Today I was reminiscing about my journey; from when I first started getting into health and fitness until now, 9 years later.
One of the few things that stood out was my diet and how I completely did a full circle from when I first started.
In the beginning my diet was crap (by the standards of my diet now).
I would make a fruit smoothie with protein every morning
I would only use egg whites and throw out the yolk
I would only cook with olive oil
I would only get sugar free or fat free goodies
You get my drift; everything I do now contradicts everything I did in the beginning
Especially my love of fats
When I first started learning about health and fitness fat was bad and cholesterol was even worse so I stayed away.
It wasn’t until I started learning about a paleolithic type of diet that sparked my interest in the way our ancestors ate.
When I first started learning more about paleo I was skeptical. Everything I knew then was being questioned and proven wrong.
No more fruits
Eat more meat
Eat real butter
Eat eggs, yolk and all
These were things I thought I needed to avoid to stay healthy and lose weight… Boy was I wrong.
Good thing I decided to ignore what my head was telling me and listened to my gut. Increasing my fat intake has been a great decision and I want to explain why.
Contrary to popular belief; Fat especially cholesterol is a vital substance for our bodies.
People have been taught that having a diet that’s high in saturated fats and cholesterol will lead to heart disease and hearts attacks. This can’t be further from the truth.
Cholesterol is found all over the body like in your “nerve sheaths, the white matter of the brain, the adrenal gland and especially in cell membranes.” (Gedgaudas 76)
So why on earth would they tell us to avoid cholesterol?
Yes our bodies do produce about 2g of cholesterol everyday but according to Nore T. Gedgaudas, despite this ability to manufacture cholesterol, it is, in fact, critical to obtain cholesterol from dietary sources.
The reason for this is because the process our bodies go through to manufacture cholesterol is inefficient. Going through a “30 step, complex biochemical process” to make cholesterol when you can just get it from eating animal fats seems dumb to me.
Eating cholesterol through animal based fats can actually supply your body with enough cholesterol to do its normal functions and start doing other jobs like producing higher amounts of necessary hormones that can only be manufactured with cholesterol.
These include; testosterone, pregnenolone, estrogen, progesterone, adrenaline, cortisol, and DHEA.
So you might be asking; wont all this saturated fat and cholesterol lead to high cholesterol in the blood?
The simple answer is no.
But the more complex answer is that your body actually produces its own cholesterol in abundance through the production of a liver enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase.
This liver enzyme overproduces cholesterol from carbs in your diet to try and make up from the little amount of cholesterol you actually eat.
This is the cause of high cholesterol in people. But unfortunately your doctors don’t tell you that.
Instead that put you on a statin drug, which is used to lower cholesterol by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase. So it’s not even fixing the cause of your high cholesterol (which by the way can only be fixed through diet by increasing your cholesterol intake from animal based fats).
So basically your doctor and BIG PHARMA are reaping the benefit of your high cholesterol problem. While you’re their paying the price; figuratively and literally.
What I mean is that you’re not just paying money for these statin drugs to “help” you lower your cholesterol. You’re also paying with your health.
And according to Dr. Mercola, there are over 900 studies proving the dangers of taking statin drugs.
The side effects of statin drugs include:
- Depression
- Memory problems
- Inability to concentrate
- Weakened immune system
- Increased risk of cancer
- Liver damage
- Fatigue
- Lowered sex drive
- Kidney Failure
- Rhabdomyolysis
And the list goes on. So in my opinion lowering your cholesterol artificially and risking your health to all those side effects isn’t worth it. So I’m baffled to why anyone would recommend taking them.
And don’t worry about HDL or LDL, “the levels of good cholesterol versus bad cholesterol reflect only transport mechanisms for healthy cholesterol and are inherently meaningless measures of the risk of coronary heart disease risk.” (Gedgaudas 80)
The only thing you do need to worry about is having LDL that has oxidized in the blood stream, according to Michael McEvoy this can happen from having a diet high in processed foods, alcohol and refined sugars.
So avoid that shit, increase your animal based fats like butter, whole eggs, grass fed steak, bacon etc. and enjoy your new found health.
If you know anyone thats been misled to believe cholesterol is the bad guy and needs a slap on the face share this article to help them avoid statin drugs that can cause serious health problems.
Talk to you later,
