Lowering your cholesterol is it even
possible? I hear it all the time, even from medical doctors sometimes, that
cholesterol levels are all genetic so there's nothing we can do. this is a
crucial question because if it's not all genetics then you do have the power to
control it, it's in your hands, it's not your fate to bear this burden and have
to worry about this for the rest of your life. so is it all genetics?
There is a genetic form, it's called familial
hypercholesterolemia. Try saying that three times in a row. familial
hypercholesterolemia, familial hypercholesterolemia. How common is it? Less
than 1% of people have it. And how many people have high cholesterol? In The US, 50% of adults. So clearly the vast majority of people who have high
cholesterol don't have Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). Okay but maybe
people don't have FH or any specific genetic disease but their genetic makeup
in general still determines their cholesterol levels so they're fixed? It's a
theoretical possibility.
How can we know if we really have any influence
over this? Well if it's food-related then cholesterol levels might change with
different diets. If it's all genetics, then cholesterol levels will stay the
same no matter what you eat. Tons of studies have looked at this, here's one. people
on typical Western diets, lots of meat, butter, cheese. Total cholesterol
averages 204. 200 is the cutoff so even the average is high. that's not good.
How about people who don't eat meat? A little
lower. people who don't eat meat or fish? Even lower. People who eat no
animals, no dairy, no eggs, they had the lowest cholesterol. Does that mean you
can never eat meat again if you want to have good cholesterol levels? No, not
necessarily, it depends on a number of factors. But clearly, this is pointing to
food having a substantial effect. Okay but maybe the people who have the good
genetics in the first place for some reason they choose to eat less meat so
it's a coincidence.
It's not that the meat and the eggs cause
high cholesterol levels, they just happen to coincide in the same people. it's
theoretically possible. What we need is to look at cholesterol levels in the
same people on different foods, that would nail it. If cholesterol levels of
the same person change with diet, then it can't be all genetics. Has that
experiment been done? Oh yeah. Take regular people, put them on a really
healthy diet, cholesterol comes down 30%. Okay, that's an impressive drop. How
long does that take? Five years? One year? How about one week? Seven days of
eating healthy, your cholesterol drops like a rock.
If that doesn't prove we have massive control
over this, then I don't know what does. That diet that gives you that nice big
drop is the portfolio diet. It's a plant-based
diet, very low in saturated fat. No cholesterol and lots of healthy foods and
it works great to lower cholesterol levels. It's been thoroughly validated by numerous
scientific studies and I cover it in detail in this article.
And as I've shown before my own cholesterol levels
dropped sharply when I started eating like that. Now I'm not saying genetics is
irrelevant, genetics is a factor for everything and there's always some people
on the extreme ends of a distribution. Some people eat super healthy and they
still have high cholesterol. And if that's you, then you want to work with your
doctor and in your case, a drug may be beneficial. Other people can eat junk
food all the time and they still have great-looking bloodwork. What
are you going to do? But those extremes are the exceptions.
The vast majority of us mere mortals, we're
somewhere in the middle. Our genetics might lean one way or another but at the
end of the day it's our behaviours, it's our diet that's going to tip the
scales. Genetics loads the gun but diet pulls the trigger, bottom-line, it's up
to us. For the vast majority of us, having high cholesterol levels is a choice.
The solutions are known, they're understood, they have been shown
scientifically over and over again. In they're available for free.
Any diet advice that you have to buy from one
dude. Or one company, that's proprietary, it's not worth the money. if it
hasn't been shown in scientific studies, then you don't want it, and if it has
been shown in scientific studies, then why do we have to pay the sales guy? In
science there are no all-knowing gurus sitting at the top of the mountain
holding this secret knowledge that nobody else has, that doesn't exist. To
lower it and to keep it low and there are many other resources out there as
well.
It always puzzles me when I see these long debates
online or sometimes in person, people with sky-high levels of cholesterol and they're
debating whether they should look into their diet, clean things up because
they're not sure if it's all genetics or if diet plays a role. Just try it. There's
no downside and you get your answer in days. What do you have to lose?
Regards
TMS