5 Common Myths About Cholesterol and Heart Disease Busted

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

Cholesterol is the oft-misunderstood villain of heart disease. Read on for some busted myths about cholesterol and heart disease.

Is dietary cholesterol a huge problem? Should cholesterol-reducing drugs be considered essential for wellness? Will excess cholesterol lead to an early death?

These are ideas that pervade our modern understanding of cholesterol and health.

The truth about cholesterol has often been lost between research and long-held opinions, but thankfully science has made some definitive discoveries in recent years about what cholesterol is and how it actually works. It’s time to bust some myths and uncover the truth about how cholesterol really impacts your health.

How Cholesterol Became the Bad Guy

With heart disease on the rise in the 1970s, the medical community started looking for a scapegoat to tell people to avoid. People wanted a tangible way to protect themselves.

The answer became avoiding saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, and ushered in statins, or cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Unfortunately, since the advent of these as regular protocols, heart disease has become the number one killer in the world.  Clearly, something is missing in this heart-protective equation.

In 2017, new research announced that saturated fat was not, in fact, a cause of heart disease. With no correlation between saturated fat and cardiovascular problems, cholesterol’s impact came into question. Is it as bad as everyone assumed?

5 Most Common Myths About Cholesterol and Heart Disease Busted

Despite new research, long-held beliefs about health are hard to defeat. It’s still common to hear advice from doctors stating that people need to eat low-fat diets, watch their cholesterol, and eat plenty of whole grains. Drugs to lower cholesterol remain some of the most-prescribed pharmaceuticals today.

So, what is the truth behind these myths?

1. Too Much Cholesterol Will Cause Heart Disease and Heart Attacks

There is no research supporting this exact connection. But research does show that too low levels of good cholesterol might lead to heart disease and heart attack. This is because cholesterol actually serves necessary functions within the body – both the LDL and HDL kinds.

Too low levels of HDL, or too low levels of cholesterol overall, can leave the body open to damaged cells and inflammation, particularly since the HDL cholesterol transporter serves antioxidant functions within the body.

2. Too Much Cholesterol Will Shorten Your Life

Some research actually shows that older folks who have higher levels of cholesterol live as long or longer than those who have lower levels. Cholesterol is necessary in the body for cell structure, nutrient transport in and out of cells, hormone metabolism, and more, making it a requirement for health.

Because cholesterol is essential, the liver actually produces as much as 85 percent of the body’s daily needs. Even dietary cholesterol sources must be converted before use, and don’t actually impact blood cholesterol levels as much as was previously thought.

3. Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs Are Safe and Essential for Prolonging Life

Not only does research not prove that statins are safe, but a strong body of evidence supports the fact that statins cause more problems than they solve. They’ve been linked to diabetes, and cholesterol reduced by statins might potentially culminate in cancer.

Cardiovascular disease and deaths have not decreased with the increase in statin use, so even if they might be beneficial in a few cases, they’re not the wonder drug that they’ve been made out to be.

4. High Cholesterol Predicts Who Will Have Heart Attacks

While people like to have a neat and tidy way to predict whether they’re at risk for a heart attack, cholesterol isn’t the bad guy.

Cholesterol levels aren’t necessarily predictive of who will have heart attacks anyway. In fact, many people who have heart attacks don’t even have “red flag” levels of cholesterol, although they may have lower levels of HDL and higher levels of LDL.  Overall, higher cholesterol levels are actually associated with longer lifespans.

5. Saturated Fat Leads to High Cholesterol and Heart Disease

The medical community has painted pictures of saturated fat sitting solidly in the arteries, clogging them, setting the ticking time bomb for a heart attack.

Saturated fat is not associated with heart disease, and while no diet should consist of only saturated fat, modern research fails to highlight that it’s not saturated fat that is the problem, but rather a lack of omega-3 fatty acids or excessive carbohydrate intake that are the actual risk factors for cardiovascular health.

Common myths about cholesterol and heart disease – Watch these 3 videos below:

Heart health: Breaking down myths and reality

Cholesterol Myth: Here’s The Truth

Dr. Paul Mason – ‘Saturated fat is not dangerous’

While cholesterol and saturated fat aren’t the heart-clogging problems that the past few decades have led us to believe, there are other mechanisms associated with the breakdown of cardiovascular health.

Most heart disease stems from inflammation, which in some cases can be associated with elevated LDL levels, but in other cases is not.

There is no single lab test that can be used to definitively assess heart disease risk, but there are lifestyle factors that can reduce inflammation and lead to overall health and a lowered disease risk.

Avoid processed and refined foods.

They’re nutrient-poor and don’t provide your body what it needs to function optimally.

Avoid trans fats and vegetable oils.

These can lead to oxidative stress in the body, which results in inflammation. They’re also damaging for the good gut microbes needed to prevent bacterial imbalance.

Get regular exercise or movement daily.

No need for a fancy fitness plan or expensive trainer. Even if you don’t do anything beyond adding more natural movements into your daily life, you’ll be working toward reducing your inflammatory load.

Maintain a healthy sleep cycle and routine.

Ensuring a healthy seven or eight hours of sleep each night is vital for the body’s restorative processes, and without this, it can become easily stressed, inflamed, and prone to disease.

Stay hydrated.

Cells need adequate fluid levels to get their jobs done, and when we become stressed at a cellular level, inflammatory processes take over. Aim to drink half your body weight in ounces a day.

Quit sugar.

Sugar isn’t a dietary need, and even Paleo forms offer little nutritionally compared to vegetables and fruits. Sugar increases glucose, insulin resistance, and inflammation, and it can boost the bad bugs in the gut.

Get to a healthy weight.

Whether you have five pounds to lose, or more than 50, working toward an optimal weight is vital for longevity. BMI isn’t the best gauge for weight, but inflammatory markers in your blood can give clues as to what a healthy range might be.

Your doctor can test things like LDL, homocysteine, C-reactive protein, and triglycerides to help look at your body’s overall inflammatory picture, and this might help to set a better weight loss target.

Find healthy outlets for stress.

When we deal with chronic stress, inflammation takes over in the body to help us cope. Consider seeing a therapist, exercising more, practicing meditation, or focusing on other elements of self-care.

Don’t smoke cigarettes.

This one goes without saying, but some people still talk themselves into believing that they’re not really that bad. They are.

Avoid or strictly limit alcohol intake.

Alcohol in moderation might not seem like a bad thing, but it can be highly inflammatory and lead to gut disruption.

Written by Aimee McNew

Author Bio:

Aimee McNew is a Certified Nutritionist who specializes in women’s health, thyroid problems, infertility, and digestive wellness. She ate her way back to health using a Paleo diet, lost 80 pounds, and had a healthy baby after numerous miscarriages. She focuses on simple nutrition practices that promote long-lasting results.

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.

To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook

3 Calorie Myths to Ditch Immediately for Good

 

Click HERE to Discover these 80 Keto-Friendly and Healthy Slow Cooker Recipes

A calorie is a measure of energy, but beyond that, it’s not a complete picture of health. Here are the top three calorie myths, debunked.

Most dieters are eventually introduced to the “calories in, calories out” math. This is where you calculate exactly how long you needed to exercise today to “burn off” last night’s dinner.

While calories themselves are real, they are not the end-all way to measure a healthy diet. In fact, the amount of calories you eat don’t have as big of an impact as we previously thought. There are many other factors about food that matter significantly more when it comes to weight loss and nutrition.

If you’ve been driving yourself crazy trying to count calories, it’s time to loosen up. Here are the top three calorie myths that could be driving your entire weight loss plan, and how to find a better way.

What Is a Calorie?

A calorie is a way of measuring the energy in food. One calorie from food contains 4,184 Joules – which is another method of measuring energy. However, it isn’t just simple math.

Food is composed of macronutrients, micronutrients and phytonutrients that nourish the body. The calorie count of a certain food is just one small aspect of the bigger picture.

The origin of the calorie is unclear. Some argue that two men from France “invented” it in the mid-1800s while others credit a German physician; still others give credit to a chemist from France who mentioned the word as early as 1819.

A man named Wilbur Atwater brought the idea of the calorie to the U.S. in 1887 and was the starting point of nutrition science in the United States.

Calorie Myths Sabotaging Your Health

Calories may have kicked off the frenzy of nutrition science in the U.S., but they aren’t a good health foundation. These are the top calorie myths – and why they’re not true.

1. A Calorie Always Equals a Calorie

All calories are not created equal. You can’t just stick to a 1,200-calories-a-day diet and guarantee weight loss. Perhaps you’ve tried this and know it first-hand. It’s easy to become frustrated at the lack of scale response due to a hard calorie restriction.

However, basing a diet on calorie count alone is destined to fail long-term. Here’s why.

First, if you’re getting those calories from junk food, you’re going to be nutritionally deficient. The body relies on a steady stream of vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients to carefully regulate homeostasis: balance within.

If your calorie restricting diet starts putting the pinch on essential nutrients, your body will instead believe that it is in a time of famine, starved of the nutrients it needs, and will go into storage and hibernation mode.

Secondly, your body digests different food at different rates. Different metabolic pathways put certain foods to use in the body. When a pathway is efficient, the food goes right to work energizing the body. When a pathway is less efficient, some energy is lost as heat.

Plus, some foods are packed with nutritional energy, whereas others are void of vitamins and minerals. These factors impact how the body breaks them down and uses them for energy far more than the calorie count.

Both protein and carbs, for example, contain four calories per gram. However, a lot of protein calories are lost as heat while being broken down in the body. This thermic effect means that protein actually requires the body to work harder to digest it and can rev metabolism, meaning less of it is eventually stored as fat.

Carbs and fat require less energy to digest, and don’t energize the metabolism as much, so diets higher in these result in more fat storage overall.

2. Weight Loss is Simply Calories In, Calories Out

Research shows that more than 70 percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight, and over 49 percent of Americans attempted to lose weight over the past year.

If “calories in, calories out” were true, weight loss would be a simple matter of restricting calories.

Unfortunately, this myth doesn’t take into account that numerous other factors affect a person’s weight, including but not limited to:

• Hormones (stress, reproductive, thyroid)
• Stress levels
• Inflammation levels
• Environmental factors
• Health conditions or disorders
• Food allergies
• Genetics
• Side effects of prescription drugs
• Gut health, leaky gut, and the overall microbiome condition
• Digestive health and constipation
• Kidney and liver health
• Heart health
• Sleep problems
• Nutrients in the diet and/or deficiencies
• Mental health and neurotransmitters

An overweight individual can easily be doing “all the right things” for their diet, like restricting food intake and exercising each day, and still not be losing weight. It’s time that we abandoned this narrow view of obesity – it’s rarely a simple matter of self-control.

3. Exercise Only Matters Because It Burns Calories

If you’re in the mindset that calories are king, then you might be driven to exercise to lower your daily calorie count so that you can (a) eat more food or (b) lose more weight.

If your motivation to exercise is only driven by burning calories, you’re misunderstanding the human connection to physical movement.

While exercise has become a chore of today’s overworked, chronically busy society, it is a basic physical need for human health – not just to lose weight. Physical movement is not just good for weight loss but necessary for the health of our muscles, heart, digestion, and hormones.

When you shift your point of view to recognize that eating is about nourishment and exercise is vital for overall health, it becomes a lot more motivating to find natural ways to incorporate movement into your lifestyle.

Watch this calorie myths related video – Dietitians Debunk 18 Weight Loss Myths

The Bottom Line

Calories are a real measure of energy, but have very little bearing on how food is actually impacting your health. When you reduce nutrition to calories only, you lose the depth of value that both macronutrients and micronutrients have on wellness. These calorie myths oversimplify a complex topic that can’t be broken down into a basic “calories in, calories out” equation.

When it comes to losing weight, don’t feed into the calorie myths. It’s more important to focus on the foods that support healthy weight loss rather than counting calories. For more weight loss tips, check out The 10 Best Foods to Eat for Weight Loss!

Written by Aimee McNew

Author Bio:

Aimee McNew is a Certified Nutritionist who specializes in women’s health, thyroid problems, infertility, and digestive wellness. She ate her way back to health using a Paleo diet, lost 80 pounds, and had a healthy baby after numerous miscarriages. She focuses on simple nutrition practices that promote long-lasting results.

A lot of people have gotten results from the Keto diet, and enjoyed the foods that it has to offer. However, many of the people who are following this diet have a hard time finding the recipes that they need, especially ones that are quick and easy to complete.

Fortunately, Kelsey Ale, noticed this problem, and decided to do something about it. She’s found that making recipes in a slow cooker gives you meals which are not only delicious, but also take very little time to make. Mostly you just put a few simple ingredients in the slow cooker, and let it do the rest.

To find out more, click on – Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook