LDL cholesterol is bad… or is it really?
If your total cholesterol is high, you need to seriously worry about your cardiovascular health!
This is true… Or, is it? The answer to this question will surprise you.
Read on..
Total cholesterol is a measure of all three types of cholesterol – VLDL (bad), LDL (generally bad) and HDL (good).
What we now know is that there are two types of LDL cholesterol – large, buoyant LDL and small, dense LDL.
Here is where it gets really interesting..
The large, buoyant LDL is quite large, it doesn’t oxidize easily and for these reasons it doesn’t stick to the blood vessel walls.
On the other hand, small, dense LDL oxidizes easily, which makes it very sticky. It is so small that while floating in the blood stream it may easily get stuck underneath endothelial cells (the innermost layer of the blood vessel, the “tile”) and start a plaque formation, which leads to narrowing of the blood vessel wall and eventually to blockage (heart attack, stroke).
So, you can see now that just the total cholesterol number won’t give you all the information. In fact, there are lots of people, who live healthy and long lives with elevated total and LDL cholesterol level, and there are others, who develop heart disease with perfectly normal, or even low total and LDL levels.
Why is it that way, and how can you tell if you have more small, dense LDL or large, buoyant LDL?
The type of LDL cholesterol a person has is inherited. The bad news is the small, dangerous LDL is not only inherited, but its levels are strongly influenced by lifestyle. Overeating of carbohydrates, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle makes for an LDL profile that has mostly the small LDL particles.
And, conversely, low-carb diet, combined with regular exercise and cardio activities can reverse a predominant small, dense LDL profile in the direction of more large, buoyant LDL.
There are two tests that can tell you which LDL you have more of - gradient gel electrophoresis and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis.
But, there is one more way you can use to easily determine your LDL profile. Normal blood tests should indicate not only the total cholesterol but also the HDL and Triglycerides levels.
Generally when the triglycerides are high, HDL (good) cholesterol levels are low, and the opposite is valid – low triglycerides – high HDL levels. What’s important is how the triglycerides and the HDL cholesterol are related.
If you divide the triglycerides number by the HDL number and the resulting number is less than 2 – you have more of the large, buoyant LDL. If this number is 3 and higher – you mostly have small, dense LDL.
So, if you fall into the second group what do you do? You make dietary changes right away – less carbs and more proteins and fats! And by fats I mean good fats – monounsaturated, omega-3 polyunsaturated (but not Omega-6), and saturated (no, saturated fats aren’t bad for you).
The other immediate change you need to do is, if you haven’t already, you must start exercising immediately.. like yesterday!
These two measures will help reverse a bad, inherited and resulting from a bad lifestyle large LDL to small LDL ratio. But.. you MUST do what it takes!
To wrap up, what you saw above is one of the main reasons why we at Viitals strive to make our baked goods low in total carbohydrates and sugars. This is also why our main fat is olive oil – the healthiest monounsaturated fat, which is shown to decrease LDL and increase HDL cholesterol.
There is more to the story of the fats we use, but I will leave this for one of the future installments.
Resources:
Sugar: The Bitter Truth – Dr. Robert Lustig
Your Cholesterol Profile - In Depth