The TRUTH about cholesterol
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard from people who tell me that their doctor told them that they have “high cholesterol.” Every time I roll my eyes… The fact that doctors are still talking about this, still over-prescribing statins, and in general freaking out their patients over the WRONG cause of heart disease frustrates me to no end.
And you, as a critically-thinking human being, should wonder: if cholesterol is the very cause of heart disease that they claim, then why after all these years of people “watching their cholesterol” and taking statins to reduce their numbers to ridiculously low levels, is heart disease still JUST AS HIGH IF NOT HIGHER in our population?
I’ll tell you why.
Because high cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease.
Cholesterol is an extremely important molecule in the body. It is involved in important mechanisms that keep cells safe and protected from oxidation. It is highly involved in cellular communication (our hormones), and is what distinguishes us from plants, as the basis of all our muscles and nerves. Cholesterol is what allows us to move and think. It is also a critical part of our immune system and endothelial repair.
Also, there are plenty of studies that show that people with higher cholesterol actually live longer!
And did you know that LDL, among other important jobs, binds to bad microbes and delivers them to the macrophages to be destroyed?
So tell me, why would something that is fundamental to our entire existence as human beings be at the same time a danger to us?
Well, it wouldn’t.
There are even some scientists, like Stephanie Seneff (listen to her on a podcast here), from MIT, who have published many papers theorizing that a compound made from cholesterol, cholesterol sulfate, is the energy source for our muscles, and especially our hearts. In the presence of sunlight on red blood cells, cholesterol combines with sulfur to create cholesterol sulfate, which is water soluble and can then be transported by lipoproteins throughout the body. It is, in fact, the main energy molecule for our heart muscle.
So why does your doctor insist that you need to lower your cholesterol?
Because the conventional medical establishment says so, and he/she is just following what they were taught in medical school. Every patient is a number, and you are just another on a long list who needs a pill, not a lifestyle change. Heart disease is big business, don’t you know.
But I have already covered why we got into this mess in the first place. You can read my posts here and here about that. In a nutshell, Big Pharma, Big Food, and the government got together to “cure” something, and surprise, surprise, their “cure” is FAR worse than the disease.
“Cholesterol” tests are actually measurements of lipoprotein particles (like HDL or LDL). HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein and LDL is low-density lipoprotein. However, there are in fact a large heterogeneous mix of lipoproteins in your body of all shapes and sizes, and there are no “good” and “bad” ones like you have been told. They all have incredibly important jobs and they all transport cholesterol throughout your body for different reasons. They are NOT cholesterol at all, but carriers of it.
The reason that cholesterol has been vilified is because decades ago, when they did tests on plaques found in arteries, they found cholesterol. Scientists erroneously concluded that because plaques contain cholesterol, cholesterol must be bad, and needed to be lowered at all costs. This was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cholesterol was there for two reasons:
1. because the arterial wall needed repairing. The arteries have higher pressure and can be subject to more injury. If this is not adequately and timely repaired, the body resorts to using cholesterol as a patch.
2. because there wasn’t enough sulfate in the body to combine with cholesterol to provide the heart with energy. The body smartly placed the cholesterol near the heart (in the arteries that feed it) so that when sulfate arrives, it can quickly combine with cholesterol and then energize the heart muscles. The body knows that it can’t survive without a beating heart and will protect that despite the damage YOU keep throwing at it.
The real questions should have been: why does the arterial wall have so much injury that is not being repaired, and why does the body not have enough sulfate, an extremely critical molecule?
You can get many answers for these questions from many people. But the most convincing reasons that I have found have been:
1. Glyphosate. Glyphosate destroys the liver, and its rise in global use correlates with a rise in LDL. Glyphosate suppresses bile production; the bile can’t get pushed out sufficiently in its presence, and bile is how the liver transports cholesterol through the body. The liver ships cholesterol to the gut through the bile, and then it gets absorbed and distributed out. But this pathway is blocked in the presence of glyphosate, so the liver is forced to ship cholesterol out via the LDL particles, which is why high LDL can be a sign that your body is high in glyphosate.
Also, glyphosate blocks the enzyme that creates cholesterol sulfate in your red blood cells. The more glyphosate poisoning you have, the more sulfur you need to ingest. Get it here and here. If you don’t make enough sulfate, your body will deposit cholesterol near your heart to have at the ready if you do have an uptake of sulfate. You can also take glycine to help detox your body of glyphosate. Get it here.
2. Processed sugars and grains - Not only are these notoriously high in glyphosate, these cause high glycation in the body and lead to oxidation, which damages arterial walls and causes inflammation. They also contribute to this situation where your body is forced to repair cracks and splits in your arterial walls. Eat organic, and avoid all processed sugars and grains.
3. Insulin resistance - High triglycerides, high fasting insulin and high fasting blood sugar are all signs that you are developing heart disease. In fact, these are extremely correlated (unlike cholesterol levels). I find it extremely ironic that one of the black box warnings of statins is that it may cause diabetes. Statins are supposed to “protect” you from heart disease and yet it causes something that causes heart disease. Make it make sense…
Your body should be able to repair endothelial damage without needing to patch it with cholesterol. But when you have high sugar and high insulin, your ability to repair is greatly diminished, forcing your body to use cholesterol.
We have talked before about what actually causes insulin resistance, and it is not just processed sugars and grains, but SEED OILS (vegetable oils or PUFAs). You can read here and here all about how seed oils cause fiery damage to your endothelial cells in your artery walls, which results in cholesterol being put there to repair it. Again, cholesterol is not the enemy, the SEED OILS are. Also, seed oils (PUFAs) cause your fat cells to grow too big, leading to fat leaking and circulating (higher triglycerides), insulin going up and diabetes on the way. Your biggest win for avoiding heart disease is to completely REMOVE seed oils from your diet.
4. Endotoxemia. We have talked about this very recently when discussing gut health. Yes, if you have microbe dysbiosis in your gut and it is leaky and releasing nasty lipopolysaccharides into your bloodstream, this can cause damage to your epithelial cells as well as lead to chronic inflammation and disease. Follow our protocols from Dr. William Davis’ book to reverse this situation.
Finally, have you ever thought about why arteriosclerosis is only found in certain spots in your arteries? Why not the veins? Why not all over the body? If the disease was caused by rising LDL, a particle that travels ALL OVER the body, shouldn’t it be causing disease everywhere? Shouldn’t people with high LDL be dropping like flies? This is another reason why high cholesterol or high LDL cannot be the cause of heart disease. It’s just an old-fashioned myth that you should not give the time of day. There is something else going on and you would be wise to pay attention to what that could be.
[And DO NOT TAKE STATINS. There is only a tiny fraction of our population that should be on statins MAYBE SOMETIMES, and that is people who have had major heart attacks. Even then, I would question everything. The fact that at one point they wanted to put it in our water should have your spidey-sense tingling.]
I hope this has helped to dispel the cholesterol myth, or at least cause you to dig deeper. It is so pervasive that it has kept scientists and doctors from questioning and figuring out what is actually going on. This has caused unnecessary pain and death for so many people. Share this post with your loved ones and encourage them to research it for themselves!
For a more in-depth dive on the subject, see the following:
marksdailyapple.com/cholesterol