The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting or health professional for your personal medical condition. Homily King and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we continue our three-part series with part two on the heart, will give you the latest information on cholesterol affects the heart, later we'll find out what's happening around town, but first step, we continue our series on Hertel, and joining us today is nutritional consultant and certified natural health professional, Valerie Hall, Valerie appears in front of thousands of people each year and speaks on a variety of topics, as well as giving many seminars at mother's market, she's such a wealth of health and nutritional knowledge, we wanna get in pro to her. Welcome back, Valerie. How are you?

I'm doing wonderfully. Thank you, Kimberly.

Well, before we get to today's topic, please fill our audience in on your background in nutrition, I've been studying nutrition for 17 years, and I love to share everything that I've learned, I was a biology major back in school, so I have always had this great love of science and the way that the body works, and now I have this wonderful understanding of how all the nutrients work with it and what we can do to support our health and take a proactive approach. Wonderful. Well, you don't look like you've been studying for 17 years at... No brownies are ready to think what? We are excited to have you here with us today, and we continue our two-part of... The second part of our degree part series on heart health and heart disease, it's the leading cause of death among men and women in the United States, and today we're going to get to some understanding about cholesterol.

Tell us about it.

We've heard so much about this topic for the last 40 years, but you have a different perspective than what we've heard on TV. What does cholesterol do in our body?

Well, cholesterol is a vital molecule and without it, we are so dead, it is a really important thing, we never hear about the good things cholesterol does, we only hear about the bad when it gets into the arteries and causes it those to narrow. But it's really a building block for every new cell, we cannot make a new cell without cholesterol, it is our band-aid, it's our instrument of repair whenever there's any kind of damage in the arteries and the muscles anywhere in the body, it's all about cholesterol for repair, it's a building block of hormone production, not only are sex hormones like progesterone, estrogen testosterone, but also adrenal hormones, thyroid hormones, cholesterol is the building block that we make all of those from very instrumental for mood and for brain function and memory, 60% of the dry way to the brain is cholesterol, unbelievable.

And I have some real concerns about lowering cholesterol and what that does to the brain, it's also involved in immune infection, fighting ability, and people with low cholesterol do not fight infection very well and even have a greater rate of cancer, vitamin D3 production. It is cholesterol in the skin that sunlight has to hit in order to make our own natural vitamin D3.

It's also really important for bio-salt production for digestion, bile is created in the liver, and it's designed to break down our fats, and what's happening... One of the worst things that we're doing, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about food, but hydrogenated oils in our food supply and partially hydrogenated oil, the trans-taps those prevent the cholesterol from turning into Bilal. So the first thing that happens is you can't break down your fats very well 'cause you're not making enough biosolids, and then your body takes a look at itself and says, Oh, I'm not making enough file salt, maybe I should up my cholesterol production. So there's a whole interesting chain of events, but that's one of the things that's un-balancing us as are the starches and sugars as well, you know, we've been told about foods and we've been told to avoid cholesterol in foods, well, our brains would not have developed as human beings without good cholesterol in food, and to the point where where they are now the brilliant place that we've all arrived to at this point.

So if we get away from cholesterol in foods, then our body makes more and more and more from the starches and sugars we eat, so from carbohydrates, so it's not... You'll have a better influence on your cholesterol levels if you give up starch and sugar than you do if you give up cholesterol in food, so we actually need cholesterol, Do not be afraid of your cholesterol, cholesterol-containing foods. I think that's a very important note there, but a lot of these things are just un-balancing us, and the real bottom line is that cholesterol is made in accordance to inflammation in the body, the more inflame we are, and our food supply is highly inflammatory these days, the more cholesterol we have to make to fix ourselves, so that's really the whole bottom line.

Wow, so it's a double edge. Or it just continues to... Two sides of a coin.

Exactly, exactly.

We'll explain to cholesterol numbers to us and what are the target ranges recommended today, because that's another number that continues to change, it seems it does. And the original numbers for cholesterol before the statin drugs got rolling, that lower cholesterol, total cholesterol was recommended to be at 300 or below, those were the old numbers, and then the statin drugs got invented and those lower cholesterol, and then the pharmaceutical companies told the doctors will now our target range should be 2-40, and then they said, Now our target rain should be 200, and now our target ran should be 180 or 150.

I think they're driving things down way too low and way below what the normal person needs, because if you have inflammation in the body and your body is creating its repair molecule to help you, and now instead of addressing the inflammation, you're just removing your band-aid, not a very good health outcome as studies are really starting to show at this point... Yes, yeah, and I would think that everybody is different, of course, it... To their body, weight in it, and your body is always doing what it thinks is right, that's really what's happened when your body is doing the thing it thinks is correct for survival.

Right.

Well, cholesterol has been painted as a great villain as far as our health goes, but it appears that it's not really true, or have you learned about the alternative health perspective on cholesterol? I've been reading articles in natural health magazines probably for 10 years that we're questioning this idea of wholesale lowering of cholesterol, a variety of magazines, even one, certainly in our magazines like the health keepers journal, the well-being journal, but even Business Week had a big article that I'm gonna give you a little quote from here in a little while, and so even some of the mainstream media has picked up on this, but the best one that I've found now is a fairly new book by Dr. Steven Sinatra called The Great cholesterol myth.

I highly recommend that all of you out there, get this book and read it, it's probably available at mother's market, and if you can't find it there, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, you can find this book, it's out there in big numbers, it's called The Great cholesterol myth by Dr. Steven Sinatra, and it encompasses all of the things that I've been reading for the last 10 years that are questioning this wholesale lowering of cholesterol, and you mentioned this on our first round, but yes, that is Francis second case.

So it'll send you to a good help on cholesterol, I'll get blamed for heart disease.

Well, there was a study way back in the 1970s where they fed that to rabbits and it killed them a word or rabbits supposed to eat fat on their vegetarians, and that they came up with this lipid hypothesis. The lipid hypothesis said, eating fat leads to cholesterol accumulation in the body, which leads to heart disease, so the equation that equals heart disease, by the way, when they replicated that study and fed fat to dogs, they didn't die, they did just fine 'cause they were designed to eat protein, in fact... So the fact that they did that anyway, the lipid hypothesis like that is still called the lipid hypothesis, which means theory, and they've spent tens of billions of dollars over the last 40 years trying to prove that, in fact, they have never been able to prove is fact it is still the lipid hypothesis. Still Italian, I disagree with that hypothesis personally... Oh my goodness. And that's an interesting theory, isn't that... Wow, the things you find out on to this... Just fun to interview you... Well, how can cholesterol all be bad for the heart... Well, cholesterol is... The only bad thing it ever does is when it accumulates in the arteries, and it's doing that because of the high speed that the blood is coming out of the heart, and there's a lot of friction there, and it can... If we don't have a very good college and building in the body and our arteries are losing their integrity, then if cholesterol doesn't go there as a band-aid, then the artery is gonna bring a leak is a hole is going to occur.

So even though we consider that bad, the alternative is worse to not being able to hold the integrity inside of those arteries, so cholesterol is only going there because of inflammation and degradation in the arteries, it's a band-aid, it's a repair, so where the problem arises when year after year, decade after decade, we keep repairing and then that narrows the tube through which our blood can flow and that can raise blood pressure, it can hinder circulation, it puts us at risk for a blockage, so basically what we want is not necessarily... And the other interesting thing, there are a lot of confusing things that lead me to believe the cholesterol, it's been promoted as the end all and be all of the heart problem, and a big factor, but I think it's a fairly minor factor when it comes to overall heart health, you wanna address inflammation, you wanna address some of those other things that are going on with the heart, but the basic thing is, is that the cholesterol is very important in keeping the integrity of the arteries, and without that we're in big, big trouble.

So it tends to plaque in those places with high friction, and Dr line is polling said that that's happening because of a lack of vitamin C, that we're all suffering from low level scurvy, so Vitamin C and our fish oil are excellent supports to help maintain the health of the arteries, so that we don't need to put the cholesterol there in the first place, that's step one. There's also HDL and LDL, and now a new one called VLDL cholesterol, we really want it to be white and fluffy and flexible, we don't want it to be hard and dense and plastic, so HDL is considered the good cholesterol and it stands for high density lipoprotein, LD-is considered the bad cholesterol, low density lipoprotein and VLDL, very low density lipoprotein is considered the worst of all 'cause it's the smallest... Hardest little particle.

Thank you for describing that by a... Absolutely, so there really is no good and bad, they really flip sides to that same coin, HD takes the cholesterol from the liver and goes out and... I'm sorry, LDL takes the cholesterol from the liver, goes out and does the repair, and then HDL takes it back, so they're really just two parts of It's a transporter is what it is, so that's the deal with the HDL and LDL, cholesterol only plaques in the arteries when it is oxidized.

Why is it oxidizing? I'll tell you a couple of reasons that cause cholesterol to oxidize accumulation of free radicals in the body, so antioxidants help to protect us against oxidized cholesterol, particularly the fat-soluble ones, like vitamin E, protects that from oxidizing. Very, very important.

We get pre-oxidized cholesterol from a couple of sources in our food, any dried cheese or dried milk is already oxidized cholesterol, so skim milk has dried milk added to it, I think it's far less healthy than whole milk because of that Parma one cheese that we shake out of the can, that's dried pre-oxidized cholesterol, get a fresh thing of Parma on and great at yourself, that's gonna be a much healthier option there.

We wanna make sure that we're in the macaroni and cheese with the packet of dried cheese that's oxidized cholesterol, so we wanna make sure that we're avoiding that, and that's one of the problems too with sharing our meat on a barbecue, which... If you do that once or twice a year, that's probably not gonna be a big issue, but if you do a grilled meat on a very regular basis that's oxidized cholesterol because of the Charing with the extreme heat. So those are some of the areas that we don't want and we wanna protect the cholesterol within our own bodies from oxidation. There's a wonderful product called eternal S-Y-T-R-I-N-O-L. And this is put out by Natural factors, and you can find it at mothers, I believe, and it is a combination of a super vitamin E-NC combination, and lots of great studies on that at preventing oxidation of cholesterol. I think that's a more important issue, is preventing the oxidation.

The other interesting thing is that cholesterol levels are not directly related to how much we are placing in the arteries, some people with high cholesterol don't put it in the arteries, and some people with low cholesterol do put it in the artery, so one of many confusing pieces of data about cholesterol, so it's the level itself does not determine how much you're placing, it just determines how much repair you need in the body.

Wow, you know what, there you paint such a very clear picture and you've described the difference between good, bad and worse with the HDL... LDL, VLDL, and action. So thank you.

We have to take a break. So a great information and stay with us more on heart health and with Valerie, just a moment, stay with the to... And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you, if you missed any portion of today's show, you can always find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the podcast from our website, mother's market dot com, click on the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com. And now, back to our interview with nutritional consultant Valerie Hall, we're talking about cholesterol as it relates to heart health, and what are the foods that have a negative influence on cholesterol in the body? Well, as I mentioned earlier, those hydrogenated oils both because they create more inflammation in the body and they're a bad building block in the body, but they block our production of bile salt from cholesterol, so we're not digesting or... That's very well. So they tend to really unbalance our cholesterol, sugar again, sugar and flower is what we make, boy, those are the great these three drainage or rather the things we should not be eating in general, for most people go... Yeah, exactly, I know. That tastes good.

So those are creating, again, a lot of inflammation and the high blood sugar can also be a problem for oxidizing cholesterol, the pre-oxidized cholesterol and the foods I mentioned earlier, especially the dry dairy, the dried milk, the dried cheeses, things like that, food chemicals can create a lot of free radical damage and oxidation, too much calcium, because calcium can get into the cholesterol, plaque and the artery walls, called hardening of the arteries. New studies on a special form of vitamin K-2 called manic were just proved to help remove calcium from the arteries and get it back on the bone, so we finally have a tool, the nutritional tool to address that.

Cigarette smoking, of course, is another way we oxidize our cholesterol, free radicals in general, and all those inflammatory foods like soda pop, those are gonna be our main culprits for having a negative influence on your cholesterol in the body.

You know what, a quick question, and you may or may not know the answer to this, so I'm gonna give you an out on this, but on that new vitamin K-2, do you know off hand if somebody who's had a heart attack, is that something that we could give somebody on that vitamin A, which you know they'd be taking a new... Younger doctors are educated about the difference between K1 and K2, K1 was not recommended, and older doctors tend not to know about the difference because it wasn't around when they went to medical school, O.But K1 can cause blood clotting. K2 does not partially because of the tiny dose that is used, if they wanna stop bleeding for someone in the hospital who has excessive bleeding, the inject and with 5000 milligrams of K1. And that stops the bleeding.

But the amount of K-2 that's recommended is 80 micrograms a day, which is less than one 10th of one milligram, so part of the reason it tends not to create clotting is because of that, but it's a very effective calcium manager and can be critical for cardiovascular health as well as bone health, yeah.

You're talking about that and it sounds really... It sounds great.

Absolutely.

Okay, okay, so the next question, what about the medications for lowering cholesterol called statin drugs, statin drugs. They are the number one selling medication in the country, 30 billion in annual sales. Wow, they are the subject of many class action suits are starting... As I go from state to state, I see commercials, have you been harmed by a limiter or private call? Please contact this law office.

I believe that they will be, if not completely removed from the marketplace within a few years, certainly restricted a great deal, because right now they're recommending them to everybody, and they have very limited upside and a big potential for harm in the body, and that's why the class action suits have started against these statin drugs, the problems include muscle weakness, memory decline, immune dysfunction, increased risk of infection, other things that can be caused by two little cholesterol in the body hormone imbalances since we use that to make our hormones, it really disrupts our blood sugar balance, 'cause insulin is a hormone as well, cellular pathways get disrupted because now we don't have enough cholesterol in our cells for proper communication, and as soon as we start taking statin drugs for cholesterol, it depletes our body of two vital nutrients for the heart, cotton and vitamin E can be reduced by as much as 50% in the first month of use, the same chemical chain of events that creates cholesterol in the liver also creates cop10, and we need couto our heart, as I explained in my last segment.

So this is not a good thing. When it comes to the strength of the heart muscle itself, depriving it of that critical nutrient Cocos, People do continue to take medications for lowering their cholesterol, I highly recommend that you get at least 300 milligrams of Cote a day to help offset the loss that is caused by these medications.

In addition to that cholesterol book I mentioned, called The Great cholesterol MIT by Steven Sinatra. So if you doubt what I say, get that book and you will be convinced, but there's another good book out there called by Susie Cohen called drug mugger, and it's about what each type of medication deplete you of nutritionally in the body, and a very interesting... And this is about all kinds of drugs to eat all kinds of drugs at a rate by Susie Cullen.

Yeah, so that's another really good new book that is by... There's some great information coming out out there... Oh, great.

See again, a great resource. Thank you. What are some of the common misconceptions about cholesterol?

Well, we've been led to believe that high cholesterol equals heart disease, but really more the average cholesterol levels of people that are admitted into the hospital for a cardiac event is 176, so it's really not high at all, in fact, more people have heart attacks with low cholesterol than they do with high or what they consider normal now, which I consider to be too low, if you have a heart attack, you're more likely to survive if you have high cholesterol than if you don't... There is no thing that you feel if you have high cholesterol, in fact, you probably feel you have a good mood because it's needed for mood big time, so low cholesterol causes a lot of mood issues as well.

Wow, so very interesting. The other thing is, there is never a study that has been shown to have any benefit for women in lowering your cholesterol, no benefit in heart health, no benefit in longevity, and a lot of potential downside for your muscles and your brain and your heart, that might also be worth repeating what you just said one more time.

Yeah, no benefit for women in any study on the statin drugs, that lower cholesterol does not improve your overall health, your longevity or your heart health... Men have to have two heart conditions and be middle-aged, not elderly, not young, for there to be a minor benefit for statin drugs, so that's the only group that it should be much more limited as far as what's recommended over age 65... There's no benefit shown for men, for women of any age, but for men as well, so there are just a lot of things, and as I mentioned earlier, the amount that we plaque in the arteries does not directly correlate to our amount of cholesterol.

I wanna quote you a little bit out of this article in Businessweek dated January 28th, 2008, so a mainstream magazine, not a health journal, it's talking about the number needed to treat, and the segment here is called doing the math, it says In visors own Lipton newspaper ad it says 36% reduction in heart attack, but in the small print with the asterisk it says, that means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or a placebo had a heart compared to 2% of the patients taking limiter.

So doing the math, that means that for every 100 people in the trial, which lasted three over three years, three people on placebo and two people on Lippert had heart attacks, the difference credited to the drug, one fewer heart attack for 100 people, maybe not.

So to spare one person a heart attack, 100 people have take Lipari for more than three years, the other 99 got no measurable benefit, or to put it into a terms of a little known but useful statistic, the number needed to treat for one person to benefit is 100 M. and these studies were formulated by the pharmaceutical companies to make their medication look the best, so the pre-selection process and so forth, so I think that the benefit of these has been vastly overstated and the potential harm of them is quite significant.

Wow, well, and you said That's from the business week date in January, January 28th, 2008, and the whole front of the thing has leper made out of giant pills, and it says for many people, cholesterol drugs may not do any good, so that's the article right on the front of the Business Week Magazine.

Right. And so again, the research is there.

Wow.

So again, it's fascinating, and again, it's there for you to also do your research on what this Lupita with these statin drugs are... Absolutely, get that book by Steven Sinatra, The Great cholesterol math, it will educate you greatly.Fascinated, what else can we do to keep our cholesterol healthy, so we wanna prevent oxidation of the cholesterol by using our great antioxidants, vitamin E, vitamin C are gonna be big benefits, things like the alpha lope and CoC 10, of course. eat that healthy diet, take your wonderful nutritional supplements, your fish oil, your vitamin E, Co-Q10, vitamin C. eternal cinnamon is also good for lowering triglycerides, so those are some of the excellent strategies we can use nutritionally to help keep our cholesterol healthy, keep it out of the arteries and maintain our heart health naturally.

Wonderful.

Well, we thank you so very much for your time, Valerie. Again, you are just such a wonderful resource of information, and again, this was part two of a three-part series on heart health, we so appreciate your time and your knowledge, and we look forward to having you on again. In the meantime, you could always get information, more information on Valerie and on your website, Valerie Hall nutrition dot com, and learn more about your natural approach to making us all healthier. We look forward to our next visit. Thank you.

Thank you, Kimberly.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,