RSS Feed
Add to Google
My Yahoo
TwitterLower Cholesterol with Wine
OK, listen. French people eat tons of saturated fat. French people drink lots of wine, mostly red. And French people have low rates of cardiovscaulr disease. This chain of effects as resulted in the conclusion that drinking red wine helps prevent cardiovascular disease.
Up crops resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine at much higher levels than it’s found in other types of alcohol. Another conclusion is drawn: resveratrol prevents cardiovascular disease. But there’s more to the story.
Wines high in resveratrol also tend to be high in flavonoids as well. Flavonoids are also found in chocolate, catechins in tea, walnuts, pomegranates, dark beers such as stouts and porters, and pycnogenol (pine bark extract) and are suspected to block oxidation of LDL (preventing its entry into plaque), normalize abnormal endothelial constriction (related to constriction of blood vessals), and offer platelet-blocking effects (which can prevent blood clots). All good stuff
Studies have also proven that a moderate amount of alcohol (no more than 2-3 drinks a day) of any kind raises HDL levels.
So the straight scoop is that wine doesn’t lower cholesteral. Red wines (and only some, not all) contain chemicals that are known to have a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels, but it’s not an effect you can’t get from other sources. Drinking 2-3 servings of any alcohol has a positive impact on the overall cholesterol profile, but if you’re someone with a poor cholesterol profile, adding a glass or two of red wine a day isn’t going to make a significant difference.
Start with the big stuff first – sugar, grains (no bread, rice, pasta, etc.), and processed carbohydrates (as in don’t eat that stuff). The jury is still out on dairy, as some recent test show full fat dairy might actually be beneficial.
Once you get that stuff under control, if you want to reward yourself with a nice glass of Merlot ot a pint of stout, have at it.
What to do to Lower Cholesterol
If you have high cholesterol, then there are some additional factors you need to look at: your HDL, LDL and Cholesterol to HDL ratio (Cholesterol divided by HDL).
Cholesterol and your cholesterol ratio are used as risk indicators, but they aren’t fool-proof. If your cholesterol is 200 or lower, chances are your risk factor is probably in the normal range. With a reading of 200 or lower, your doctor probaby won’t dig any deeper, although even with a 200 or lower cholesterol, it’s possible to have other readings that indicate some increased risk. I recommend you always do a full profile to get your HDL, LDL and triglycerides too.
HDL: The ‘good’ cholesterol, the high density lipo-protein particles that act as scrubbers to keep the low density lipoprotein (LDL) particles out of the blood. For a man, you want your HDL to be at least 40. For women, 50. If your HDL is lower than that, you could be at increased risk. If you can get your HDL higher than 60, that’s good, as HDL higher than 60 has been proven to actually give some protection against heart disease.
Cholesterol/HDL Ratio: Works like this: if your cholesterol is 200 and your HDL is 50, then your ratio would be 4 to 1. If your ratio is 4 to 1 (or better), then your risk factor is normal or even better than normal (the lower the better).
LDL: This is the bad stuff, the gunk that sticks to the inside of your arteries. The less you have of this, the better. Your LDL level is actually a better predictor of risk than your total cholesterol. You want your LDL to be 100 or lower.
HDL/LDL Ratio: Since LDL is such a good indicator of risk, this is yet another number that’s worth looking at. What’s your ratio of good stuff to bad stuff? If you have HDL of 50 LDL of 150 , then your number would be 50/150, which equals .33. Your goal here is to be .4 or higher. The higher the better. My last number here was 69HDL/128LDL = .54 – pretty good!
Lowering Risk Factor: When it comes to understanding your real risk factors, you need to look at all these numbers. When you ask, “What do I need to do to lower my cholesterol”, what you really mean is, “What do I need to do to reduce my heart attack and stroke risk factor.”
And how do you do you lower your risk factor? Two ways really:
- Raise HDL
- Lower LDL
I’m not going to go into the dirty details, but there are three main things you can do to accomplish 1 and 2 above.
- Diet
- Exercise
- Supplements
Diet: Eliminate processed carbs and sugar. No bread or other grains (rice), or grain based food (pasta). No startches (corn adn potatoes). No sugar (soft drinks, fruit juice, candy, etc). Drink water or unsweet tea. Limit red meat to 1 – 2 times a week, eat more fowl (chicken and turkey) and fish. Grilled not fried or baked. No potatoes. You can eat a little dark chocolate if you want. If you do fry, use olive oil.
Eat all the fruit, vegetables, and nuts you want. Peanuts are not nuts. Walnuts and almonds are best. Corn and potatoes are not vegetables, they are starches. And drink alcohol. Yes, alcohol, but no more than 2 drinks a day. Any alcohol will do; beer, wine, whiskey, whatever. Drinking 1 – 2 servings of alcohol a day raises HDL and lowers LDL. More than that does the opposite and is BAD.
Exercise: Do cardiovascalar exercise for a minimum 30 minutes 3x a week. The more the better here. Cardiovascular exercise is a proven method for raising HDL and lowering LDL. Cardiovascualr exercise is something that raises the heart rate to your target zone.
Quick guidelines:
- Max heart rate = 220 – Your Age
- Target heart rate = 60 to 80% of your max
If you’re really out of shape, your doctor might recommend starting around 50% of your max. It’s also recommended that you don’t exceed 85% of your max.
Walkign is exercise. Walking is not cardiovascular exercise (unless you are so out of shape that it gets your heart rate into the target zone). Riding a bike slow is not cardiovascular exercise. Rising a bike fast can be. You need to do something that gets your heart rate into the target zone. Quite arguing.
Supplements: This is based on my own experience. Your mileage may vary, but this combination worked for me. It didn’t lower my total cholesterol, but it took my HDL from the 20s into the 60s, my LDL down from a high of 170 to the 120s, and my cholesterol to HDL ratio from 10+ to 3.13 (half normal risk factor – cholesterol reading posts).
Every day, I take:
- 2,000 mg niacin
- 5,000 IU Vitamin D3
- 4,000 mg fish oil
I take half the dose in the morning, and half in the evening. My research has indicated that niacin in even larger doses (up to 5,000) can be even more beneficial.
I’ve read about some other supplements that are supposed to have a beneficial effect on your cholesterol profile(Vitamins A and K2), but I haven’t tried them yet. I will though, and when I do, I’ll write about it here.
Don’t start any exercise or supplement program without talking to your doctor!
Palm Oil and Heart Disease
Back in 1964, a study was conducted where researchers looked for heart attack indicators in thousands of autopsies in Africa nad the United States. The findings were surprising. In the African sample (Nigeria and Uguanda), they found only 3 out of more than 4,500 hearts, while the sample from the United States showed a much higher rate.
This led them to look at the diet. In Nigeria, they typical diet consists of home-processed grains, starchy root vegetables, beans, fruit, vegetables, peanuts, red palm oil, and a bit of dairy, fish and meat. Palm oil is on one of their main dietary fats.
To extract palm oil, the fruit is steamed and flesh removed and pressed to extract the oil. Like olive oil, plam oil is gently extracted from a fruit taht is richj in the oil. The resulting palm oil is deep red and might even be the most nutrient-rich fat on the planet.
Carotenes cause the red color, but red palm oil also contains a lot of vitamin E, vitamin K1, coenzyme Q10 and assorted other fat-soluble nutrients and antioxidants, which protect the fat from becoming rancid. Some of these nutrients and anti-oxidants make it into the body, where they apparently protect the body’s own fats from oxidizing.
Widespread nutritional adice is to avoid palm oil because half of the fat it contains is saturated fat, which is supposed to be the bad stuff, with common wisdom concluding saturated fat raises blood cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease. Right?
First know that there’s a difference between refined palm oil and the natural extracted red palm oil. While most studies concluding the link between palm oil and cholesterol were done with refined oil, there have been a few done with red palm oil.
Dr. Suzanna Scholtz led s study where they put 59 volunteers on diets dominated by sunflower oil, refined palm oil, or red palm oil for 4 weeks (The effect of red palm olein and refined palm olein on lipids and haemostatic factors in hyperfibrinogenaemic subjects). The results showed no difference in LDL cholesterol between sunflower oil and red palm oil groups. The red palm oil group, however, saw an marked increase in HDL. LDL and HDL both increased in the refined palm oil group compared to the sunflower oil group.
There have also been investigations into whether or not palm oil promotes hardening and thickening of the arteries. So far there has been no proof collected that palm oil promotes atherosclerosis. IN fact, in its unrefined state (red palm oil) it actually protects against atherosclerosis due to its ability to reduce oxidized LDL (oxLDL). oxLDL is a major risk factor in cardiovascular disease and a much better indicator of risk than the typically measured LDL cholesterol.
Know that atherosclerosis is only one factor in heart attack risk. Other factors include clotting tendency, plaque stability, and susceptibility to arrhythmia (irregular heart rate). Another factor most people aren’t aware of is the heart’s resistance to loss of oxygen (hypoxia).
If the heart is temporarily deprived of oxygen, the heart muscle can be damaged. Nitrites from green vegetables can protect the heart from damage and red palm oil is also protective. Red palm oil has also been proven to protects against high blood pressure in rats.
All of this research indicates red palm can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Several studies have shown that a red palm oil extract called palmvitee lowers blood lipids in humans (Lowering of serum cholesterol in hypercholesterolemic humans by tocotrienols (palmvitee), Effect of a palm-oil-vitamin E concentrate on the serum and lipoprotein lipids in humans). This protective factor seems to go away when palm oil is refined.