Could High Cholesterol Make Us Live Longer?

Bacon and eggs a great meal full of good fats and vitamins! — Bacon and eggs a great meal full of good fats and vitamins and healthy cholesterol!

Original article by. P. D. Mangan Health Author.

Is it possible that mainstream medicine got cholesterol all wrong? That not only does cholesterol have no connection to heart disease, but that high cholesterol is actually a good thing? Yes, it’s more than possible — here I’ll show some evidence that higher cholesterol is associated with longer life.

All-cause mortality vs heart disease

Obviously, people die from many causes, whether natural, such as heart disease, cancer, or infection, or unnatural, such as from homicide, suicide, or accidents.

Should we be concerned about what cause we die from?

Yes, and no. On the one hand, if you’re dead, you’re dead, no matter from what. On the other, dying in your sleep in old age may be preferable to a long, lingering illness.

Nevertheless, from a public health standpoint, it seems a mistake to focus on changing something that lowers the risk of death from one cause only to raise that risk from another.

While total cholesterol is a poor if not utterly worthless risk marker for heart disease, doctors have focused on it to the exclusion of how it might affect other causes of death. It does you little good to save yourself from heart disease if it means that you increase your risk of death from cancer.

All-cause mortality — death from anything — is the most appropriate measure to use when looking at risk factors.

Older people with higher cholesterol live longer

Population studies in Japan show that people of all ages with higher cholesterol live longer.1

Overall, an inverse trend is found [in Japan] between all-cause mortality and total (or low density lipoprotein [LDL]) cholesterol levels: mortality is highest in the lowest cholesterol group without exception. If limited to elderly people, this trend is universal. As discussed in Section 2, elderly people with the highest cholesterol levels have the highest survival rates irrespective of where they live in the world.

Consider the chart above, taken from the paper. It shows all-cause mortality by cholesterol levels, men on the left, women on the right.

Current guidelines call for keeping cholesterol at 200 mg/dl or lower, yet higher levels meant lower death rates.

What about outside Japan? The following chart shows cumulative all-cause mortality of people older than 85 in Leiden, The Netherlands, by cholesterol level.

The cohort with an average cholesterol of 252 mg/dl, the highest, had the lowest death rates.

The following shows data from elderly people in Finland. Those with cholesterol greater than 232 mg/dl had the lowest death rates.

The data from Japan is for all ages; the data from outside Japan is for the elderly. What about the data for all ages, outside of Japan? The authors believe that the presence of people with familial hypercholesterolemia, which causes a very high cholesterol level and which raises the risk of death, in the highest cholesterol categories, accounts for higher death rates in those categories. They also argue that cholesterol levels in that disorder are not the cause of increased death rates.

A recent review in the prominent medical journal BMJ regarding LDL cholesterol, the risk marker considered most significant, found either no association or an inverse association between LDL and death rates.2

High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis. Moreover, our study provides the rationale for a re-evaluation of guidelines recommending pharmacological reduction of LDL-C in the elderly as a component of cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.

The Honolulu Heart Program was one of the first studies to find this inverse relation between total cholesterol and death rates in elderly people, aged 71 to 93. It found that compared to the lowest quartile (fourth) of cholesterol level, increasing quartiles of cholesterol had cholesterol had 28%, 40%, and 35% decreased death rates, respectively.

Furthermore, the Honolulu study seems to provide evidence that actually raising cholesterol is protective, since “Only the group with low cholesterol concentration at both examinations had a significant association with mortality.”

The authors of the study concluded, “We have been unable to explain our results. These data cast doubt on the scientific justification for lowering cholesterol to very low concentrations (<4.65 mmol/L) [<180 mg/dl] in elderly people.”

Is high cholesterol protective?

Why would people with low cholesterol die at higher rates than those with higher cholesterol?

Several things could be going on.

Cholesterol may protect against infections and atherosclerosis.3

Cholesterol may protect against cancer.4

A strong association was found between low cholesterol and violence. Odds ratio of violence for cholesterol of <180 mg/dl was 15.49. 5

Several studies have found an association between low cholesterol and suicide. For instance, one study found that those in the lowest quartile (fourth) of cholesterol concentration had more than 6 times the risk of suicide as those in the highest quartile.6

Conclusion

A number of studies have found that, at least in people older than 60, high cholesterol is associated with lower death rates.

This fact casts considerable doubt on the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease.

Why, with so much evidence against it, does the cholesterol theory still have so much traction? To quote the authors in the first cited study, it’s all about the money:

We believe the answer is very simple: for the side defending this so-called cholesterol theory, the amount of money at stake is too much to lose the fight.

Update: I hadn’t seen this before I wrote this article, but Uffe Ravnskov, a co-author of some of the above-cited studies, has a good article with many relevant citations, The Benefits of High Cholesterol.

Inflammation from Food can tear ligaments

If you eat too much sugar, flour and fried foods your muscle become weak on the cellular level.

Just came back to work from a great lecture on general inflammation by Dr. David Seaman, DC, MS. Did you know that what you eat can tear your ligaments and discs? In the scientific literature there are hundreds of published papers over the last 20 years that prove and support this concept.

Hypothalamic Immune signaling — The left side is normal tissue based on a “good” diet. The right side is what happens when you eat too much sugar, flour, and refined oils. *Picture comes from the journal article referenced below.

Pro-inflammatory foods will ultimately weaken ALL tissues; muscles, bones, nerves and organs to the point of failure! Not only will you gain weight that is hard to lose but you joints and muscles will weaken and become arthritic WITHOUT physical trauma. Osteoarthritis has been traditionally taught as “wear and tear” or “injury” arthritis but now has been proven to be autoimmune triggered by food and environmental factors. Yes you will have an arthritic knee after that football tackle but it will heal and not chronically swell as you get older from the injury if you have a “good” diet. But the swollen knees and shoulders as you age are from your poor diet which has made you over-weight and environmental pollutants which get “stuck” inside your body weakening it further.

This concept of tissue degradation because of destructive components becoming part of normal tissues like muscles and tendons explains how seemingly low force movements cause BIG injuries that seem trauma or mechanical in origin when they are not. Over time, years and decades your muscles become infiltrated by “bad” fats, inflammatory molecules and immune cells that cause inflammation as part of the clean-up process related to this daily tissue micro tearing or damage. This infiltration means that your tendons, muscles and cartilage(discs) are not as dense and strong later in life like they were when you were younger since this is an accumulation process over time. This weakening of your tissues takes a prolonged amount of time. Now add aging, meaning that your body doesn’t respond as efficiently or fast as it used to at the chemical level, this in turn slows down our physical performance and healing. As time and over-eating these “bad” foods continues you accumulate “junk” in your cells or pro-inflammatory molecules. Now when a 35 or 45 year old tears a meniscus while jogging or walking up the stairs instead of thinking injury from physical activity you should consider tissue failure under normal physical stress caused by poor diet! This was NOT a mechanical injury albeit the stepping or running triggered it but it only tore or became subluxated because of the acquired structural weakness due to chemical mediators. FAT. This was a directly related to your bad diet.

So now you show up at the physical therapist’s office they treat you like they always have, for a “mechanical” injury and do rehab and you heal. Maybe you were sharp enough to see your chiropractor and they do something similar and add chiropractic adjustments (PT’s are not legally aloud to adjust or manipulate joints in most states). And here too your knee heals and you’re running again. But… If the weakened tissue from pro-inflammatory agents like leukotrienes is not addressed your lifestyle will cause other tissues to fail and you will be destined to repeat this back and knee injury scenario again and again! Worse yet this same degradation from eating poorly is happening EVERYWHERE in your body; your heart, your kidneys, your liver, you intestines, your brain, your sexual organs, everywhere. Then one day you middle aged and you have a heart attack. All this could most likely have been prevented had someone caught the problem, the poor diet.

In our office we not only do the chiropractic, the physical therapy rehab we always include the nutritional detective work to give our patients the fullest recovery and lowest chance of re-injury or organ failure. If this pro-inflammatory state that sugar, grains and refined oils has led you to isn’t addressed you will be a cardiac or brain disease victim later in life if you are not one already. According to top researchers, Carey Lumbeng and Alan Saltiel¹ these joint and muscle injuries should be treated like heart disease and not just soft tissue injuries. (I have paraphrased their exact comment).

If you do not address your diet and environment you will be destined for a shortened life full of muscle and joint injuries, unnecessary prescriptions and doctor visits. Find a holistic doctor that uses chiropractic, nutrition and rehab exercise to fix your injuries and improve your total health.

1.Carey N. Lumeng and Alan R. Saltiel,
Inflammatory links between obesity and metabolic disease. J Clin Invest. 2011 Jun 1; 121(6): 2111–2117. Published online 2011 Jun 1. doi: 10.1172/JCI571321.

How Do We Get Results?

surface_EMG — Non-invasive nerve testing, nerve health

How Do We Measure Your Progress?

We use the latest and most accurate technology to measure how well the “inside” of your body is healing and base all our care on these measurements and reflex markers along with your symptomology. Gathering this information on each visit gives the doctor information that they need to make a correction and keep the healing process moving as quickly as possible, making you a more energetic, active and happy person. We all are aging so why not age as well as possible! No other profession checks your body’s SELF REGULATION SYSTEM like we do. Regular checkups of your body’s self-regulation and reflex system gives the doctor a real-time assessment of what is working at optimum and what is below par on each visit. Then a focused and personalized plan can be put in place to find the true cause of your weaknesses and get you back in shape or keep you in shape if you are on Wellness Care! We understand that symptoms or poor performance brought you in here for help and we want to help you get well but remember this problem started on the “inside” before you noticed any symptoms. There was some interference and a vital deficiency that started way before you could feel anything that was slowly degrading your body and health. The great thing about our system is that it can quickly be rechecked on each visit and is very accurate when done by a trained professional with thousands of hours of experience like our doctor. From time to time more high tech evaluations like the one you just went through are done in addition to your regular treatment visits. This is to measure and compare the progress of your physiology and neurology, again taking specific measurements of what is going on inside your body where you can’t “feel” anything happening. Using Heart Rate Variability, Surface EMG, Spinal Thermography Differential Scanning, Orthopedics, Chiropractic and basic vital sign instrumentation gives the doctor the most accurate picture of what is going on inside your body before it hurts. All this data gives the doctor a deeper understanding which helps you better, knowing when you are finally stable enough to go on Wellness Care.

How to Avoid Catching the Flu

3 Things YOU Can Do to Avoid Catching the Flu

First you have to understand the Flu Vaccine has more risks and damage it will do to you than it does “prevention”. Don’t let the media campaigns wear you down into getting “stuck”. Don’t be pressured by your job or coworkers, tell them you “opt out”. I know plenty of pharmacists that NEVER take the vaccine for them or their family although they give it to hundreds as part of their “job”. (What a conflict, glad I don’t have that philosophical issue!). I have never had a Flu or Shingles vaccine and never will. My children were not vaccinated when they were born or in school back in the 90’s and are very healthy adults now. Not to mention they hardly missed any school due to illness. They were always healthy while all their vaccinated friends were out regularly in the cold and flu season!

So what can you do to strengthen your immune system and body to stay healthy?

Hydration is crucial. Bottled or filtered water, 48 to 64 oz per day depending on your size and activity level. Coffee, teas, even herbal tea are not hydration. Water, water, water…and nothing but water. Regular water is my favorite not enhanced vitamin water or alkaline water and definitely not reversed osmosis water. RO water and distilled waters have less of the organic minerals that you need. Alkaline water an mess up your digestion so don’t drink it with meal if you drink it, drink in 1 to 2 hours away from consuming any food. You need water to run all the chemical reactions in your body including your immune system.
Reduce stress, chill out take some needed “me time”. Warm baths with essential oils for relaxation and immune stimulation work well. I like Lavender, Peppermint, Oregano, Roman Chamomile, Orange, and Lemon oils. (Sounds like a soup base!) Myrrh and Frankincense work well too but can be expensive. Epsom salt and baking soda work when you have muscle or joint pain , 24 oz of Epsom salt and 8 oz of baking soda to regular sized bath tube of hot water. The baking soda is to help with water hardness, making the magnesium salts more absorbable.
Regular nervous system check-ups. Chiropractic and Nutrition Response Testing are the two best, most proven therapies to check for, find and fix nervous system irritation and organ weaknesses/nutritional deficiencies. Your nervous system controls everything! Every cell, every molecule gets its orders from through your nervous system. Chiropractors are specifically trained to find and remove physical nerve irritations called subluxations. Nutritional testing using the Nutrition Response Testing method based on kinesiological reflexes helps me find and support any tissue weakness returning it back to normal or health status. If your immune system is getting the messages through a nervous system that is subluxation-free and the nerves and organs are strong because you have the proper support and a good diet for you then you will most likely avoid the flu this and every season that you continue these healthy habits.

So see your chiropractor and Nutrition Response Doctor today. I of course use both these approaches in my office to help all my patients, young and old stay healthy and avoid the flu and all other adverse conditions as much as possible. Since I combined both health therapies, nutrition and chiropractic our results with wellness and people not having illnesses has dramatically improved. Call us for more information now. 434-481-2012.

How Does Nutrition Response Testing Work?

Nutrition Response Testing (Nutritional Muscle Reflex Testing) is a non-invasive system of analyzing the body in order to determine the underlying causes of ill health. When these are corrected through safe, natural, nutritional means, the body can repair itself in order to attain and maintain more optimum health.

Dr D doing NRT testing — Dr. Kydonieus uses, Nutrition Response Testing and lab work to help find toxicities

Nutrition Response Testing is very precise and scientific. However, if I were to analyze you using Nutrition Response Testing before it was explained to you, you might find it strange, or simply not believable – only because it is probably very different from anything you may have experienced before.

When I first saw this type of work being done, I had the same reaction: “Hmm, what is this strange stuff?”

No one was more skeptical than I was. As a result, I studied Nutrition Response Testing extensively to see if it was for real. And I sure am happy I did because it has greatly helped me, my family and so many of our patients attain greater health.

If you want to get healthy and stay healthy, it is important that you understand what Nutrition Response Testing is and what our recommendations are based on.

That way you will be more likely to follow through and do what is needed in order to get well.

What is Nutritional Muscle Testing Based On?

The analysis is done by testing neurological reflexes and specific acupuncture points on the body’s surface.

This analysis gives us an energy assessment of how well the organs and systems of the body are functioning.

The neurological reflexes are derived from the part of the nervous system whose job is to regulate the functions of each and every organ. The acupuncture points are selected from the ancient Chinese system of acupuncture, which is thousands of years old.

Since the human anatomy has not changed significantly in thousands of years, these reflexes and acupuncture points have become extremely useful in our practice because they are so reliable!

Each Nutrition Response Testing reflex corresponds to a specific organ, system, or function. It helps us determine the effect that energy, or the lack of energy, is having on your overall health. Nutrition Response Testing also provides a system of monitoring your body at each visit. This has proven to be extremely accurate clinically, and helps us identify exactly what the body needs and how well we are meeting that need.

Customized Nutrition for Person

A custom designed nutrition program utilizes specific dietary recommendations and whole food concentrates in a tablet, capsule or powder. They are prepared using a unique manufacturing process that preserves all of the active enzymes and vital components that make it work as Nature intended. These real food supplements have been designed to match the needs of the body, as determined by the positive response shown when tested against the active Nutrition Response Testing reflexes.

These are nutrients you are simply not getting, or not assimilating, in your current diet.

These deficiencies may be due to your past personal eating habits and routines, but it is for sure due, in some large extent, to the lack of quality of the foods commercially available in grocery stores and most restaurants today.

An example of a whole food could be carrots.

Carrots are high in Vitamin A Complex. A “complex” is something made up of many different parts that work together. Synthetic vitamin A does not contain the whole “Vitamin A Complex” found in nature. So, if we were looking for a food high in Vitamin A, carrots might be one of our choices.

If one actually were deficient in any of the components of Vitamin A Complex, one would be wise to seek out a supplement that was made from whole foods that were rich in this complex – not from chemicals re-engineered in a laboratory to look like one little part of the Vitamin A Complex that has erroneously been labeled as “Vitamin A.”

Designed Clinical Nutrition is not ‘over-the-counter’ vitamins. Over-the-counter vitamins are pharmaceutically engineered chemical fractions of vitamin structures reproduced in a laboratory. They are not “genuine replacement parts.” They lack many of the essential elements normally present in WHOLE foods. Most store bought vitamins (1) can cause other health problems; (2) create additional deficiencies and imbalances; or (3) simply don’t work because they do not contain all of the factors found in nature.

Please ask about our DVD by Dr. Kydonieus:

“The Vitamin Difference,” an in-depth explanation of vitamins and other nutritional supplements.

We help you to determine the exact nutrients you need to supplement your diet, in order to bring about balance and better health. We make these highly concentrated therapeutic formulations available to you in tablets, capsules, or in powdered form to “supplement” your current diet. That’s why they are called “food supplements.”

Depending on your individual situation, we might also require that you make some specific changes in your diet & eating habits, and in your daily routines, in order to bring about the best possible results.