Why cholesterol is actually good for you.

I often get asked what causes high cholesterol and high sugar and what can be done about it. Believe it or not, the two of them are actually connected in a way and, if you fix one, chances are good you're going to fix the other. Out of the two of them, the only one you really should be concerned about, is the suger. The reality is that cholesterol itself, is NOT bad for you. In fact, your body needs it in order to function normally.

Cholesterol became a popular buzz-word round about the time that saturated fats became the enemy and low-fat diets became trendy. The best thing, according to everyone and their doctors, was to have as low cholesterol as possible. Well, like the low-fat diet, we have been misinformed! Eggs, butter, red meat, full cream dairy; they've all gotten a bad rap when it comes to our health. According to "experts", they are all just so bad for you, you need to stop eating ALL of them. Instead, you need to eat more grains and carbs. In other words, more sugar?!

Well, people are doing that and, guess what? More people are dying of heart attacks then EVER before. So how's that workin' for ya? Let's take a closer look at what cholesterol is really, and perhaps we'll have a better understanding of it.

When a woman gives birth to a baby, the first milk that her body will produce, is called colostrum.  For those who didn't know, colostrum is essential to your baby's development. It is considered your baby's first vaccine because it contains so many antibodies. It is also extremely high in cholesterol...

What?!?!?!

However, if you know what cholesterol is used for, then that would make all the sense in the world because cholesterol is used to help produce cell membranes, blood vessels, vitamin D and bile acids. You have cholesterol in your body all the time because it is helping to build it up. You can see why a baby would need it, but can you also see why YOU would need it? While a baby may have slightly more specific needs than us, we are not that different. We are still human and our bodies are always regenerating, as long as they have the tools to regenerate WITH. Take away the tools, and you are going to end up with any number of problems.

If you go to a doctor, and they tell you that you have high cholesterol, that doesn't immediately suggest that there is something wrong with you. First of all, high HDL (high density lipoprotein) which is considered the good cholesterol by conventional doctors, is indeed good, and necessary, for everyone. HDL takes excess cholesterol in your body, and transports it back to the liver. LDL (low density lipoprotein) is known as the "bad" cholesterol by conventional doctors. LDL takes cholesterol from your liver and transports it to the rest of the body. So, we can deduce from that, that both HDL and LDL are not actually cholesterol so much as "transporters" of cholesterol, right? Now, there are also TWO types of LDL: the big fluffy kind, which you don't need to worry about, and the small, dense kind, which MAY be more cause for concern and I'll explain why in a bit.

The problem is, most blood tests don't distinguish between HDL and LDL, never mind the two different types of LDL so, more than likely, the reading you are getting, is not telling you the whole story. It is one of my biggest issues with Discovery Vitality's health assessment. A finger prick test gives you the total of ALL your cholesterol levels, not a breakdown of good and bad. Penalising you points-wise, based on that, is simply incorrect and it can cause unnecessary worry as well.

If you have high cholesterol, it is a symptom of some underlying problem in your body. It ISN'T the cause of the problem. Cholesterol gets sent TO the problem areas to try and alleviate said problem. If there is inflammation in the arteries, cholesterol will be sent to the artery to help heal the inflammation. If it's successful, everything will return to normal. But, when the inflammation doesn’t subside, more cholesterol is sent and it eventually starts to accumulate around the artery. This is where the small, dense LDL will pose a problem because that's when plaque starts to form and that, as we know, is going to cause all kinds of trouble.

So you can see that cholesterol is sent to treat a problem, not to cause it. The root of the problem is actually the inflammation. What is that caused by: High levels of insulin, and high levels of insulin are caused by excessive carb (sugar) consumption, as well as excessive transfats and vegetable oil consumption. Can you see the link here between high sugar and high cholesterol? If you fix one, the other will likely balance out.

Getting a pill from your doctor isn't going to fix the problem. You knew I'd say that though;) Pills don't fix problems. They just mask symptoms. While the pill may lower your cholesterol, it won't stop the inflammation around your arteries. Whether you lower your cholesterol or not, you will STILL be sick and in danger of something going horribly wrong. The great irony is that, if you lower your cholesterol by cutting it out of your diet, or by taking pills, your body will simply MAKE its own cholesterol, because it needs it to function. If you eat cholesterol, your body won't need to compensate and so it won't make more.

So how can you fix both of these issues? It's actually so easy and, if you've read all my blog posts (if you haven't, start here and work your way through) you already have the tools! As I've said before, you really ARE what you eat. The only way you are going to lower your sugar levels, is to start eating REAL food. Cut out ALL processed foods. If you aren't sure what that means, read up here. Go through your cupboards and throw out anything that you have bought from the middle shopping aisles in a grocery store. That means all this stuff.

If it has to list ingredients on the packaging, you shouldn't be eating it. It's not real food. It's food made in a science lab and it's loaded with sugar, transfats and vegetable oils; all the things that will raise your sugar levels and cause inflammation throughout your body. The only way you are going to lower your sugar and inflammation is to go back to grass roots. Start eating good, wholesome food. That means anything that was grown in a field, the natural way, without pesticides and chemicals to make it grow faster or out of season. Eat meat or eggs or dairy from an animal that has been allowed to range free and eat its natural food rather than genetically modified grains; animals that haven't been pumped full of hormones to make them grow faster; and animals that haven't been pumped full of antibiotics to try and cure the horrible diseases they get from being held in such cramped, unhealthy quarters.

Real, organic food is not only GOOD for you, it's healing and it will heal you faster than any pill, or anything labelled as "health food", ever could. If none of this is making sense to you then I urge you to read the rest of my blog posts. I have spoken about all of this ad nauseum so it's pointless repeating myself, although I probably am anyway;) There is NOTHING else that is going to lower your sugar levels and regulate your cholesterol permanently. But remember, high cholesterol isn't a bad thing unless it is being sent out to fix a bad problem. Once you fix that problem, you lower your cholesterol to acceptable levels again, and you will be good to go! If your doctor tells you your cholesterol is high, ask them for a breakdown of the types of cholesterol. That will give you the tools you need to fix the problem IF there is a problem at all.

My advice? Fix your sugar by fixing your food intake, and you will fix yourself. Give it a try for a few weeks. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

I'll take a full cream cappucino please!

Question: What is the best way to sell a product that isn't moving off shelves and isn't popular with the public?

Answer: Call it a health food and you will see that product flying off the shelves faster than they can manufacture them.

It's sad, but true. So many of us are being fooled by clever marketing and advertising. We are actually turning our noses up at real, wholesome food, and choosing to buy processed, genetically modified foods instead, because the adverts, and sadly sometimes health professionals, tell us to.

If you can, try and cast your mind back to the time that you FIRST heard that full cream dairy was bad for you, I bet you'd struggle to actually pinpoint it or remember who it was who told you? I know you'll probably say you've read it in many magazines and newspapers, or it's something you've seen on TV, or someone said something. Did you ever question it? Or did you just go along with it because the amount of places you heard it or read it or saw it, meant that it HAD to be right? I was SO brainwashed, I actually convinced myself that cream was just gross and that I hated the taste! (I actually LOVE the taste though...)

THAT is the power of propaganda. Even our health professionals have been duped. As an exercise scientist, I am told to advise my clients to stay away from saturated fat and full cream dairy. Discovery Vitalityfoods actually subtracts points if you buy full cream dairy. It's terrifying the far reaching effects good advertising can have. These days, the amount of people who actually know the truth about full cream dairy, and saturated fats, are few and far between. Tim Noakes (read this very interesting article about him and his diet) is probably the only well-known person to actually say it in recent years. But I am trying my hardest to change that!

Did you know that, before World War 2, no-one even knew what skim milk was? People bought milk based on how creamy it was. The thicker the layer of cream on top of the milk, the better the quality, the faster it sold. Milk wasn't homogenised in those days which meant that it still formed that thick layer of cream on the top (yum!) These days, all milk (unless it's bought raw at a farmer's market) is homogenised.

In case you aren't sure what homogenisation is, it's a process where milk is raised to high temperatures and agitated and filtrated to break down the naturally occurring fat molecules that would otherwise separate and rise to the top of the milk to form cream. The process of homogenisation stops the separation from taking place and gives store bought milk its smooth appearance which most people have come to prefer. It also gives the milk a longer shelf life making it easier for manufacturers to transport it over longer distances, and also for consumers to have longer-lasting milk, once it's opened.

One of the problems with this process is that it kills off all of the many healthy enzymes in milk. But a much bigger problem is that, according to Dr Kurt Oster, the process of breaking the fat globules into such small pieces is now a leading cause of arteriosclerosis and heart disease. It's been listed as one of the top three causes of heart disease, along with transfats and chlorinated water.

You might ask, well why do they do it then? We could also ask why they make things like margarine and genetically modified cereals and other processed foods... Because they CAN,  because it makes them loads of money and because WE continue to buy them thinking we're doing the right, healthy thing.

Back to skim milk though, how exactly DID it become a health food? Well, not long after World War 2, people started moving away from butter and full cream dairy, in fact, ALL saturated fats, because some studies had apparently shown that it was linked to a growing number of heart disease cases. What they didn't pay attention to was the fact that heart disease was virtually unknown before the mid 1920's when people still loaded their food with cream and butter. Logic dictates that saturated fat couldn't possibly be the culprit when it came to heart disease, or people would have been dying from it for centuries before. It had to be something new that had been added into people's diets more recently. It's no coincidence that partially hydrogenated fats were introduced around 1921. These fats are primarily responsible for the heart disease epidemic and yet people decided to blame saturated fats anyway.

People started cutting full cream dairy out of their diets due to its high saturated fat content and skim milk became the order of the day. People the world over, bought into the scam and skim milk became the new favourite health food to buy. The great irony is that heart disease is now the number one killer and people have not gotten thinner and healthier. They've gotten fatter and sicker despite the amount of skim milk being sold each year. What does that tell us?

I don't have kids yet, but BOTH of my sisters told me, at different times, that their kids had to eat full cream dairy until they were at least 2 and that it was a struggle to find full cream yoghurt for them. Apparently full cream was essential to their development. Low fat dairy actually posed a threat to their normal development and could only be consumed after they turned 2... I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, kids were humans too. They aren't some strange breed that magically turns human at the age of 2. What they need, ADULTS also need, and vice versa. And if it's bad for kids, you can bet your bottom dollar it isn't good for adults! Who on earth comes up with this nonsense?! Full cream dairy is as essential to adults as it is to kids and that's the bottom line.

So how DOES drinking skim milk make people fatter? Well, milk, without the fat, is really just milk sugar (lactose). That means, when you drink your "healthy" glass of skim milk, you are actually just drinking a sugary drink and we know what sugar does to us... it ultimately makes us fat. Another reason is that, when you reduce the saturated fat in a person’s diet, they start eating carbs (grains and sugars primarily) to fill the gap. It's these grains and sugars that actually make you fat, not saturated fat. I've mentioned it before on this blog; since I started eating saturated fat, I have LOST body fat. It is much easier to control my eating because I no longer have cravings for sugar. I feel satiated when I eat, thanks to eating saturated fat. I am not unique. The rule applies to all of us. If you drink skim milk, you will be missing out on the satiating, blood sugar and insulin steadying affects of saturated fat. That skim milk will actually make your body automatically crave sugar and carbs (grains) to make up for the lack of them. Why else do you crave sugar and carbs when you don't eat saturated fat? It's because the body is incredibly intelligent. It is able to MAKE saturated fat out of sugars. If it is low on saturated fat, it will make you crave sugar so that it can MAKE saturated fat. Unfortunately, eating more sugar also has the horrible side effect of making you fat, not to mention the threat of diabetes and other illnesses.

Here's another frightening reason to avoid skim powdered milk in this excerpt from “Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry” from the Weston Price Foundation:

"A note on the production of skim milk powder: liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidised. Those of you who are familiar with my work know that cholesterol is your best friend; you don’t have to worry about natural cholesterol in your food; however, you do not want to eat oxidised cholesterol. Oxidised cholesterol contributes to the buildup of plaque in the arteries, to atherosclerosis. So when you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidised cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease."

A last point to make you think: farmers feed skim milk to their pigs TO MAKE THEM FAT. Seems like a paradox, doesn't it? But a farmer actually said that, if she gives her pigs full cream dairy, they eat far less, but, if she gives them low fat dairy, they want to eat all the time! The same rule applies to all grain fed animals. They have so much sugar in their diets that they feel permanently hungry and keep needing to eat. It's not normal, and it's not healthy, not for the pigs, and certainly NOT for you.

Still going to order that skinny cappuccino? I dare you to try full cream for a couple of weeks and see the difference it makes. Lower the amount of starch and grains and increase the saturated fat in your diet. It must be from a healthy, grassfed animal though. Add some raw, full cream milk, and raw butter and some free range animal fat to your diet and see if you can feel the difference. I guarantee you will.