the products I prefer, feel free to email me at angela@angelalucterhand.com for links to those)
  • Stop smoking.
  • Start exercising.

Take away points:

  • Prevention is key, so don’t wait until you have heart disease to take your diet and lifestyle seriously.
  • You MUST be on CoQ10 if you are going to continue to take statins.
  • Cholesterol is not the enemy, so do not go low fat in attempts to correct the problem.

Believe it or not, these cases are some of the easiest patient cases I take on!  It doesn’t take much time to see drastic changes in someone’s labwork in these cases, and the solutions are pretty simple when you compare them to more complex issues like cancer and autoimmune diseases.

The Key to Long Term Health

Leave a comment

Many of us have busy lives that require our time to be spent in so many different places that we barely have enough time to fully dedicate ourselves in one area.  I have been seeing a lot of patients lately that feel as though they are doing everything right but not reaching their optimal level of health.  When they express this to me, I ask them what things they are doing right.  I have been getting a lot of answers that sound something like this “I’ve been trying to exercise everyday and drink more water.  Dr. Angela, I’ve also been trying to eat better.”  You all know what my next question is, right?  What specifically are you eating?  However, that is not the point of this post.  Many of you know that if you tell me whole grains, you will get a polite invitation to my next nutrition class.  The point of this post is to evaluate priorities to reach your health goals, and I am going to start with an analogy I use often:

If you went home tonight and saw that one of your house plants was wilting, what would you do?

Most people will tell me that they will give it WATER!

Great answer.  What if I told you that it had been watered adequately.  The plant just happened to be placed in the basement where there are no windows.

Then people say “Well duh, it needs sunlight.”

Another great answer.  What if I told you I was mistaken; the plant was in the window and was watered regularly, but there was no soil in the pot.

Now you are getting annoyed because who doesn’t know that the plant needs soil for nutrients?!

So, what you are telling me is that a plant can have adequate water and sunlight and still be a wilting plant?  Yup.  Your body is no different.  We require ALL aspects of health to truly be healthy.  Not only does that mean appropriate dietary nutrients and adequate water, but that means movement, as well.  You can exercise every single day, but if you are picking up McDonald’s on the way home or eating pasta every night, then you probably still have health concerns.  The same is true for reducing stress and removing toxins.  Our bodies are built to be able to keep up with stress and remove toxins, but if you aren’t getting enough sleep and stressing out everyday at work, guess what, despite your efforts at the gym and in the kitchen, you are still a wilting plant.

This can seem like a tall order.  However, it is our current lifestyle that makes it impossible for many people to “do it all.”  Therefore, they either focus on eating healthy and don’t carve out time for exercise.  OR, they are a gym rat that doesn’t have time to cook healthy meals.  OR, they are a gym rat that eats healthy to maintain their physique but gets up at 4:30am to go to the gym, doesn’t get out of work until 6pm, has to run the kids around, cook dinner, start laundry, and might get to bed around 11:30pm.  Hate to tell you….still a wilting plant.  This balance is a tricky one in today’s society but it is essential for our vitality.

You need:

nutrients

movement

sleep

removal of toxins (no one wants to grow a plant next to the sewer!)

sunlight

appropriate doses of stress

If one of these components is off track, think about making a shift in your life in order to create balance.  If you are eating correctly, you are probably cutting out a lot of toxins that would be coming from food at the same time as providing your body with nutrients.  If you have movement within your job, then consider yourself lucky.  Otherwise, you need to make it an effort of move daily, and exercising outside gets you both movement and sunlight.  If you give yourself a bedtime, then you are probably much more able to handle stress throughout the day. Chiropractic adjustments also have impact on the nervous system, which is essential for stress adaptation.  If you structure your day around making sure you hit all the things you need to be healthy, then it’s easy to evaluate whether or not you have time to add another task onto your schedule.  This is probably the hardest thing for parents to do these days and it may just be the missing link to your vitality.