Is cholesterol level just genetics?

 

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