Tag Archive for: cholesterol

PQQ: Miracle in a Bottle

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The latest cure for your health problems has arrived. I know—I just watched the online infomercial. Or do they call it advertainment now?

It was presented by a cardiologist who is well respected in his field. The topic was arterial inflammation, AKA the cardiac killer, and what you could do about it. I was in.

What I saw were the “facts” about heart disease. Using an artist printing and drawing on a whiteboard with a voice over, I learned:

  • Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the number one killer.
  • The Framingham Study gave . . .

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Raising HDL: Weight Loss

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Before I finish up this week’s look at HDL cholesterol, I want to wish every mother a Happy Mother’s Day. I hope it’s a great day with your children.

The number one way to increase HDL cholesterol is to lose weight. Losing fat helps increase HDL levels while simultaneously lowering LDL cholesterol. We still don’t know precisely why, but there’s really nothing debatable about it.

I’ll give you my theory of why weight loss helps raise HDL cholesterol. In order to lose weight, you have to eat less and/or move more; more than . . .

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Raising HDL: Exercise

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For many years—even back when I was a graduate student—we’ve known that one of the benefits of regular aerobic exercise is increased levels of HDL cholesterol, AKA the healthy cholesterol. If you want to increase your HDL, you should exercise regularly.

There are still many questions that need to be answered. What is the best type of exercise: aerobic or resistance training? How intense does the exercise have to be? Is walking intense enough or does it have to be faster? There are more questions, but you get the idea.

The reason we don’t know is . . .

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Why You Should Raise Your Cholesterol

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Would you like to have a vacuum cleaner that sucks out the cholesterol from the plaque in your arteries? You would? Well, all right! That vacuum cleaner is called HDL-cholesterol, AKA the good or the healthy cholesterol. The problem is that most people, especially men, don’t have enough. Before we get to ways you can improve it, let me explain how it works as simply as possible.

HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein and indicates that the molecule is denser than other lipoproteins such as LDL. Adding the word cholesterol means that it carries cholesterol. The question is . . .

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Health Habits: Just Do Better

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Let’s finish up our look at the recent paper that concluded we’re doing poorly when it comes to our health habits (1). If you thought smoking and exercise were underwhelming, today we’ll look at diet and body fat.

When it comes to following the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines, just under 38% hit that goal. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years, and this isn’t a debate over what constitutes a good diet. While we are doing somewhat better, adults do not eat enough vegetables, fruits, or beans, and we still . . .

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Why Now?

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In the last two messages, I’ve challenged you not to waste the entire month of December before changing to a healthier lifestyle after January 1st. Why now? Why didn’t I just wait until the New Year when everyone is “ready”? Maybe the latest report from the CDC will put things in perspective.

Researchers from the CDC and Emory University analyzed data from NHANES studies conducted between 2005 and 2012. They were interested in finding out how many people with high LDL cholesterol were taking medication and making lifestyle changes. There were a lot of results reported in the . . .

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Drinking Your Phytonutrients: The Bottom Line

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To finish this series, I’ll briefly cover two recent research studies on coffee and tea, and then give you the bottom line and a recipe.
 
Research
Green Tea and Neuronal Mitochondria
The mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cells, and that includes brain cells. When they operate at peak activity, they provide our brains with the energy for learning and memory. The downside is that they produce many free radicals in the process, and if we don’t have antioxidants to quench those free radicals, it can cause a decline in mental function. Researchers have recently . . .

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The Battle of Fat vs. Carb

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Sometimes I just can’t let go. Such is the case with this diet debate of fat versus carbohydrate. I’m going to address both of these questions this week. It won’t end the debate, but at least you’ll have the facts.

The debate comes down to two separate but related questions:

  • Does a diet high in saturated fat contribute to heart disease?
  • Is the high-carbohydrate and low-fat diet recommended by the USDA the cause of the obesity epidemic?

Let’s begin with scientific evidence that a high-fat diet . . .

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Keeping Track of Life’s Simple 7

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To complete American Heart Month, here’s an easy way to track your heart health called Life’s Simple 7 (LS7), developed by the American Heart Association. LS7 has been around since 2010 but it escaped my attention until recently. For those of you who like to track your progress to see how you’re doing, this is a great tool; you may remember I mentioned it last month, but I think you need the details to really understand how LS7 can work for you.

There are seven different categories of variables to track, hence the name Life’s Simple . . .

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The Link Between Fat Intake and Heart Disease

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The second batch of headlines I referred to Tuesday related to an article published in the journal Open Heart (1). The study was a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials done before the dietary guidelines on fat were put in place in 1977. The studies analyzed showed no reduction of heart disease when subjects were placed on a low-fat diet; therefore the current study’s authors concluded that the original low-fat recommendations in the 1970s had no scientific basis.

Sorry, but we didn’t need randomized controlled trials in this case—and here’s why.

In the late . . .

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