High Cholesterol, Heart Disease - And You.

High cholesterol is linked with increased risk of heart disease – a major killer in western countries. But it’s also vital for normal health. Is a low cholesterol diet a good idea?

Cholesterol is a type of fat produced in your liver. The amount of cholesterol in your blood is nothing to do with how much of it you eat, though there are foods that help to lower your cholesterol levels.

Though high cholesterol is a danger sign, cholesterol is vital to normal health. Your body uses it to make hormones (including testosterone), vitamin D and bile. Cholesterol levels should not be too high or too low.

If cholesterol is necessary, why does it become dangerous? Its because cholesterol forms the plaque that thickens and hardens the walls of your arteries. This thickening (known as atherosclerosis) narrows the arteries, restricting the flow of blood and increasing blood pressure – leading to a risk of heart attack.

Doctors prescribe statins to block the production of cholesterol in your liver, and aspirin to thin your blood so it can flow better through the narrower arteries. Where the arteries supplying your heart itself are severely blocked, they might recommend heart bypass surgery to replace the damaged arteries.

Is this really a logical response to high cholesterol?

Rather than finding ways to reduce the cholesterol, it’s better to ask, why has your body started making too much of it and blocking your arteries with it?

Everything in nature has a reason. Cholesterol is deposited as plaque on the artery walls to patch them up where they have become thin and weak. This weakness is due to vitamin C deficiency. Vitamin C is needed to build connective tissue in your body. Much of your body is connective tissue – it forms blood, lymph, bone, cartilage, tendons and ligaments. Your skin and mucous membranes (the lining of your insides) are also largely connective tissue. Without vitamin C this connective tissue quickly weakens, causing scurvy – the deficiency disease that used to kill so many sailors.

Nowhere is there as much pressure on connective tissue as in your arteries, because of the force of blood pumping through. Your body’s emergency reaction, to prevent internal bleeding, is to patch up the artery walls with cholesterol.

Knowing this, it’s clear that the best treatment for high cholesterol is better nutrition combined with nutritional supplements. Vitamin C supplements alone reduce the risk of heart disease by 50%. Vitamin C works even better to protect your heart if you take other vitamins as well, specially vitamins A and E. For a healthy heart, eat a diet which gives you enough of all the vitamins and minerals that you need.

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