My brunch just now and a cholesterol question page

[ATTAACK]

Here's the scene. I'm with 4 other guys at Longhorn Steakhouse. I've been on PB for a few months, lost 12 pounds, and am very fit. My friend Joe has been on PB for a month and lost 21 pounds and is very happy with it all. So the group starts the diet discussion since Joe and I aren't eating the bread. A new friend I met yesterday, Ben, says his cholesterol is high and he's on a statin. Ben is young, 26 maybe, and he is in great shape. Oh! Before this he was saying that he LOVES desserts and eats a lot of them, etc... So I had a knee-jerk reaction and was telling him essentially, do the PB or Paleo and your cholesterol will go down, etc. Ben asked a very simple question that kinda stumped my hung over brain, namely, HOW does eating PB style lower cholesterol? Now, I know that it does and that the size of LDL and the raising of HDL are affected, but the HOW part got me. How would you have answered him?

Second question: Do you guys ever encounter this sort of thing and just feel like the worst ambassador ever for PB? It seems so simple to me, this PB thing, because that is just the way I now eat. But explaining it sometimes can get me a little tongue tied....

[Alex Good]

It doesn`t lower cholesterol. It lowers inflamation, which makes cholesterol irrelevant. Plus it shifts the type of cholesterol you have from being the bad kind to the not so bad kind.

[Drumroll]

I'm not sure if it will actually lower overall cholesterol levels. It WILL give him a more beneficial cholesterol profile by encouraging the formation of a healthy HDL to LDL ratio and making the LDL less likely to oxidize and cause vascular damage due to the high antioxidant content of this diet.

By the way, you might want to learn a bit more about the carbohydrate/triglyceride connection and teach them about that too. Lately, there's been more evidence that triglycerides are a better indicator of risk for heart disease than cholesterol.

[jojohaligo]

Search for Griff's Cholesterol Primer in the forums - he's got an excellent little tutorial about it.

[ATTAACK]

Ah! Yes, the inflammation part! That's one aspect that I am not clear on yet. I will read Griff's Cholesterol Primer and maybe that will help me a bit. Thanks!

[magicmerl]

Ah! Yes, the inflammation part! That's one aspect that I am not clear on yet. I will read Griff's Cholesterol Primer and maybe that will help me a bit. Thanks!

The real trick is to lower HDL-P (a count of the 'bus' particles that drive cholesterol and serum triglycerides around the body) by lowering serum triglycerides. Which means lower carbs.

[noodletoy]

zomg -- he's 26 and on statins? does he have a genetic disorder that causes super high cholesterol? or can he not just keep cake out of his pie-hole?

[Dirlot]

http://chriskresser.com/the-most-imp...ut-cholesterol
A great article with links to scientific papers

[Boff's [widget]]

That's an outstanding article, Dirlot. Thanks very much for the link!

[ATTAACK]

Well, it turns out that Ben is 35 or so and not 26. He really does look like he's in his 20s though. But still, he's on a statin and says it's genetic. I wonder though, if what is considered genetic could be linked to a family's eating habits. He did say that he eats a lot of sugar...