cholesterol info

Hobo · 01-04-2009, 07:09 AM

Hi!

I'm new here, and i wanted to share a website with some really good info on cholesterol. There are alot of articles on this site, look about half way down the page on the left side for items to click on. This site is written by a doctor who doesn't push statins.

The Heart Scan Blog

Leo41 · 01-04-2009, 03:10 PM

THANKS. I had already found this site recently. This cardiologist also approves of low carb and condemns the "low fat" movement, so it's really inspirational to read his stuff.

Stevie Renee · 01-06-2009, 10:53 AM

ONE of my favorite sites. I am actually getting a calcium heart scan cuz of Dr Davis. I heart is heartscanblog. lol

Stevie Renee · 01-07-2009, 10:40 PM

Looks like Dr D. gave Jimmy Moore another interview! Yeah.

Dr. William Davis: Atkins Nutritionals Presents Best Of 2008 ‘Encore Week’ (Episode 214) | The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show

un4givun2 · 01-12-2009, 05:45 PM

I can vouch for the "low fat" scam. This was the biggest piece of junk information the FDA ever tried to shove down our throats. It has led to the obesity epidemic we're in now. I lived the LOW FAT regimen for 3 straight years and exercised every day to exhaustion. I was placed on meds for cholesterol and high blood pressure after 3 long years of starving myself of meat and eating rabbit food. There's no doubt in my mind I would be dead right now had I continued with the No-Fat diet. I switched to LC and I've been off all meds now for 11 years. I do fall off the wagon about every other year and go on a carb binge. The results are always the same....I gain 20 pounds and my blood pressure and cholesterol shoot through the roof. It's so difficult to eat LC when 100% of your surrounding is high carb. Everyone at my job thinks I'm crazy yet I'm thinner than all of them and my cholesterol is always lower than theirs and they all exercise more than I do.

Stevie Renee · 01-12-2009, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by un4givun2

I can vouch for the "low fat" scam. This was the biggest piece of junk information the FDA ever tried to shove down our throats. It has led to the obesity epidemic we're in now. I lived the LOW FAT regimen for 3 straight years and exercised every day to exhaustion. I was placed on meds for cholesterol and high blood pressure after 3 long years of starving myself of meat and eating rabbit food. There's no doubt in my mind I would be dead right now had I continued with the No-Fat diet. I switched to LC and I've been off all meds now for 11 years. I do fall off the wagon about every other year and go on a carb binge. The results are always the same....I gain 20 pounds and my blood pressure and cholesterol shoot through the roof. It's so difficult to eat LC when 100% of your surrounding is high carb. Everyone at my job thinks I'm crazy yet I'm thinner than all of them and my cholesterol is always lower than theirs and they all exercise more than I do.

11 years! Wow - thats cool. Hey, welcome to LCF.

un4givun2 · 01-14-2009, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chantel

11 years! Wow - thats cool. Hey, welcome to LCF.

Thank You Chantel!

I think I will try harder not to be tempted by all the high carb foods after this NO-carb diet to loose 15 pounds. It's much easier to maintain than it is to loose. I was doing good until I got this new job 4 years ago. I'm confronted with lunch meetings 2-3 times a week and it is never anything LC. That's my biggest problem. How do you turn down free food the company provides you without coming off as a prick?

Stevie Renee · 01-15-2009, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by un4givun2

Thank You Chantel!

I think I will try harder not to be tempted by all the high carb foods after this NO-carb diet to loose 15 pounds. It's much easier to maintain than it is to loose. I was doing good until I got this new job 4 years ago. I'm confronted with lunch meetings 2-3 times a week and it is never anything LC. That's my biggest problem. How do you turn down free food the company provides you without coming off as a prick?

yeah that is tricky. I recall we had catered lunches and pizza and salad. I ate the salad. Someone said "oh you have such will power".lol -

I would say however, bring your own if possible and if someone says anything, be honest. Its terrible for the heart, the health and waist line. Thanks but no thanks. And if need be, eat before - heck I have even downed a quick bite before those meets and loaded up on water during the meets.

And if you go out to eat - look ahead at the menu on line if possible and see whats ok. If not, order a meat and veggie with dressing on the side.

When I worked - a lot of vendors brought in junk all the time. I always moved it out of my vision and then end of the day, sent to the kitchen or whse. I always brought my own mini cooler for my desk and had a stash of legal foods in my drawer.

Good luck!

Stevie Renee · 01-15-2009, 05:53 PM

An interesting read today..I am going to eventually go get my ldl tested to get the particle size...

QUOTE/CUT&PASTE...

Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Tale of Two LDL's

Kurt, a 50-year old businessman with a heart scan score of 323, had a :

--Conventional (calculated) LDL of 128 mg/dl
--Real measured LDL 241 mg/dl.

Laurie, a 53-year old woman who underwent a coronary bypass operation last year (before I met her), had a:

--Cconventional LDL of 142 mg/dl
--Real measured LDL was 85 mg/dl.

(By "real, measured" LDL, I'm referring to LDL particle number in units of nmol/L obtained through NMR lipoprotein testing and dividing by 10, or just dropping the last digit to convert the value to mg/dl. This technique was arrived at by comparing the population distributions of these two parameters, LDL particle number and calculated LDL. This is the gold standard in my view. Similar numbers can be obtained by measuring apoprotein B, direct LDL, or calculated non-HDL, with diminishing reliability from first to last.)

In other words, Kurt's conventional LDL underestimated real LDL by 88%. Laurie's conventional LDL overestimated real LDL by 40%.

Interestingly, Laurie's doctor had insisted she take Lipitor for a high LDL cholesterol. Her real LDL was, in fact, low to begin with and benefits of a statin drug would be little to none. (Remember, in our Track Your Plaque approach, multiple other treatments are included, such as omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, vitamin D normalization, and wheat elimination, strategies that yield benefits that others expect to obtain with statins.) Laurie's real cause of her heart disease proved to have nothing to do with LDL cholesterol, but involved lipoprotein(a) and thyroid issues.

Kurt proved to have a severe preponderance of small LDL particles--the worst kind of LDL, while Laurie had none--a benign pattern.

Then how can anyone make sense of the conventional, calculated LDL cholesterol that is generally (95% of the time) provided? If accuracy can stretch to plus or minus 80% . . . you can't. Conventional LDL is a miserably inaccurate number. The problem is that obtaining a superior number requires a step or two more testing and insight, something most busy primary care doc's simply don't have in the midst of a day filled with arthritis, bronchitis, diarrhea, belly aches, and seborrhea.

Yet conventional--I call it "fictitious"--LDL serves as the basis for this $27 billion (annual revenues) industry selling statin drugs.

This is meant to be neither an argument in favor of nor against statin drugs. However, it is plain as day that any study designed to reduce LDL cholesterol will be hopelessly clouded by calculated LDL imprecision. A calculated LDL of, say, 143 mg/dl might really be 187 mg/dl, or it might be 74 mg/dl--you can't tell by looking just at LDL. Yet billions of dollars of research and billions of dollars of healthcare costs are based on the treatment of this number.

This reminds me of the mark-to-market accounting magic that helped topple Wall Street.

I don't think that the statin world is poised for such a huge downfall. But I do see this as a source of enormous dilution of the effects of statin drugs. People who barely stand to benefit get the drugs, while others who might truly benefit are treated inadequately. It provides fuel to the growing idea that reducing LDL cholesterol fails to truly provide benefit.

I am no lover of statin drugs nor drugs in general. But I am a fan of knowing the truth. Despite my bashing of the drug industry (and make no mistake: the drug industry is a cutthroat, profit-seeking, do-anything-to-increase-sales industry), I do believe that there is a role for statin drugs (though far smaller than $27 billion per year). But the usual method of selecting people for treatment is pure fiction. The ATP-III cholesterol treatment guidelines? An anemic attempt to apply structure to meaningless values.

You and I do not need to subscribe to this sort of non-quantitative nonsense.

UN QUOTE BY DR WILLIAM DAVIS.

Stevie Renee · 01-15-2009, 05:54 PM

Interesting...

Sunday, January 11, 2009 - dr william davis..
Niacin scams

In the Track Your Plaque program, we often resort to niacin (vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid) to:

--Raise HDL cholesterol
--Reduce the proportion of small LDL particles
--Shift HDL towards the healthy larger fraction (HDL2b or "large")
--Reduce lipoprotein(a), the most aggressive risk factor known

But niacin comes with a crazy "hot flush," a warm, prickly feeling that usually envelops the upper chest, neck and face that is, without a doubt, annoying. Around 1 in 20 people simply cannot tolerate any amount of niacin >100 mg, while others have no problem even into the 3000 mg per day or more range. (Tolerance to niacin is genetically determined, governed by the rapidity of metabolism to the niacin metabolite, nicotinuric acid.)

The niacin flush has spawned an entire panel of niacin-like scams, agents that sound like niacin or may even contain niacin, but exert no beneficial effect whatsoever:

Flush-free niacin--I have previously posted on this useless but ubiquitous preparation that often costs several times more than conventional niacin. Flush-free niacin, or inositol hexaniacinate, does indeed contain niacin, but it is not released in the human body. You simply pass it out down the toilet, where this preparation belongs in the first place.

Nicotinamide--Also called niacinamide. While the nicotinamide/niacinamide forms of vitamin B3 can be used to treat B3 deficiency ("pellagra"), they do not reproduce the lipid and lipoprotein effects of niacin. For our purposes, they are useless.

Niacin-containing heart-healthy supplements--These are the multi-supplements that contain a little of everything that might be beneficial for the heart, but none at a dose that provides genuine benefit. Don't throw your money away.

There's also a prescription niacin, Niaspan, that costs 20-fold more than the best over-the-counter preparation, Sloniacin. Niaspan has yielded hundreds of millions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry. Your money, in my view, is far better spent on Sloniacin (around $12-14 per bottle of 100 tablets of 500 mg).

For more on niacin, here's an article I wrote for the Life Extension Magazine people a while back: Using Niacin to Improve Cardiovascular Health.

01-04-2009, 07:09 AM	#1
Hobo Junior LCF Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1 Gallery: Hobo	cholesterol info Hi! I'm new here, and i wanted to share a website with some really good info on cholesterol. There are alot of articles on this site, look about half way down the page on the left side for items to click on. This site is written by a doctor who doesn't push statins. The Heart Scan Blog

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01-04-2009, 03:10 PM	#2
Leo41 MAJOR LCF POSTER! Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 2,358 Gallery: Leo41	THANKS. I had already found this site recently. This cardiologist also approves of low carb and condemns the "low fat" movement, so it's really inspirational to read his stuff.

01-06-2009, 10:53 AM	#3
Stevie Renee Way too much time on my hands! Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 10,940 Blog Entries: 1 Gallery: Stevie Renee Stats: 24/8-6/6 (240/158.5/150) WOE: Low Carb, moderate fat, portion control Start Date: July 2000	ONE of my favorite sites. I am actually getting a calcium heart scan cuz of Dr Davis. I heart is heartscanblog. lol

01-07-2009, 10:40 PM	#4
Stevie Renee Way too much time on my hands! Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 10,940 Blog Entries: 1 Gallery: Stevie Renee Stats: 24/8-6/6 (240/158.5/150) WOE: Low Carb, moderate fat, portion control Start Date: July 2000	Looks like Dr D. gave Jimmy Moore another interview! Yeah. Dr. William Davis: Atkins Nutritionals Presents Best Of 2008 ‘Encore Week’ (Episode 214) \| The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show

01-12-2009, 05:45 PM	#5
un4givun2 Senior LCF Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 65 Gallery: un4givun2	I can vouch for the "low fat" scam. This was the biggest piece of junk information the FDA ever tried to shove down our throats. It has led to the obesity epidemic we're in now. I lived the LOW FAT regimen for 3 straight years and exercised every day to exhaustion. I was placed on meds for cholesterol and high blood pressure after 3 long years of starving myself of meat and eating rabbit food. There's no doubt in my mind I would be dead right now had I continued with the No-Fat diet. I switched to LC and I've been off all meds now for 11 years. I do fall off the wagon about every other year and go on a carb binge. The results are always the same....I gain 20 pounds and my blood pressure and cholesterol shoot through the roof. It's so difficult to eat LC when 100% of your surrounding is high carb. Everyone at my job thinks I'm crazy yet I'm thinner than all of them and my cholesterol is always lower than theirs and they all exercise more than I do.

01-15-2009, 05:53 PM	#9
Stevie Renee Way too much time on my hands! Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 10,940 Blog Entries: 1 Gallery: Stevie Renee Stats: 24/8-6/6 (240/158.5/150) WOE: Low Carb, moderate fat, portion control Start Date: July 2000	An interesting read today..I am going to eventually go get my ldl tested to get the particle size... QUOTE/CUT&PASTE... Thursday, January 15, 2009 A Tale of Two LDL's Kurt, a 50-year old businessman with a heart scan score of 323, had a : --Conventional (calculated) LDL of 128 mg/dl --Real measured LDL 241 mg/dl. Laurie, a 53-year old woman who underwent a coronary bypass operation last year (before I met her), had a: --Cconventional LDL of 142 mg/dl --Real measured LDL was 85 mg/dl. (By "real, measured" LDL, I'm referring to LDL particle number in units of nmol/L obtained through NMR lipoprotein testing and dividing by 10, or just dropping the last digit to convert the value to mg/dl. This technique was arrived at by comparing the population distributions of these two parameters, LDL particle number and calculated LDL. This is the gold standard in my view. Similar numbers can be obtained by measuring apoprotein B, direct LDL, or calculated non-HDL, with diminishing reliability from first to last.) In other words, Kurt's conventional LDL underestimated real LDL by 88%. Laurie's conventional LDL overestimated real LDL by 40%. Interestingly, Laurie's doctor had insisted she take Lipitor for a high LDL cholesterol. Her real LDL was, in fact, low to begin with and benefits of a statin drug would be little to none. (Remember, in our Track Your Plaque approach, multiple other treatments are included, such as omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, vitamin D normalization, and wheat elimination, strategies that yield benefits that others expect to obtain with statins.) Laurie's real cause of her heart disease proved to have nothing to do with LDL cholesterol, but involved lipoprotein(a) and thyroid issues. Kurt proved to have a severe preponderance of small LDL particles--the worst kind of LDL, while Laurie had none--a benign pattern. Then how can anyone make sense of the conventional, calculated LDL cholesterol that is generally (95% of the time) provided? If accuracy can stretch to plus or minus 80% . . . you can't. Conventional LDL is a miserably inaccurate number. The problem is that obtaining a superior number requires a step or two more testing and insight, something most busy primary care doc's simply don't have in the midst of a day filled with arthritis, bronchitis, diarrhea, belly aches, and seborrhea. Yet conventional--I call it "fictitious"--LDL serves as the basis for this $27 billion (annual revenues) industry selling statin drugs. This is meant to be neither an argument in favor of nor against statin drugs. However, it is plain as day that any study designed to reduce LDL cholesterol will be hopelessly clouded by calculated LDL imprecision. A calculated LDL of, say, 143 mg/dl might really be 187 mg/dl, or it might be 74 mg/dl--you can't tell by looking just at LDL. Yet billions of dollars of research and billions of dollars of healthcare costs are based on the treatment of this number. This reminds me of the mark-to-market accounting magic that helped topple Wall Street. I don't think that the statin world is poised for such a huge downfall. But I do see this as a source of enormous dilution of the effects of statin drugs. People who barely stand to benefit get the drugs, while others who might truly benefit are treated inadequately. It provides fuel to the growing idea that reducing LDL cholesterol fails to truly provide benefit. I am no lover of statin drugs nor drugs in general. But I am a fan of knowing the truth. Despite my bashing of the drug industry (and make no mistake: the drug industry is a cutthroat, profit-seeking, do-anything-to-increase-sales industry), I do believe that there is a role for statin drugs (though far smaller than $27 billion per year). But the usual method of selecting people for treatment is pure fiction. The ATP-III cholesterol treatment guidelines? An anemic attempt to apply structure to meaningless values. You and I do not need to subscribe to this sort of non-quantitative nonsense. UN QUOTE BY DR WILLIAM DAVIS.

01-15-2009, 05:54 PM	#10
Stevie Renee Way too much time on my hands! Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 10,940 Blog Entries: 1 Gallery: Stevie Renee Stats: 24/8-6/6 (240/158.5/150) WOE: Low Carb, moderate fat, portion control Start Date: July 2000	Interesting... Sunday, January 11, 2009 - dr william davis.. Niacin scams In the Track Your Plaque program, we often resort to niacin (vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid) to: --Raise HDL cholesterol --Reduce the proportion of small LDL particles --Shift HDL towards the healthy larger fraction (HDL2b or "large") --Reduce lipoprotein(a), the most aggressive risk factor known But niacin comes with a crazy "hot flush," a warm, prickly feeling that usually envelops the upper chest, neck and face that is, without a doubt, annoying. Around 1 in 20 people simply cannot tolerate any amount of niacin >100 mg, while others have no problem even into the 3000 mg per day or more range. (Tolerance to niacin is genetically determined, governed by the rapidity of metabolism to the niacin metabolite, nicotinuric acid.) The niacin flush has spawned an entire panel of niacin-like scams, agents that sound like niacin or may even contain niacin, but exert no beneficial effect whatsoever: Flush-free niacin--I have previously posted on this useless but ubiquitous preparation that often costs several times more than conventional niacin. Flush-free niacin, or inositol hexaniacinate, does indeed contain niacin, but it is not released in the human body. You simply pass it out down the toilet, where this preparation belongs in the first place. Nicotinamide--Also called niacinamide. While the nicotinamide/niacinamide forms of vitamin B3 can be used to treat B3 deficiency ("pellagra"), they do not reproduce the lipid and lipoprotein effects of niacin. For our purposes, they are useless. Niacin-containing heart-healthy supplements--These are the multi-supplements that contain a little of everything that might be beneficial for the heart, but none at a dose that provides genuine benefit. Don't throw your money away. There's also a prescription niacin, Niaspan, that costs 20-fold more than the best over-the-counter preparation, Sloniacin. Niaspan has yielded hundreds of millions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry. Your money, in my view, is far better spent on Sloniacin (around $12-14 per bottle of 100 tablets of 500 mg). For more on niacin, here's an article I wrote for the Life Extension Magazine people a while back: Using Niacin to Improve Cardiovascular Health.