Dr. Melodie Billiot

Atherosclerosis– Is Your LDL Sticky?

Ronald Grisanti D.C., D.A.B.C.O., DACBN, MS, CFMP

Atherosclerosis is the thickening or hardening of the arteries caused by a buildup of plaque in the inner lining of an artery.

For as long as I remember, most people, including myself, have been told that LDL cholesterol is the bad villain of plaque build-up and HDL cholesterol is the good guy.

Of course, with this hypothesis, it would make perfect sense that the higher your LDL cholesterol, the greater the chance of getting atherosclerosis.

However, there is much more to the story and my hope today is to share a different angle that will shed some light on the real issues with LDL cholesterol and its nemesis called atherosclerosis.

The Significant Role of LDL in Our Bodies

Cholesterol isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it’s the building block for creating healthy cells. It also helps your body make testosterone and estrogen. Without LDL, these and many other steroid hormones wouldn’t be made effectively

Contrary to what we have been told, LDL cholesterol also has another good side: its ability to fight infections.

LDL plays a valuable and important role in the body’s response to an assault by infectious invaders. When bacteria invade our body, they release a cell wall component known as endotoxin. What is critically important and something we will dig in deeper in this article is that endotoxins are super inflammatory and can strongly trigger the immune system.

But research has shown that your friend LDL cholesterol is around to bind up this toxin preventing things from getting out of hand.

In a study using mice it was discovered that increased levels of LDL cholesterol were eight times more resistant to endotoxins. This showed a significant decrease in overall mortality when injected with gram-negative bacteria. On the other hand, rats with the lowest LDL cholesterol had an increased rate of mortality and levels of inflammation when injected with endotoxin.

Now, if you are like me, I would be asking, what about humans?

Is there evidence that higher levels of LDL cholesterol are protective against infections in humans? In fact, many studies are proving that higher levels of LDL cholesterol are protective as we age. This is more likely due to the positive impact on the immune system.

The answer is that LDL itself is not harmful, but in certain situations, it can be involved in responding to injury and inflammation. This, of course, makes LDL look like more of a firefighter than simply a criminal causing atherosclerosis.

So the question that we must ask ourselves is: Is there something more sinister behind the scenes that are actually driving heart disease (atherosclerosis)?

As I have discussed in a prior article, the real issue is insulin sensitivity and the stickiness factor.

In people who are insulin sensitive, rising LDL levels do not correlate with increased rates of heart disease. On the other hand, the higher the LDL, the greater opportunity for plaque formation in those who are insulin resistant. Remember it is not all about elevated levels of LDL but the more important villain of insulin resistance.

What will make our head spin is the fact that higher levels of LDL in the blood do not consistently correlate with the progression of atherosclerosis in the absence of insulin resistance.

LDL Stickiness is the Real Issue

Here is the important takeaway from this important article. LDL under certain circumstances (which I will mention in a minute) can get stuck within the arterial wall. So it is not the size or amount of LDL particles moving into the arteries that is important but rather if it sticks to the wall of the artery that determines whether or not it contributes to atherosclerosis.

Here is a good analogy:

If you were to throw a tennis ball at a wall unless the tennis ball and the wall were coated in velcro, the tennis ball would not stick. So to bring it back to reality, unless the LDL particle and arterial wall (the intimal space) were sticky, it does not matter how many LDL particles we have floating around in our arteries. The LDL “balls” only get stuck to the arterial wall when they are coated in what we will call “molecular velcro.” LDL is simply not enough of a problem alone to initiate plaque build-up. The takeaway is: it has to get stuck in the arterial wall to initiate the process of atherosclerosis.

Now the magic question

What in the world determines how sticky the LDL particle and the intimal space are?

There is now growing evidence during states of insulin resistance and inflammation that both the LDL particle and the arterial wall get coated in “molecular velcro” making everything more sticky, increasing atherosclerosis progression.

You may now be asking: really, how common is insulin resistance?

Would you believe that a massive 88 percent of the American population has some degree of metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance)?

So to conclude: 

In the absence of insulin resistance and inflammation, higher levels of LDL cholesterol are probably protective because of their roles in the immune response.

The Trail Out of Diabetes, Blood Pressure, Heart Disease & Obesity

In many cases, there may be a way to prevent future damage to your life from your diagnosis.

It is NOT an “easy way out,” however.

If you possess some grit, determination, and self-discipline, if you are very upset with your diagnosis, and if you want a do-over on what the rest of your life may hold in store: read on.

I’ve found that diabetes, blood pressure, and heart disease can be confusing for many of my patients. These diagnoses can be terrifying, but at the same time, you may not have many (or any) symptoms directly related to the diseases. Often, patients have seemingly-unrelated symptoms that are making them miserable (joint pain, allergies, digestive problems, etc.), but the “pre-diabetes” or “high blood pressure” or “heart disease” aren’t directly producing much obvious trouble.

Most people in the US die from one or more of these illnesses, so your fear and upset with your diagnosis are correctly placed. “Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Diseases” CDC

Here are the basic facts you must know if you would prefer to live a long and active life without fear of disease.

• For these diseases, medical treatment is limited to drugs to try to manage the disease process. There is no “cure.” If you’ve asked, your doctor will have told you that your only option is drug management and dietary changes to help you live as long as possible, but that the diseases are life-long.
• I have worked with these cases for 27 years, and my experience has been extremely positive. Most patients respond very well to lifestyle changes and support to assist their bodies to heal themselves. Diabetes lab tests may become healthy, blood pressure and cholesterol drugs may no longer be needed; the weight comes off, etc. I don’t treat the disease. Instead, I support the body’s self-healing processes to help it overcome stress and heal itself.
• These diseases continuously cause damage to your body, so the sooner you begin the process of recovery, the more successful you are likely to be.
• To be successful, you’ll have to be dedicated and willing to go the long-haul. Helping your body to heal from these conditions isn’t easy or quick.

Understanding the Causes

These diseases carry a stigma of a poor or unhealthy lifestyle. Your doctor may even “blame” you for getting sick. “It’s all that extra weight I’ve been telling you to get rid of that’s causing your diabetes.”

No one will blame you for getting the flu or a cold. But with chronic illness, there’s an element of personal responsibility. You ate too much junk food, failed to exercise, drank too much alcohol, and now look what’s happened to you.

The truth is that this “personal responsibility” is mostly fiction. We live in a world where most of the available food is disease-causing. We’re bombarded nonstop with food-fiction designed to entice us into eating destructive foods and eating volumes more than we should. Our government supports and condones the sale of these foods, which are deliberately designed to be biologically addictive.

Chronic disease is supposed to be “non-communicable” in that it’s not passed on by bacteria or virus from one person to another. The science on this is quite a different story. You’re much more likely to be overweight if your family and friends are overweight.(1) Where you live is one of the most statistically important factors in whether you have a chronic disease, even more important than your genetics.(2) Culture plays a huge role in chronic disease, as is evidenced by comparing chronic disease in Europe vs. the US. Europeans have dramatically less heart disease, for example than Americans.

Non-communicable chronic diseases are, it turns out, highly infectious.

What Happens

The single most significant cause of chronic disease is our “industrial diet.” Our food is loaded with processed grains, sugars, starches, and refined fats. As you continue to eat quicky-absorbed sugars and bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, the systems in your body designed to handle sugar begin to fail.

Most of the food you eat is broken down by your body into sugars. These sugars are moved into your cells by the hormone insulin. Insulin moves the sugar out of your blood and into your cells, where they produce your energy. If this system is overloaded by the high sugar and carbohydrate content of your diet, over a long period, you’ll develop “insulin resistance.” Now your cells require more insulin to absorb the same amount of sugar. As the insulin resistance increases, it eventually requires more insulin than your pancreas can manufacture to absorb your sugar. At this point, the sugar begins to build up in your bloodstream, causing inflammation, kidney stress, nervous system damage, weight gain, and many more chronic problems.

The first sign that you have a problem is not your blood sugar; it’s a high level of insulin. High insulin will make your body deteriorate. Insulin resistance leads to premature aging, along with heart disease, stroke, cancer, and dementia. High insulin causes weight gain in the belly area, unhealthy appetite, high cholesterol, low HDL, high triglycerides, thickening of the blood, and increased risk of cancer, Alzheimer’s, and depression.

The Solution

Undoing the dietary causes of these diseases is a significant part of recovering from them. However, if you’ve tried to do this in the past, you may know the difficulty involved. You’ll need a plan, a program, and a team to work with to be successful with permanent diet and lifestyle changes.

Changing your diet is essential, but only about 30% of what you’ll need to do to recover.

The rest of your healing will depend on accurate information and testing to be effective. Despite the uniformity of medical treatment for these diseases, each person develops similar symptoms from different sources. To be successful, you will need to do a treatment program that is individualized and based on accurate testing.

Clinical nutrition is essential in helping your body to heal and rebuild damaged tissue. Cells are made of nutrition (food), so providing the exact “replacement parts” needed in the required quality and quantity is a vital requirement for healing.

A major reason your body can’t heal from a chronic condition is excessive stress. It’s like cutting your finger and not bandaging it; the dirt gets in the cut, and infection sets in, which prevents healing. The bandage reduces the stress on the wound so that the body can heal normally. In your body, stress from bacteria, virus, fungus, toxins, allergies, metals, etc. can prevent healing from occurring, even when clinical nutrition is used. These stressors must be identified with testing and labs, then natural means of reducing the stress can be used (acupressure, homeopathy, supplements, herbs, etc.)

References:

[1] Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Jul 26;357(4):370-9.

[2] Graham GN. Why your zip code matters more than your genetic code: Promoting healthy outcomes from mother to child. Breastfeed Med. 2016 Oct;11:396-7.

Insulin Resistance– More Dangerous Than High Cholesterol

Contrary to what most people have been told, elevated cholesterol is not the villain it has been made out to be. 

Unfortunately, many people are chasing the wrong criminal when it comes to improving health outcomes.

The medical literature is exploding with the dangers of insulin resistance in increasing cardiovascular disease and other disease entities.

It is reported that chronic insulin resistance is also associated with various types of cancer such as colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, endometrial cancer, and breast cancer.

Insulin resistance is when cells in your muscles, fat, and liver don’t respond well to insulin and can’t use glucose from your blood for energy. To make up for it, your pancreas makes more insulin. Over time, your blood sugar levels go up.

Some signs of insulin resistance include:

• A waistline over 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women
• Blood pressure readings of 130/80 or higher
• A fasting glucose level over 100 mg/dL
• A fasting triglyceride level over 150 mg/dL
• Fasting insulin greater than 6
• A HDL cholesterol level under 40 mg/dL in men and 50 mg/dL in women
• Skin tags
• Patches of dark, velvety skin called acanthosis nigricans

Effective Treatment for Insulin Resistance

Carbohydrates such as simple sugars, grains, and starchy vegetables should be avoided as they stimulate insulin secretion. They should be replaced with higher protein-containing foods and non-starchy vegetables.

Adequate vitamin D intake

Aerobic and resistance training–High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been found to be superior to low-intensity cardio. Of course, I suggest that people completely out of shape work their way up to HIIT. Start out slow. Some exercise is better than none.

Get adequate sleep.

Reduce stress– meditation is recommended.

Get adequate magnesium intake.

Take Berberine supplementation.

Conclusion

I recommend one take insulin resistance very seriously. The implications of being associated with increased cardiovascular disease and cancer are overwhelming. The following robust list of peer-reviewed citations should be reviewed. I have provided above a good starting point in reversing insulin resistance.

Ronald Grisanti D.C., D.A.B.C.O., DACBN, MS, CFMP