Stop and think about cholesterol for one minute.   If cholesterol were such a bad thing, why would the good Lord have your body making it?   Perhaps cholesterol is necessary?   I am absolutely amazed that our entire country is bending over backwards to get their cholesterol level tested so that they can go to the doctor to get a drug to stop the liver from functioning properly or the intestine from absorbing properly.

So say after me, “Cholesterol is our friend”.   Don’t believe me? Well here are some of the benefits of cholesterol.  

            Cholesterol is found in animal cell membranes.   It is like a guard, deciding what can cross over into and out of each cell in your body. 

            Cholesterol makes up a large percentage of your brain.

            Cholesterol is used by the body as one of the basic ingredients of hormones, specifically the stress/adrenal (cortisol, corticosterone, aldosterone) and sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone).  

            Cholesterol is also found in the liver where it is used in the creation of bile, which is necessary for proper digestion.

So let me paint a different cholesterol picture for you. Your blood vessels have wear and tear just like any other part of you. So you get a little inflammation in your blood vessel and your body calls for a blood vessel patch. Since your diet is the typical American diet, it is devoid of most nutrition and your body is unable to send the best patch, so it settles for something that is easy to make, cholesterol. Not the best patch, but will do in a pinch.   So your friend cholesterol is sent to the blood vessel to form a patch. You go to your doctor and he tells you that your cholesterol level is too high and puts you on a medication to lower it. Now your body calls for another patch and you don’t even have cholesterol to patch the vessel, so now it sends the only thing left. Calcium. It is easy to steal from your bones. So now you have a patch of calcium. This is also called hardening of the arteries and osteoporosis. How screwy is this? Still want to lower your cholesterol artificially?

OK, really high cholesterol is a sign that something is wrong, but the problem is your diet. Why do so many Americans have the same problem? Because most people eat the same bad processed foods. It is not so much that we are eating too much cholesterol, it is that we don’t eliminate enough. The only way your body has to eliminate cholesterol is by releasing it in your bile. If your diet does not allow you to release bile properly, you wind up with gallbladder problems. The other diet problem is that you are not getting enough fiber in your diet. Bile binds with fiber to get eliminated or you just reabsorb the cholesterol back into your system. Why? Because you body wants and needs cholesterol, or it would not work so hard to absorb it back and make it.

So in simple English, bile should be a nice thin liquid about the consistency of blood, but when you don’t eat the correct foods, it gets thick like toothpaste. A nice liquid is easy to move, a thick sludge is not, so it backs up in your gallbladder. The easy way to determine if you are eliminating enough bile is by the color of your bowel movements. Yes you need to look! They should be dark brown like coffee without cream. If your bowel movements are lighter, then you are not releasing enough bile. After enough time of not releasing sludgy bile, you will form gallstones.

So let’s say your poop is not dark. What’s a person to do? Beets and Beet greens are your best bet. Beets thin the bile. Don’t like beets? Well personally at this point, too bad. Think of beets as medicine. But you can eat sauerkraut or lemons. LOTS!  If that does not work for your picky palate (which is what got you in this mess!), your alternative healthcare doctor can suggest something in pill form. Don’t ask your medical doctor, he will do an ultrasound and find stones and want to take out your perfectly healthy but overloaded gallbladder.   If you have waited too long and are having gallbladder problems, all is not lost. You can do a gallbladder liver flush. In one week you can eliminate most if not all the stones in your gallbladder and still get to keep your gallbladder!!! YAH!

That will thin the bile, but you still have to add fiber. If you listen to the TV, and I don’t suggest that, you would think that you need fiber in the form of Metamucil or bran. Yes they are forms of fiber, but they are not very good fiber. Mostly they are by-products of food. You know, the stuff they were going to throw away or give to the pigs. Most processed foods in the Standard American Diet (AKA SAD) are by-products, not food. If a company can sell its garbage, that is big bucks, but I prefer to not eat recycled material.   So here is a new concept. How about eating food for your food?  Fruits, nuts, seeds and vegetables (preferably raw) and grains are all high in fiber. That is why oatmeal lowers cholesterol, but even oatmeal is not very good food and don’t even get me started on instant oatmeal!

So if you are listening to all the cholesterol hype, you have stopped eating eggs, or only eat synthetic eggs. You have cut most red meats out of your diet. You have switched to highly processed foods that say “low in cholesterol” because they are using very poor quality hydrogenated oils instead of lard. You are eating hydrogenated peanut butter because it is low in cholesterol (plants do not make cholesterol so any plant product will be cholesterol free). Does that really sound healthy?  Stop the insanity! Eat whole organic unprocessed foods and watch your health soar! This is so simple. If God made it, eat it.   If man had something to do with it, do not eat it. God made fruits, veggies, seeds, nuts, eggs, meats and dairy. Try them, you will like them and so will your body. Your cholesterol levels will lower and even if they don’t, you will have what you need to make the high quality patch and you will not coat your blood vessels, you will heal them.

The latest studies are showing that cholesterol levels below 180 increase the risk of strokes. Since cholesterol-lowering drugs have become so popular, Alzheimer’s has almost doubled in our population.  Add that to the long list of side effects from the cholesterol drugs and you are kissing your health goodbye. I suggest to my patients that a cholesterol level between 200 and 250 is acceptable and not below 200. If you have high cholesterol, exercise and eat real foods high in fiber especially beets and beet greens. If your levels still are too high then try adding red yeast rice. It contains a chemical very similar to the statin drugs, but seems to have none of the side effects. If you need help, ask your alternative healthcare provider.

Cholesterol is BIG business. No one should be on cholesterol medication. It should be controlled with diet, but no one has ever told you the correct diet that you need. People can screw up anything and cholesterol is just another example of how backwards our world really is! 

Good luck and God bless!

February 2006