The Heart

Cholesterol

     I mentioned that I have several degrees.  Some of those are in Mathematics and I probably fancy myself a mathematician more than anything else.  So it bothers me no end when people use mathematics to mislead - especially knowingly.  No place is it worse than in the health and weight loss industries.  Let me give you an example. 

     "Cholesterol is bad for your heart so don't eat foods high in cholesterol."  This statement is completely false on many levels, but you need to understand why I say that.

     First is the idea of "correlation".  Lets take a look at the group of people you know.  You may see them about on a daily basis but most of the time when you see Bill you also see Mary.  You say there a correlation between seeing Bill and seeing Mary.  You may assume, because it isn't entirely random, that there must be a reason or a cause involved.  But saying Bill causes Mary would be silly.  Often, the events in a correlation have an undiscovered common cause; for example, Bill and Mary may ride the same bus to work.  Cholesterol and heart disease are like that.  Elevated levels of LDL cholesterol is often seen, but not always seen, in people with heart disease.  There is a correlation between high LDL cholesterol and heart disease, but saying high LDL cholesterol causes heart disease on that basis alone would be foolish.  The saying we have all heard "where there is smoke, there is fire" is actually incorrect.  It should be "where there is smoke, there may be fire" because that is all a correlation tells us.

     Next is the idea of "risk factor".  Because you have just seen Bill and there is a correlation between seeing Bill and seeing Mary, you might think it is a good idea to look for Mary as she might be nearby.  That is, if you see Bill, you are "at risk" of seeing Mary and seeing Bill is a "risk factor" for seeing Mary.  So, if you see high LDL cholesterol in the blood, it would just be prudent to look for heart disease.  Not because one is cause and the other effect, but merely because they are often seen together and for no other reason.  If Bill moves out of town, are you less likely to see Mary?  The answer is no; you will see Mary just as often as you did when Bill lived in town.  Likewise, lowering LDL cholesterol will not prevent heart disease.  No research has ever shown that taking cholesterol lowering drugs or eating low cholesterol foods adds a single day to anyone's life.  Indeed, the published research shows lowering cholesterol has no effect on preventing heart disease. 

    Doctors discovered back in the 1890's that "dropsy" (congestive heart failure) was most often caused by hypothyroidism, abnormally low levels of thyroid hormones.  The treatment was to give the patients Armour® Thyroid (essentially desiccated pig and beef thyroid).  It has been discovered that treating patients for hypothyroidism also lowers their cholesterol levels, meaning hypothyroidism is a common cause of both heart disease and high LDL cholesterol.  In this case, I can say "a cause", since curing hypothyroidism reduces the incidence of both heart disease and high LDL cholesterol.  I'll cover in another section how the vast majority of doctors "forgot" this simple treatment, how to test if you may suffer from hypothyroidism (over 50% of Americans do), and what you can do to prevent/treat/cure the problem.

     Eliminating a symptom of a disease doesn't cure the disease or put you at lower risk of getting the disease; only curing or preventing the cause of the disease does that. When you read medical research you will find it falls into two categories:  (1) we did this and that happened and (2) there is a correlation between this and that.  The first type is good research because it shows cause and effect.  The second might be interesting and suggest further research, but is of little practical use when it comes to treating health problems.

Atherosclerosis and Hypertension

     Atherosclerosis (coronary artery disease) is the building up of plaque in the arteries.  This leads to high blood pressure and an insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle.  That is, you are starving the heart at the same time you are demanding more work from it.  So, if you develop or have atherosclerosis you are in danger of your heart eventually giving out.  This affects older people more than younger because it takes time for the plaque to build up to that extreme.  But it is preventable in my opinion.  Even curable.

    I had very high blood pressure.  I do not have high blood pressure now, so I'm cured.  Therefore, there must be a cure that will work for some people.  I'll tell you what I did and let you be the judge.  You will want to pass this by your doctor, especially if you are on high blood pressure medication.  The doctor will want to monitor your blood pressure and adjust your medication, which is an excellent idea to keep you out of trouble.  Anyone on medication should have a doctor monitor them when they try anything that effects the condition they are being medicated for.  That's just common sense.

    First, I started taking a product called SODzyme distributed through the Life Extension Foundation.  Clinical studies have show that SODzyme stops the advance of atherosclerosis.  SODzyme increases the levels of natural SOD (Super Oxide Dismutase) and catalase in your blood.  These are extremely powerful anti-oxidants.  I started taking SODzyme because it reduces the damage caused by diabetes and reduces inflammation of all kinds.  I believe it relieves the inflammation that causes plaque buildup on the arterial walls, halting any further formation of plaque.  Hence atherosclerosis is halted - as shown by the clinical studies.

    Next, I drink one once of pomegranate juice on an empty stomach each morning.  Actually, I wash the SODzyme down with it.  I started taking pomegranate juice because it lowers essential hypertension, the most common form of high blood pressure in middle-aged adults.  Alone, it dropped my blood pressure nearly 30 points, far more than any prescription drug available.  But when you take pomegranate juice long term and without the inflammation that causes the plaque buildup in the first place, it cleans the plaque from your arteries.  It takes about a year to accomplish that.

    Lastly, I did something I doubt anyone has ever heard about.  I was researching hypertension.  I eat bananas for their potassium, so I did a Google Scholar search on hypertension and bananas to see if bananas had any effect on hypertension.  I didn't expect any hits, but I got several.  It seems ripe banana and L-arginine work very well to activate nitrous oxide synthase in the arterial walls.  This causes the arterial walls to relax normally, countering essential hypertension.  Since this exactly counters the direct cause of essential hypertension, it knocked my blood pressure the rest of the way to normal - about 20 points on top of the improvement caused by pomegranate juice.

     I must state that, even if you have no disease, your blood pressure can still be high due to a lack of exercise or extreme weight.  So, exercising and losing excess pounds are equally important to long-term heart health.

Avoiding Atherosclerosis

     Atherosclerosis is caused by plaque building up on the inside walls of the arteries.  These walls are called the endothelium and are made up of tightly packed cells called endothelial cells.  When these cells become inflamed, cracks between the cells begin to appear.  These cracks lead to a weakening of the artery and invite disease.

     One of the functions of LDL cholesterol is to patch wounds including cracks and other damage to the endothelium.   It is actually damage to the endothelium that leads to atherosclerosis, not how much cholesterol you eat.

     The two major causes of damage to the endothelium are the consumption of sugar and trans fats. 

     Excess sugar in the blood coats proteins in the blood rendering them useless.  Worse, sugar actually breaks the protein, releasing super oxides.  When super oxides come into contact with cells, in particular the endothelial cells of the artery wall, they cause inflammation. Inflamed endothelial cells produce binding proteins making them sticky.  LDL cholesterol then sticks to the inflamed area and we have the beginning of atherosclerosis.  It isn't the level of LDL cholesterol in the diet that starts the process - it is the inflammation.  Our body produces two substances to help combat super oxides: super oxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase.  SOD converts super oxides to hydrogen peroxide and catalase converts hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen.  Together they render super oxides harmless.

      As we grow older, our blood level of SOD falls which is why older people are more prone to atherosclerosis and heart disease.  Whether this is because we produce less or because we use it up faster, I don't know.  Fortunately, 40 years after its discovery, we are now able to manufacture SOD.  A product from the Life Extension Foundation called SODzyme contains both SOD and catalase.

     Trans fats are a touchy subject because our food industry in the US loads our foods with trans fats.  Even if the package says it contains 0 gms trans fats per serving, it can still contain 499 mg per serving and that is actually quite a lot.  But let me start with what the "trans" in trans fat is and why you have to be careful when reading claims about this topic.

     Fats are long molecules with a couple of oxygen atoms at the "head" and a long string of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached to the sides of the carbon atoms.  The carbon atoms can be attached to each other with a single bond (meaning they share one electron) or a double bond (share two electrons).  The carbon atoms also share an electron with each hydrogen atom attached to them.  A carbon atom can have two hydrogen atoms attached if it is attached to its neighboring carbons with single bonds, but only one hydrogen atom if it is attached to one of its neighboring carbon atoms with a double bond.

     At the double bond points, the two hydrogen atoms attached to the two carbon atoms can both be on the same side of the carbon atoms or on opposite sides.  If they are on the same side then the fat molecule can bend at the double bond making the fat molecule flexible; this is called a cis bond.  If they line up on opposite sides, the joint is stiff and won't bend; this is called a trans bond.

     "Trans fats" (the ones on the package labels) are those fat molecules that have a single trans bond and no cis bonds.  These fats, among other ill things, inflame the artery walls, the endothelium, and lead to atherosclerosis.  Unlike super oxides, you body doesn't produce anything to fight this cause of inflammation as trans fats are not commonly found in natural foods.

     So, where do trans fats come from?  They are formed by heating vegetable oil to high temperatures, such as the temperatures common in the manufacturing of many vegetable oils and the making of margarine and shortening.  Whoever attached "heart healthy" to these products was woefully uninformed or simply lying to us.

     Now, you will hear that trans fats are also found in animal fat, such as butter, cheese and milk.  This is an attempt at misdirection.  Butter, cheese and milk all contain a fat called Conjugated Linoleic Acid, CLA.  CLA has one cis bond and one trans bond.  So one might argue it is a trans fat, but this isn't the trans fat required on the labels of food containers and it doesn't cause inflammation.  In fact, CLA is a cancer preventative among many other benefits.

     Not all vegetable oils contain trans fats.  Virgin olive oil, coconut oil, walnut oil, flaxseed oil and other oils that are not processed at elevated temperatures do not contain trans fats.

     This isn't the end of the story on trans fats.  They have a devastating effect on our cells that have nothing to do with inflammation.  I'll cover that in another section. In the meantime, if the food package mentions an oil processed at high temperature or lists partially hydrogenated something oil then it contains trans fats (no matter what the label may imply) and is best avoided.

Fructose

      Excess sugar causes a reduction in the levels of SOD and catalase in our bodies.  That is because we cannot manufacture them fast enough to replace what is used up combating the super oxides produced by the excess sugar.  Losing this battle leads to inflammation of the arterial walls and atherosclerosis.  There are different sugars and they use up SOD at different rates.  Glucose, the most common sugar, uses up only one third as much SOD as the sugar fructose. (ref)  This means high fructose corn syrup uses up SOD faster than glucose and therefore may accelerate atherosclerosis when consumed in excess.  The point is, it takes considerably less high fructose corn syrup to be "excess sugar" than it does glucose, making high fructose corn syrup more damaging to our health.

     If you look at package labels you will find our food industry has gone almost exclusively to high fructose corn syrup.  Why?  Because it is cheaper and sweeter than glucose.  And people are naturally addicted to sweet tasting things (another long story).  The American diet contains an excess of sugar, plain and simple, and it damages our health.  Replacing glucose with high fructose corn syrup only makes the situation worse - a lot worse.  Part of any plan to restore one's health includes avoiding those things that damage it.  Need I say more?

     Okay, one more thing.  White table sugar is 50% fructose. 

Adiponectin and Fish Oil

     Our white fat cells produce a hormone, adiponectin, that is found in abundance in our blood stream.  One function of adiponectin is moderating the stickiness of the inflamed endothelial cells in our artery walls making them less sticky.  This causes plaques to bind less strongly.

     Obesity, insulin resistance (metabolic syndrome), and type 2 diabetes, are all associated with seriously reduced adiponectin in the blood.  These illnesses are also associated with accelerated  development of atherosclerosis.   Fish oil has been shown in mouse models to increase blood adiponectin levels by as much as three fold.  Fish oil has also been shown to benefit arterial health by reducing platelet adhesion allowing our body a more normal response to arterial inflammation, probably as a result of increasing adiponectin.

     Adiponectin decreases in our blood as we become fatter.  As the number of fat cells increases, our levels of a fat hormone called Tumor Narcosis Factor-alpha, TNF-alpha, increases and TNF-alpha suppresses the release of adiponectin.   This is why obese people are insulin resistant and at greater risk of developing atherosclerosis.

     Adiponectin is also known to be increased by fasting and is related to increases in longevity in animal models where animals are fed low calorie diets for extended periods.  I can't recommend prolonged fasting for humans because it plays heck with other hormone systems.  In the section on aging, I'll have more to say about fasting, weight loss and longevity. 

Heart health and Supplements

     As we grow older, we stop producing many substances necessary to the optimal functioning of our bodies.  The reason is in our DNA and the way our cells replicate.  There isn't anything we can do about this, yet, so all we can do is try to make up what we are losing through supplementation.

     Co-Q10.   This is the only supplement I take that has a direct effect on my heart.  Japanese doctors give Co-Q10 to heart patients because it increases the survival rate of patients after heart attacks.  The body produces Co-Q10 out of other forms of Co-Q that are commonly found in our diet.  But as we get older, we gradually lose the ability to convert other forms to Co-Q10.  Co-Q10 is found in the greatest quantity in our hearts where the heart cells' mitochondria use it to produce the energy the heart needs to function.  It also reduces inflammation of the heart cells caused by the free radicals released during energy consumption by the heart.  All-in-all it strengthens the heart.  Unfortunately, much of the Co-Q10 sold online and in some stores is fake.  For that reason, I buy Co-Q10 from the Life Extension Foundation who I trust.

     Fish oil. The benefits of fish oil, helpful to our arteries, extends beyond just heart health.  By increasing adiponectin, it reduces insulin resistance benefiting people who are type-2 diabetic or pre-diabetic.  Reducing insulin resistance also aids in weight loss which we will go into in more detail in the chapter on insulin.

     Iodine.  Many areas of the world are poor in iodine, necessary to thyroid health including almost all of North America.  The USDA recommendation is 150 IU of iodine per day, which is way too low.  Despite claims that high doses of iodine is toxic, clinical studies show that the body excretes excess iodine preventing toxicity.  One book I recently read and trust recommends up to 10,000 IU per day.  How to determine if you need iodine and how much you need is the topic of another chapter of this website.  Iodine is critical to heart health, so you should read the chapter. 

       The other supplements, I've mentioned, SODzyme, pomegranate juice, L-arginine and ripe banana all aid the heart by improving arterial condition and reduce strain on the heart by lowering blood pressure.  Exercise and good overall nutrition will keep the heart in its best form.