How to address the root causes of high cholesterol

First off all... Let's clear up some rumors about our friend cholesterol (LDL +HDL). While many make LDL out to be the villain, It is God designed and a critical, life-giving substance that our liver makes to help our body respond to the environment we ask it to live in each day.

Our friend Cholesterol plays many key roles…

It plays a critical role in our immune system + vitamin D production + our tissues need LDL to synthesize steroid hormones. No LDL would mean no estrogen, no progesterone, no fertility, no testosterone, no libido, no sex and so on...

However, as someone who has years of clinical experience in cardiology: LDL can also wreak havoc, not because it is the sole problem though, but because ignoring or suppressing it is ignoring underlying factors causing it to rise in the first place.

The truth is, blaming it as the #1 cause for cardiovascular disease is misleading. It’s like blaming a bug for killing your plant and spraying the plant with pesticides to kill the bug, while not taking into consideration the soil you are asking the plant to grow in. What if the bug you blamed is actually a bee and the plant has fruit blooms that can only survive by being pollinated by the bee? Killing + blaming the bee isn't addressing the root and it is actually harming the plant in the long run because it is part of the ecology of the plants survival. The better approach is to start examining what else could be at play, like the soil of the plant and ensuring it has the nutrients it needs to survive + thrive + build resilience in case of an environmental threat.

In the same sense, instead of simply lowering cholesterol, what would it look like to begin examining our bodies and asking what elevated cholesterol is telling us? Further, what environment are we asking our bodies to thrive in?

According to popular theories: the fat we eat is directly is responsible for the amount of cholesterol in the blood. But this is often only one piece of the puzzle because it turns out 80% of the cholesterol in the body is produced by the liver and only 20% comes from food in the diet.

It turns out, lowering certain types of fat is actually a problem because our body thrives on good sources of saturated fat and it protects our vessels from injury and inflammation. (Processed polyunsaturated fats are a different story and are inflammatory, but thats a whole other post). Check out Heart Surgeon Dwight Lundell for more info on the fat + heart disease topic.

Moving on, what else could be causing it to rise?

The liver plays a central role in cholesterol metabolism (PMID: 31595236). If you have been following me long enough you know I talk often about liver health and how liver congestion is on the rise today, due to chronic stress, nutrient depletion, and over supplementing + medicating.

So knowing the liver also plays a role in cholesterol metabolism, and knowing our body is interconnected, let's start asking more questions.

How are liver health + cholesterol interconnected? And what else happens in the liver that could make an impact? Well one process (among many) that relies on the liver + cholesterol is thyroid hormone conversion. Dr. Broda Barnes (if you have not checked out his work on hypothyroidism, I recommend it) shines light on the fact that elevated cholesterol is likely related to hypothyroidism.

Why? The conversion of thyroid hormone occurs in the liver and cholesterol plays a role in this process. Cholesterol is converted into pregnenolone, the precursor to all the steroid hormones, and in order to do that, we need adequate amounts of active thyroid hormone triiodothyronine, also known as T3. We need a healthy amount of active thyroid hormone (T3) for many processes in our body, but especially for this. T4 is converted into T3 in the liver and when the body is overburdened by chronic stress and depleted minerals, thyroid conversion is interrupted. As a result, because everything in your body is interconnected, cholesterol cannot be converted and levels begin to increase.

Instead of addressing liver + thyroid health, nutrient deficiencies + chronic stress, modern medicine often screams, "just lower your fat intake and take this statin."

But here is the problem:

Low cholesterol as we age actually increases our risk of many diseases and death itself. In fact, low cholesterol is actually a predictor of earlier death in our elders.

One study found that elders (age 65 or older) with total cholesterol in the lowest quartile had more than twice the risk of death of those in the highest quartile. This was true even when the data was adjusted to reflect an abundance of chronic diseases including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and existing cardiovascular disease. The study found that total cholesterol levels below 189 actually increased the risk of death!

In addition, the risk of infections that require hospitalization (and infections overall) is also intertwined with total cholesterol. This makes sense as another role of LDL is being a key component of our immune system (it just so happens, LDL is attracted to damaged or inflamed arteries – as a defensive, healing response – just as your immune system would do if you slice open your finger.)

Which is why, protecting our God designed bodies from heart disease has to also include keeping our bodies free from chronic inflammation – because when we are chronically inflamed, our body responds in an attempt to protect our arteries and as a result our arteries attract an immune response which results in plaque building up from excess LDL (leading to stroke, heart disease, etc).

But again, simply prescribing a statin does not address the root cause as to why cholesterol is rising in the first place.

Your body is always telling you something. And Cholesterol raises for many reasons...

Like chronic stress + inflammation, poor liver health, poor thyroid health, magnesium deficiency, lack of saturated fat, over consumption of synthetic medication + supplements...

Am I saying refuse or stop your statin? No. I am not your provider, I do not know your physiology and health history. I do not know the environment you are asking your body to survive in each day. That is impossible for me to answer for you in a post on social media. It is so important remember each God designed human is unique and medications can be life-saving intervention.

But the truth is, they can also really worsen things.

Here is something you need to know if you are on or considering a statin: they deplete a vital antioxidant called CoQ10 and are often paired with beta blockers which further deplete CoQ10 and diuretics which deplete you of essential electrolytes needed for many things but especially heart health. If you are in my membership, you know how vital CoQ10 is when it comes to Mitochondria health.

In case you are not in my membership, in short

Mitochondria dysfunction can cause a cascade of chronic symptoms and do you know where the most mitochondria are found? In your heart. Which is why statins can actually increase your risk of heart disease as they deplete your CoQ10 and impair your endothelial function + worsen the health of your Mitochondria.

Then pair this with a beta blocker (which depletes melatonin + coQ10) and then add on a diuretic (which depletes potassium (which by the way is also essential for heart health and when I worked on a cardiac unit, just about everyone was low in potassium and needed it replaced).

This is a recipe for chronic symptoms + disease and leads to a long list of added medications for different symptoms year after year.

Yet, we blame high cholesterol...

The truth is, God designed LDL and HDL are just one example in which your body communicates with you, and they are neither inherently “good” nor “bad”. They are messengers (among many other roles they play). And to steward our God designed bodies well, we need consider those messages and begin tuning into the environment we are asking our LDL and HDL to function, and if the numbers are off, start asking more questions and pursuing what we can do to support the body vs suppressing it with pills or ignoring it until a major health crisis happens.

Your body is interconnected and always speaking to you via symptoms.

Are you listening?

Join my membership to learn how to start tuning into your body and to receive tangible tips to help it thrive each week when it comes to addressing topics like this one.