maandag 16 december 2013

How arteries get clogged up

An interesting article opened my eyes. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/11/statin-nation.aspx

How do people get coronary heart disease? Due to an increased consumption of sugar, the risk of inflammation goes up. The arteries will get damaged by the high concentration of sugar. The damaged arteries need to follow an automatic cell repair mechanism. As all cell membranes consist of cholesterol, the repairing of these damaged cells will need cholesterol. The liver will produce this extra cholesterol, so the cholesterol concentration in the blood will go up.

When the cells of the arteries (endothelium) get fixed, this will form a scar on the arteries. It's this scar that will cause narrowing of the arteries along with the cholesterol that is used to repair the cells. It's therefore very important to have good cholesterol HDL in your blood, because bad cholesterol LDL will cause plaque.

But the primary cause of coronary heart disease is not cholesterol, it's inflammation due to high blood sugar. In fact low cholesterol induces heart disease, because a deficiency in cholesterol means a deficiency of cholesterol sulphate. A low level of cholesterol sulphate, which has a negative charge, will make blood more positively charged. Positive charged blood is prone to blood clotting as it is thicker. So actually you need more cholesterol to get the blood thinner. Of course you also need sulfur which can be found in eggs, coconut oil, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, kale, ... Especially old people who are deficient in sulfur need to eat this. Otherwise the sulfur will be extracted from the bones, which causes arthritis.

I hope this enlightens your view on cholesterol. Eating too many eggs is not bad for you.