Nutrition -- A diet for low cholesterol

This is all about what we eat. It is not about aging or genetics or anything else. This means it is entirely in our control, if we are willing to make changes. All change is hard. Nothing motivates me more than realizing that my lifestyle almost shortened my life.

First of all, dieting for weight loss and changing your diet to avoid Atherosclerosis are two different things. I am primarily going to talk about diet changes to reduce cholesterol (and thus control artherosclerosis), but I will toss in some comments about diet for weight loss later.

I am proof that weight loss and clogged arteries are two entirely different things. I am not and have never been overweight, yet I just had a critical coronary artery that was 90 percent blocked "fixed" by having a stent placed. I have said for years that being thin, active, and in shape doesn't means your insides aren't clogged. I didn't know how right I was.

Now that I have one stent, I want to avoid having another. Having required one stent was a wakeup call. I got the message, much later than I might have wished, that my lifestyle, and particularly my diet, were causing severe health problems and needed to change.

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of fats, cholesterol and other substances in and on the artery walls. In essence this is a self inflicted disease that is the result of choices about what we eat. Saturated fat is the main culprit. Saturated fat is converted into cholesterol by our liver. A certain amount is necessary and good, but the standard American diet includes far too much saturated fat, which stimulates the liver to produce too much cholesterol.

Statin drugs provide one solution. What statin drugs do is to interfere with the enzyme the liver uses to convert saturated fat into cholesterol. Many people (including much of the medical profession apparently) present this as the whole solution.

However, a change in diet (and we are not talking about weight loss here), can have big effects on cholesterol levels. My LDL level at the time the stent was placed was 143. Two months later, after making big changes in my diet (eliminating or greatly reducing meat, dairy, and eggs) my LDL was down to 99 -- a drop of 44. At that time I began taking a statin drug (Rosuvastatin) and I am optimistic that by sticking to my diet changes and taking the statin, I can get LDL levels down to 60. A good friend has done exactly that. They say that if you get your LDL level below 75, your body will begin removing Atherosclerotic deposits from artery walls, reversing the damage from years of bad diet.

It is important to point out that a radical departure from the standard American diet is required. The "normal" diet for Americans is distinctly unhealthy. This is why heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States. 400,000 die each year from heart disease (strokes and heart attacks). Compare this to 42,000 each year who die in auto accidents. This is not a normal aspect of getting old. Other cultures who do not eat as we do see essentially no heart disease!

I now find myself checking nutrition facts labels on almost everything I eat. I look only at saturated fat. I pay no attention to calories. Calorie counting is all about weight loss. My goal is to allow myself no more than 10 milligrams of saturated fat each day. Many things I used to eat routinely are now out of the question. One of my old camping favorites -- a 20 ounce can of Dinty Moore stew -- has 10 mg of saturated fat and is now out of the question.

A shock to my thinking was to view ice cream as junk food! It is just a mixture of fat and sugar, and a large portion, like I used to eat regularly has over 10 mg of saturated fat. A small portion is OK, but a slippery slope exists and must be guarded against.

All of these are personal choices.
A person can of course ignore all this and eat whatever they like. But it is important to be realistic about the consequences. Nobody beats the rap. In particular I used to think my active lifestyle enabled me to "burn off" whatever I ate. This is true of calories, but not artery clogging cholesterol and fat.

Change is hard.

I am sure that unless I had felt the blade of the knife pressing against my throat, I would not have made the changes just described.

It is often said (and I have said it myself) that it is hard to sort through all of the contradictory nutritional information. You can find someone to recommend almost any approach to nutrition. This does not mean that there are not answers if you are honest and look for them. It should be obvious that anyone telling you that you can eat all the bacon, butter, and meat you want and be healthy is full of baloney.

What about weight loss?

There are no end of crackpot diets (Keto, Carnivore, Atkins, ...). I am reminded of a bible verse about people having "itching ears". How do you recognize a crackpot diet? Any diet that is not centered on the concept of reducing calorie intake is a crackpot diet.

Weight gain is all about a simple formula:

Excess calories = Calories eaten - Calories burned

If for some reason, a person is unable to exercise, the only term in the equation that can be modified is the total number of calories eaten. Without significant changes in diet, weight loss is impossible.