Healthy Cholesterol

1. Your body requires sodium (a component of salt) to regulate fluid balance and distribution, as well as nerve and muscle cell function. Although you need some sodium, the standard American diet includes way too much. That’s why I urge my patients to try what I often refer to as "the healthiest diet of all." You'll be amazed at how effective it can be.
2. The current recommendation for salt consumption is less than 2,400 mg of sodium a day, which amounts to about one teaspoon of salt. Recent research suggests that people ingesting less than 1,500 mg of sodium a day are better able to keep their blood pressure low. If you have high blood pressure, you should definitely aim for that kind of level. Don’t use salt from the shaker, and read labels to add up the amount you’re taking in.
3. Many items at fast food restaurants are high in salt, so you can easily exceed the recommended level with one serving.
4. You can easily make up for the reduced salt in your diet by cooking with fresh herbs and spices such as basil, garlic, oregano, rosemary, chives, parsley, and onion. What’s more, all of these flavorings contain natural substances that are good for your health. Garlic, in particular, has been shown to have a positive effect on blood pressure when consumed on a daily basis.

• Choose to seek natural ways to lower blood pressure if that’s a problem for you.
• Choose to adhere to good cardiovascular nutrition, which may include increasing the amount of fresh vegetables you consume and lowering the amount of breads and other starches you eat each day.
• Choose to do what you need to do to maintain good cholesterol levels, improve blood circulation, and healthy triglycerides.
• Choose to exercise so that you can more easily prevent blood clots and maintain a healthy weight.

• Address any lifestyle-related or heart risk factors you have with your doctor.
• Follow a good cardiovascular nutrition eating program, such as the PAMM diet.
• Take 1–3 grams of fish oil daily.
• For women over 65, take 100 mg of aspirin (equivalent to 1.25 baby aspirin) a day. (Beware of stomach bleeding, though, which is always a possibility with long-term aspirin use.)
• Drink 1 to 3 cups of green tea and 2 ounces of pomegranate juice daily.
• Take a 500–1,000 mg garlic supplement or eat one crushed clove daily. (Avoid this tip if you’re taking Coumadin.)
• Be aware of your high inflammation marker scores: CRP, homocysteine, fibrinogen, and Lp(a).
• Maintain good cholesterol levels, including an HDL less than 40.

Maintaining good cholesterol levels is  important, but, contrary to popular belief, cholesterol is not a villain. Your body needs cholesterol to synthesize certain nutrients and hormones, construct the semi-permeable membranes around each of the 100 trillion cells that make up your body, and facilitate cell communication and memory in the brain.

Cholesterol moves through the body with the help of two proteins: LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, and HDL, or high-density lipoprotein. LDL carries ready-to-use cholesterol molecules that can be absorbed by cells that need it, and HDL picks up excess cholesterol and carries it back to the liver for recycling and excretion.

Healthy LDL cholesterol levels are always of great concern, as they should be, but few people know that it’s impossible for your cells to absorb too much of it. LDL becomes unsafe only when it interacts with molecular fragments called free radicals. The effect of such interaction is that the LDL becomes oxidized. Unlike normal LDL, oxidized LDL has toxic effects on the cells it attaches to.  

When you get down to it, though, the real problem is not cholesterol—it’s whether your body’s antioxidant system can effectively neutralize the free radicals that damage LDL molecules.

Here’s what you need to remember about cholesterol: It’s a relative heart risk factor and it’s influenced by other factors. You should also keep in mind that good cardiovascular nutrition and a cholesterol lowering diet can go a long way to helping you keep good cholesterol levels.

For more information on cholesterol guidelines, reducing hypertension, and overall heart health, visit www.drsinatra.com. While there, sign up for FREE e-letters or subscribe to Dr. Sinatra’s monthly newsletter, Heart, Health & Nutrition.

• Total Cholesterol:  173
• HDL:   74
• LDL:   87
• LDL cholesterol-C:  90
• Lp(a) : 12

Time is of the essence when you’re dealing with a heart attack. The best chance for survival and optimum recovery occurs if you are treated within two hours of the onset of symptoms.

At the hospital, things will move quickly. Up to 50 percent of the time, sudden death is the first symptom of heart disease, so any patient who survives the first two hours after a heart attack has passed a significant milestone. However, even with the best of medical care, 10–12 percent of those who survive the initial attack never leave the hospital (they die in the days following).

When it’s time for a patient to be discharged from the hospital, close caregivers should be present for any medical instructions because patients frequently don’t remember details. In fact, patients sometimes fail to recognize hospital staff members when they return for follow-up visits—that kind of psychological side effect is common during times of shock and trauma. At home, one of the biggest challenges that patients and loved ones face is a sense of day-to-day suspense. Many patients say they feel like they are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. These feelings are normal.

While I hope you’ll never need this information, I want you to be aware of it. I also want you to recognize common heart risk factors so that you can avoid ever being victim to heart attack or other cardiovascular problems. The key is prevention, which includes good cardiovascular nutrition, the ability to control high blood pressure, and maintaining healthy cholesterol and healthy triglycerides levels.

For more information on heart attack and stroke, heart risk factors, or other cardiovascular problems, visit www.drsinatra.com. While there, sign up for FREE e-letters or subscribe to Dr. Sinatra’s monthly newsletter, Heart, Health & Nutrition. 
 

In my newsletter, Heart, Health, and Nutrition, I’ve written a lot about inflammation as being a chief cause of cardiovascular problems, even more critical than the difficulty many Americans have with maintaining healthy cholesterol.

But, the good news is that a lot can be done to combat this potential killer. For example…

In a coronary arteriography study of nearly 400 Japanese men, those who loved their traditional green tea enough to drink at least a cup every day had a risk of heart attack significantly lower than men who were down­ing other beverages.

This study from the other side of the globe was extremely interesting. Researchers looked at green tea, black tea, cocoa, coffee, and red wine consumption and the heart. While investigators were hard-pressed to find any relationship between identifiable coronary artery disease and the dietary intake of any of these beverages, there was definitely a statistical association between green tea and heart attack; more of the former meant less of the latter.

The important property you get from a soothing cup of green tea is its natural COX-inhibiting effect, which translates to an anti-inflammatory effect.

Other natural COX-2 inhibitors that you can easily add to your diet include healthy spices like ginger, curcumin, oregano, onion, and garlic. These remarkable spices make for good overall cardiovascular nutrition.

For more information on good cardiovascular nutrition, visit www.drsinatra.com.

1. Niacin:  Take up to a total daily dose of 1 gram (1 gram=1,000 mg) taken in one or two doses. Start at a dose of 125mg, then double it as tolerated, up to the full amount.
2. Fish or squid oil: Take 2 grams daily of a good quality fish or squid oil (but not krill oil).
3. Nattokinase: 50 mg daily.
4. Bolouke: Boluoke contains the enzyme lumbrokinase, which has been shown to assist with the breakdown of fibrin, a protein involved in blood clotting. It is a Canadian product and can be purchased online. This is the only measure I know of that may actually lower your Lp(a). Take as directed.
5. Delta tocotrienol: Take 100–200 mg of this natural form of vitamin E once a day.
6. Get grounded! Remember, heart disease—like diabetes, cancer, and a host of autoimmune problems—is a disease caused by inflammation. In the case of heart disease, it’s the arterial walls that get inflamed. Once they puff up from inflammation and all kinds of debris that accumulate in the arterial walls, they then get clogged, especially if you have a tendency to clot. Grounding can help to reduce inflammation, and help avoid cardiovascular problems and prevent blood clots.

• Because of its small dense properties, Lp(a) has been shown to contribute to atherosclerosis;
• Your Lp(a) level is often hereditary, with DNA determinants;
• Lp(a) is thought to have something to do with coagulation and clot formation;
• It can help with wound healing because of its ability to turn on inflammatory reactions; and
• At high levels, it can promote excessive inflammation.

• small—it can easily sneak in and permeate the cell wall and wreak havoc;
• dense— like a stone that sinks to the bottom, it can pile up on the walls of your blood vessels; and
• highly inflammatory—it is a provocative little monster.

C-reactive protein is a heart risk factor that the medical world has started to take note of. It’s a blood protein that, when found in elevated levels, may indicate a risk for heart attack and stroke.  

CRP can be detected when there is inflammation resulting from trauma or infection. Let’s look at some study results:  A 1985 Finnish study found that half of patients with coronary heart disease had high levels of an antibody known as C-reactive protein, compared with only 17 percent of healthy controls.

The Physicians Health Study indicated that C-reactive protein could predict future cardiovascular problems, such as heart attack in healthy and high-risk individu­als, and that high levels of this protein increase risk for heart attack and stroke.

In healthy postmenopausal women with levels of C-reactive protein and 11 other substances, the one-fourth with the highest C-reactive protein lev­els were 4.4 times more likely to have had a heart attack or other cardiovascular problem than the one-fourth with the lowest levels.

If you have cardiovascular problems or you’ve recently experienced a virus or urinary infection that could cause inflammation, have your doctor check your C-reactive protein levels. CRP can be detected when there is inflam­mation resulting from trauma or infection (including pneumonia, herpes, chlamydia, and possibly even a viral infection that simulates a cold). A simple blood test is as accurate as cholesterol and homocysteine screening in pre­dicting a person’s risk of heart attack and stroke.

For more information on heart risk factors and how to prevent them, visit www.drsinatra.com.