The Greatest Sideshow On Earth
Focusing on your blood cholesterol level is probably one of the greatest medical sideshows in history. Elevated levels of cholesterol is a symptom of
- a body under stress
- a body that is inflamed
- a body suffering from a high level of insulin in the system due to a high garbohydrate diet
- an under-stimulated elimination system that can’t get out of your body the waste products of your own metabolism and a toxic environment
- a body that’s massively under-exercised
- a low fibre diet
- insufficient vitamin C, which may be the precursor of the high level of inflammation around the body.
Fix them and the cholesterol will look after itself
Cholesterol is a white waxy substance. 70% of the cholesterol in our bodies is produced in the liver from what ever food we eat, carbohydrates as well as fats. The other 30% is taken into the digestive system, principally in foods containing saturated fat.
The body needs cholesterol in optimal amounts for the efficient operation of cell membranes. Too much of it is a symptom of high blood insulin levels and inflammation, particularly around the arteries of the heart.
The cholesterol build up is driven by the need to cover up the inflammation. Lowering it by taking a drug is a fraud, because it doesn’t treat the underlying hyper insulinism or inflammation. So much for medical research.
The other way of looking at it is that high blood cholesterol levels are a sign of poor health. The remedy? Start doing the things that bring you back to good health – a good diet, a good exercise program and a stress reduction program.
An elevated cholesterol level is telling you to do something to modify your lifestyle. It’s not telling you to take a cholesterol lowering statin drug.
So, what do you need to do to restore your body to good health?
- Get yourself a decent aerobic exercise program
- Star meditating
- Eat from the top of the Hourglass
- Add psyllium husk to your diet
- Eat more vitamin C. I’m reluctant to prescribe the amount, but Linus Pauling used to eat 20,000mg (20 grams) each day such was his belief in the importance of getting enough of it.
To simply focus on the intake side of the equation is to miss the point.
To take a statin to lower it also misses the point. Elevated levels of cholesterol are not due to a lack of statins. Taking them is just another example of medical-pharmaceutical hoax that thinks its a smart idea to mask the symptoms of a body system dysfunction with a pill, instead of encouraging people to make the lifestyle changes needed to restore the total ecosystem to good function.
Cholesterol is one of several categories of blood lipids and is transported in the blood stream by other blood lipids of which there are three principal types:
- low density lipoprotein (LDL) and
- high density lipoprotein (HDL)
- triglycerides (more about them later)
Cholesterol Screening
A blood analysis of cholesterol level is usually a screening of the blood for both HDL and LDL. A score over 5.5mmol/l is usually an indication that the concentration of the LDL (bad) is too high. A pathology sample can then be done to determine whether this is the case. In some cases it is a higher than normal concentration of HDL (good) which has elevated the total cholesterol result, in which case you’re OK.
The Usual Treatment
The most common treatment in the Western world is to take a tablet which masks the symptoms. In fact cholesterol and triglyceride lowering tablets have reached the top of the pharmaceutical benefits list. It is a strange situation of a government to subsidize a treatment in view of the fact that Nathan Pritikin lowered his from 7.7mmol/l to 2.5mmol/l through diet and exercise!
But it’s not the only move, because taking the tablet does not treat the causes of the dysfunction. And, of course one must also keep in mind Lao Tzu’s dictum that big problems could have been solved easily when they were small problems. If your cholesterol is mildly elevated, start doing things now to stop it getting more elevated in the future.
If you have to keep on with the tablet you can be pretty sure your lifestyle hasn’t changed sufficiently to clean up the bad health habits that started the dysfunction off in the first place.
What You Can Do
1. Stimulate the elimination system with exercise
Develop a high density exercise routine.
Exercise has a two-fold benefit for people with high cholesterol levels. It stimulates the elimination system and as an effective de-stressing agent.
Exercise with vigor, continuously for 40 minutes each day. Start running, or swimming get on the stepper or climber, get a good sweat up. Your pulse rate should be over 130 for most of the time you are exercising. Ambling around the block, or walking around your office for ten minutes three times a day won’t have much effect.
The vigorous physical activity will burn off the chemicals that over-stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. This will help to de-stress your body.
Use Aerabytes as a way of measuring the time and intensity of your aerobic workouts. You’ll need a copy of our aerobic activity diary to know what we’re talking about. You’ll need 1,000 or more herbs a week to keep yourself in great shape.
2. Stimulate the elimination system with a high fibre diet
Eat a high fibre diet. The excess cholesterol which enters the stomach through the bile duct combines with the fibre and goes down the drain. I recommend a high fibre supplement. That means adding psyllium husk and/or raw oat bran to your diet. It means plenty of vegetables and fruit. White bread, pasta and rice are not high enough in fibre to do the trick.
The best way I’ve found to introduce the high fibre supplement into my diet is putting it in with the thickshake from heaven.
3. Eat foods which stimulate the liver back into normal function, particularly celery, carrot and parsley.
Here is my recipe for the thick shake from heaven
- place into your blender a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables — carrot, parsley, celery, cucumber, broccoli, pear, apple, orange …
- add some high fibre supplement (psyllium husk, raw oat bran, lecithin and flaxseed) to get yourself moving quicker on the inside and help lower your cholesterol level
- add a couple of heaped table spoons of whey protein from dairy or soy sources.
- add fresh juice.
If you use these as meals (and I can guarantee that each one is a decent meal when you take into account the amount of fruit and vegetable), you’ll soon find yourself losing weight. You’re cholesterol level will decline.
Read Sandra Cabot’s books on liver cleansing — The Liver Cleansing Diet and The Healthy Liver and Bowel Book.
Better still get Protein Power, by Michael Eades. This is the most authoratative, easy to read book on the subject I’ve seen. His thesis: – lower your insulin level and you’ll lower your cholesterol level. The high level of insulin is the root cause of your high cholesterol level.
4. Meditate
Meditate on a daily basis to de-stress your body by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. When you do this muscles relax and blood vessels dilate to the very core of your body. Blood pressure comes down. Adrenal cortex activity is reduced. Cholesterol production is reduced.
5. Attain and maintain your ideal weight.
Eat from the top of the Hourglass. You’ll become thinner. Being fat, of course, is a symptom of an under-stimulated elimination system.
6. Eat the right food at the right time.
Lay off the starch and sugar. Treat ‘low GI foods’ as foods with a GI below 40. That will rid you of must of the junk foods that contain starch and sugar.
Eat a decent diet comprised of low density carbohydrates, ie vegetables and fruit, (particularly those you don’t have to cook to eat) and protein, especially fish. If you eat this way the fat will look after itself. You need to have a high fibre supplement to keep things moving on the inside.
7. Eat the right amount of food.
For instance half a dozen slices of bread each day can add and extra 1000 calories to your food intake. Far from doing you good, too much of some of the foods you’ve been told to eat more of are making you fatter. The same goes for pasta. Your fat guts may well be a starch guts.
8. Stop eating the wrong food and the wrong time.
Take your focus away from the foods at the bottom of the hourglass. If you eat from the bottom of the Hourglass you’ll become fatter.
- the high density carbohydrates — especially white flour-based products (bread, pasta and breakfast cereals) white rice, potato … The great tendency is to eat too much of these starches. Once they enter the body they are quickly converted into sugar. Sooner or later, and if you eat too much, they turn into fat.
- sugar — soft drinks, licorice, lollies
- fat and starch — pizza, chips, pasta (when it’s labelled carbonara) dry biscuits, bead and butter (and peanut butter)
- fat and sugar — ice cream, chocolate, fudge
- sugar and starch — most of the popular packaged breakfast cereals (which can contain over 40% raw sugar)
- fat, sugar and starch — biscuits, cake, pastries …
9. Take a holiday that involves at least 21 days away from home
10. Use up all your accrued annual leave
and long service leave and dedicate the time to getting fit.
11. Undertake a course of personal development
and counseling to get your mind back focussed on your Self and your health
12. Boost your intake of vitamin C, nature’s anti-inflammatory.
Linus Pauling took 20gms a day for most of his life. You could try doing the same and see what happened to your cholesterol level.