dope on cholesterol page

[Kingofturtles]

The straight dope on cholesterol

I finally finished reading this. Its a long hard read with may more information than I can comprehend. At the end of the day, I was a little disappointed. I am not interested, nor do I understand, how cholesterol esterfies and de=esterfies and gets stuck in your walls ect.. I was more interested in what I, as a normal knowledged human being can do. He never seems to answer this.

What I've learned is:
-Low LDL is the most important thing.
-High HDL doesnt protect you like people think.

And finally in part 9 he briefly touches on what we can do to help, as he says glucose and fructose are bad on their own and worse together.

What kind of foods contain glucose? For some reason I thought all carbs did?

Anyway, my hope was to make a thread where we can discuss the straight dope and maybe have some of our resident know-it-alls help with some of the tougher ideas.

[SJW2]

I am interested in what others have to say.

I literally just got done RE-reading the chapter in Good Calories, Bad Calories about cholesterol.

My understanding was definitely that the problem was with the small, dense LDL and the number of VLDLs and that HDL was protective.

Carbohydrates can come in multiple forms. Namely glucose, sucrose, fructose, maltose, dextrose, lactose, and others.

My understanding is most or all carbohydrates break down into glucose to be used by the body for energy. Most primal carbs will be higher in glucose than any other sugar.

Fructose is metabolized differently from other sugars and can cause dose-dependent problems.

[magicmerl]

What kind of foods contain glucose? For some reason I thought all carbs did?

Yep, carbs. And glucose + fructose = sugar.

[peril]

What I've learned is:
-Low LDL is the most important thing.
-High HDL doesnt protect you like people think.

That is not the takeaway at all. Attia's main point is that it is the LDL particle count, LDL-P, that is most important and it should be low. The standard measure of LDL just measures concentration, LDL-C, and is a very poor estimator of risk.

Note that rather than getting the expensive NMR or VAP tests, which have not been fully standardised so produce uncertain results, LDL-P correlates very strongly with apo-B

[Kingofturtles]

Thanks for the clarification Peril.

SJW2; I believe HDL is protective, however; only certain kinds of HDL and its not AS protective as one believed.

"Don’t believe the hype: HDL is important, and more HDL particles are better than few. But, raising HDL-C with a drug isn’t going to fix the problem. Making this even more complex is that HDL functionality is likely as important, or even more important, than HDL-P, but no such tests exist to “measure” this."

I dont understand any of this shit though, so heres the link to the HDL part of the 9 part blog.

The straight dope on cholesterol

[SJW2]

Thanks for the clarification Peril.

SJW2; I believe HDL is protective, however; only certain kinds of HDL and its not AS protective as one believed.

"Don’t believe the hype: HDL is important, and more HDL particles are better than few. But, raising HDL-C with a drug isn’t going to fix the problem. Making this even more complex is that HDL functionality is likely as important, or even more important, than HDL-P, but no such tests exist to “measure” this."

I dont understand any of this shit though, so heres the link to the HDL part of the 9 part blog.

The straight dope on cholesterol

Haha. I understand it a LITTLE, but that doesn't say much. I want to try to wrap my head around it better.

It'll be nice when the scientists themselves actually understand what the hell is going on and have an easier way to disseminate it to the masses.