New Guidelines: Cholesterol Should Be On Everyone's Radar, Beginning Early In Life

[Mito]

Even the AMA has come around to the view that cholesterol is okay. One of Peat's main points is that PUFAs are damaging, not saturated fats.

The AMA has only come around on the view that dietary cholesterol is okay because they realized that dietary cholesterol is not that well absorbed and is an insignificant amount relative to the the amount of cholesterol we produce endogenously. They still view serum LDL as bad, hence their support of the new guidelines in the OP.

 

[yerrag]

In Ray Peat's Novermber 2018 newsletter :

Although healthy tissues usually produce enough cholesterol for their own needs, the glands that secrete large amounts of steroid hormones take up considerable amounts of cholesterol from the blood, absorbing low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in proportion to their need. In an experiment with blood-perfused ovaries, it was found that the amount of progesterone secreted varied with the amount of LDL cholesterol in the blood. The increased serum cholesterol in stress is an important protective adaptation.

Wanted to add this to the discussion to put LDL in a better light. Since, as mito explains, the risk of oxidized LDL is with PUFA, and if the risk is minimized when we avoid PUFAs, non-PUFA eaters would be happy to have LDL, as it is needed for the production of steroid hormones.

 

[Mito]

In Ray Peat's Novermber 2018 newsletter :

Although healthy tissues usually produce enough cholesterol for their own needs, the glands that secrete large amounts of steroid hormones take up considerable amounts of cholesterol from the blood, absorbing low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in proportion to their need. In an experiment with blood-perfused ovaries, it was found that the amount of progesterone secreted varied with the amount of LDL cholesterol in the blood. The increased serum cholesterol in stress is an important protective adaptation.

This is an important distinction from the typical mainstream thinking doctors that want to justify prescribing cholesterol lowering drugs. The mainstream view is that serum cholesterol should be as low as possible to lower the risk of CVD. They justify it by arguing that serum cholesterol is not needed for steroid hormones or the many other cholesterol dependent tissue functions. The argument is that any bodily tissue that needs cholesterol will just synthesize as much as it needs.

In that newsletter quote, Peat is arguing that serum cholesterol is needed to supplement the cholesterol being produced by the local tissues, but he also points out that this is a stress adaptation. If this is the case, then it would obviously be dangerous to artificially lower cholesterol since the body is using it to help your body adapt to stress. However it also implies that a healthy person would not have high cholesterol because their local tissues are healthy enough to synthesize enough cholesterol so there is no need for serum cholesterol to supplement the local tissue production.

 

[yerrag]

This is an important distinction from the typical mainstream thinking doctors that want to justify prescribing cholesterol lowering drugs. The mainstream view is that serum cholesterol should be as low as possible to lower the risk of CVD. They justify it by arguing that serum cholesterol is not needed for steroid hormones or the many other cholesterol dependent tissue functions. The argument is that any bodily tissue that needs cholesterol will just synthesize as much as it needs.

In that newsletter quote, Peat is arguing that serum cholesterol is needed to supplement the cholesterol being produced by the local tissues, but he also points out that this is a stress adaptation. If this is the case, then it would obviously be dangerous to artificially lower cholesterol since the body is using it to help your body adapt to stress. However it also implies that a healthy person would not have high cholesterol because their local tissues are healthy enough to synthesize enough cholesterol so there is no need for serum cholesterol to supplement the local tissue production.

Very good points. That explains why Ray Peat says the elderly people get protection from higher cholesterol in their blood. This is what he wrote in the Nov 2018 newsletter:

In a study of several hundred people in the seventies, it was found that in those whose baseline total cholesterol was 195-244 mg/dL, "...each 10-mg/dL increase in the 1988-1991 change in non-HDL-C was associated with an adjusted mortality odds ratio (OR) of 0.67..." (Karlamangla et al, 2004)

 

[Rafe]

Thanks for that Matthias Rath talk @Queequeg
“If you are convinced of something then you have to tell people about it, otherwise they don’t know who you are.”

It kept me up past my bedtime but it was completely worth it. That’s a real jewel there.

 

[TeaRex14]

I guess they wouldn't like me too much then, lol. I specifically make sure I eat high amounts of sugar and get plenty of dietary choline so my body can basically produce an unlimited amount of cholesterol.

 

[GelatinGoblin]

I've read this thread with interest. Based on this article by Ray Cholesterol, longevity, intelligence, and health. and just thinking about why heart disease is so prevalent, my present intuition is that heart disease is caused by inflammation and the primary source for that is PUFA.

Statins do not make sense to me anymore and Ray does not hold them in high esteem. It seems that cholesterol is a healthy substance even though elevated levels and particle sizes my indicate an underlying inflammatory issue. Genetic arguments do not make sense to me either other than some people may be able to consume higher amounts of inflammatory substances (due to some type of genetic protective factor?) without necessarily suffering the severe health consequences as much as someone else. For instance, we've all heard of outlier cases where some person lived to be 100 years old yet smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day. For most of us, smoking leads to cancer.

I watched Dr. Rath's video in the quoted material above and he along with the late Linus Pauling are advocating a different approach where the focus is on lipoprotein A rather than LDL. They've conducted some impressive science and it is convincing that there may be a link between vitamin C and heart disease.

My question and reason for writing this is the Pauling/Rath therapy requires massive if not ridiculous amounts of vitamin C. I still wonder if the fundamental question is being asked by either the Statin people or the Pauling people. Why would statin therapy or massive vitamin C therapy be necessary in the first place - assuming people are getting normal amounts of healthy vitamins/nutrients in their diet to begin with? What is it that is making some of us very sick and why would such therapies even be necessary if we understood the underlying causes? That is a rhetorical question and I believe the answer lies in the inflammatory substances, like PUFA and others, that many of us have been consuming for much of our lives.

All that said, if you follow Ray's advice, there is some natural correlation, through natural substances to the Pauling/Rath therapy. For example, if you follow Ray's guidelines and consume say 100G of protein a day, you will get more than enough of either Lysine or Proline to satisfy that portion of the protocol. I looked at my protein consumption yesterday for example with four glasses of milk (32g protein), four tablespoons of Now Beef Gelatin (36g protein), and 24G of protein from a hamburger. According to my estimates, I had approximately 7.1g of Lysine and 9.3g of Proline which more that satisfies the protocol (if my calculations are correct).

Now the tricky part and my ultimate question. Ray says he consumes anywhere between a pint and a quart of OJ per day (other places he says even more) which would give him from about 250mg to 500mg or more of vitamin C per day. I had four glasses of OJ plus other fruit yesterday for about 550mg, for example. I've read many sources that say the industrialized/commercialized vitamin C in supplement form is often an overload to the system and much of it is excreted in the urine. Also, Ray talks about the supplement form as being possibly disruptive to our bowels. Thus, someone trying to take their 6g/day (or more) according to Pauling/Rath protocol - how much of it is actually bioavailable? My intuition tells me that 250mg to about 500mg a day from natural sources ought to be enough but would like others to chime in on this if possible. Is it possible 6g is the amount needed from supplements in order for our bodies to get the desired amount - assuming there is validity to the Pauling/Rath protocol?

Great post.
It seems that beyond a certain oral dosage of Vit. C it becomes less effective ( I.E a 50mg dosage is more effective than a 500mg dosage per mg for raising Serum Vit. C), from what I've gathered Vit. C is most absorbed per mg when given at between 30mg-180mg as 90% gets absorbed, but at higher doses the absorption falls to about 40% if you take a 1g oral dose for example.
This is one of the things that discredit Pauling if you don't look at the full picture. Our bodies can't absorb that interms of supplementing GRAMS, if we needed that much our body would have a mechanism to aid in its absorption, because if we take that much it basically turns into a laxative.
Perhaps if I looked at it from another point-of-view I would find some sufficiant evidence to support it, but it's much easier to find a reason to rule something out rather than research it and come to a conclusion.