High Cholesterol

Are you on meds for Lyme?

You can go a more natural route to try to decrease your bad numbers, cutting all meats, even chicken back some, as well as dairy, and eating more veggies, beans, certain nuts, avocado.

/www.earthclinic.com/cures/cholesterol.html

My first thought was a daily dose of Bragg's ACV (apple cider vinegar) with the Mother in it.

That's true Traveler, I know it plagues mine about every other test I have, up/down/up/down. But for me we're talking numbers just a small rise above the top safe parameter. 250-260 consistently in the last 2 years something else needs to be considered, just to be on the safe side. Especially because articles are saying now that 200 is not a low enough number anymore to be 'safe'.

IDK, we're all so different. It can even be genetic. Blood pressure is a factor, smoking....so many factors.

The meat thing is depressing. I would have a tough time with that.

The other suggestion for lowering cholesterol numbers is regular walking. (if you aren't doing it already)

We definitely need to be aware of and get other possibilities checked out! But, if (in this case, with cholesterol), the numbers don't come down with "normal" dietary changes that would usually bring about the right changes, it may be the infections we have. Even medication may not lower it, until we get the infections under control.

These infections doing this is more something to be aware of, rather than to say that we shouldn't be concerned about it. And I nearly always advocate for things to be checked to be sure that something else isn't the cause.

High cholesterol here, 220s right now. It's a good reason for even the strictest of doctors to prescribe Cholestyramine which has the added side benefit that it can pull toxic metals out of your lower GI tract. I'm guessing like many people here I also have the gene where my gi tract recirculates rather than eliminates. The day after taking this binder/bile sequestrant I feel loads better.

I echo Bb -
Cholestyramine can carry away the microbes that hang out in the cholesterol and help eliminate both AND detox you! Yay!

HIGHLY recommend splurging for the PURE form - available w/ compounding pharmacies or if you need a good source that will ship email me.
Cholestyramine has several other bennies:
/selfhacked.com/2016/06/17/11-proven-uses-cholestyramine-csm-6-things-watch/

Also, mine shot up almost double what it normally is after starting abx. Who knows why. I've since learned the hypothyroid condition can cause it, low Vit D can cause it and other things I can't remember right now. But I've re-incorporated Omega 3, Vit. D supplementation and have increased naturethroid. Will retest in June and will let you know if it improves. Might even be off abx by then. No way am I going on cholesterol meds.

-p

Post Edited (Pirouette) : 4/8/2017 1:09:28 AM (GMT-6)

Psilociraptor said...
High cholesterol is correlated with disease not causative. This is because they share the same etiology, ie infection. The body synthesizes cholesterol and VLDL to mop up fat-soluble endotoxins from the vascular tissue where microorganisms have penetrated the endothelium in search of immune-priveledged niches. Having high cholesterol will not lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Having chronic viral/bacterial/fungal infection on the other hand will lead to high cholesterol and the potentials for these other diseases through induction of inflammatory pathways. This is why anti-cholesterol meds are BS. So your plan of action really needs to be focused on just treating the Lyme. Cholesterol is your friend. If anythings going to kill you it's the Lyme.

That said Lyme is not the only thing contributing. Pathogens can seed from your gut and mouth as well as indoor air. This is why diet and lifestyle is important to lowering cholesterol too. Better immunological control over these ubiquitous exposures

I 100% agree. Cholesterol level is the body's attempt to regulate and compensate. Mold sent my cholesterol to high levels. I did not treat for this, yet antifungals can affect cholesterol. I count on the higher levels of cholesterol to protect me.

Hey traveler. Unfortunately this is just part of my global understanding of disease that i pieced together with my own research over several years. I don't off hand know of a concise papers on the topic. However, if you look for "endotoxin lipoprotein hypothesis" you're likely to find what you need. Or search for "LPS LDL" or "lipoteichoic acid LDL" or "lipopolysaccharide binding protein (LBP) LDL" and so on. It's been so long i can't really point you at the best paper. But in short lipoproteins carry LBP which binds endotoxins for excretion and both cholesterol synthesis and VLDL are transcriptionally regulated by inflammatory signals. There's an abundance of literature regarding that. The better question is where is the literature showing how cholesterol causes heart disease.

More and more studies are proving that diets high in carbohydrates contribute to high cholesterol, especially triglycerides, more than diets high in fat. I would recommend leaning towards a more Paleo diet. It has a lot more benefits than just helping symptoms of Lyme and Co.'s

I have a girlfriend that had high cholesterol. She began eating a bowl of oatmeal every morning and that alone brought down her cholesterol.

That is an easy one to try.

Pirouette said...

Psilociraptor said...
...in short lipoproteins carry LBP which binds endotoxins for excretion and both cholesterol synthesis and VLDL are transcriptionally regulated by inflammatory signals.

WOW. I'm really interested in this… although I can't understand it! ;) Can you rephrase in a more pedestrian-friendly version? I would love to share this w/ my Lyme nurse.

-p

Well lipoproteins are just packets of fat bound by proteins that circulate in your blood for delivery of fat to tissues. You know these as your HDL and LDL though there are many subfractions of these. But their duel function is not just to deliver fats but to sequester fat-soluble bacterial components using lipopolysaccharide binding protein (and likely other proteins). So they leave from the liver with dietary fats and come back to the liver with bacterial "endotoxins" which get dumped in the bile and pooped out. Transcriptional regulation just means that these genes are regulated by external signals at the DNA->RNA level. In this case many genes associated with host metabolism and especially those pertaining to lipid "disorders" are modulated in response to inflammatory signals and pathogen recognition systems. So my understanding is as follows...

High fat diets->overgrowth of fat metabolizing gut microbiota->leaky gut->inflammation. Inflammation then triggers insulin resistance/cholesterol and VLDL synthesis/lipoprotein lipase activity and causes all the basic features of metabolic syndrome. As we know with Lyme, many microorganisms do not like to stay in the blood stream because of circulating complement, antibodies, immune cells and so on. So they attempt to break through the blood vessels into deeper tissue. So immune cells chase after them, stimulate local inflammation, recruit more immune cells and lipoproteins and form a plaque which some think may serve to contain the infection and prevent sepsis. I don't think anybody really knows the exact dynamic between HDL/LDL and all the subfractions. But we do know that they pass endotoxins back and forth that are ultimately taken up by the liver. We don't really know why cholesterol is needed either but it could simply have to do with the binding dynamics of lipoproteins. In either case it really has nothing to do with the initiation or propagation of this process (unless of course it also has an adverse effect on gut microbiota). The inflammation comes from the bacterial endotoxins. The plaque comes from the immune cells. And the heart attack risk comes from when plaque ruptures. This is usually attributed to physical stress, but there was one recent study showing the presence of bacterial biofilms inside plaques. And showing that, in vitro, stress signals can cause them to disperse by releasing biofilm degrading enzymes which also rupture the plaque. So that's a possibility too.

But all in all your CVD risk comes from infection, not cholesterol or LDL. Neither is "bad" though they may certainly reflect something bad happening under the surface. It's not really straight forward though. All that stuff changes in a healthy way with diet as well. When i switched to paleo i started eating more meat and my cholesterol levels jumped. But my LDL changed from pattern B to pattern A which is much healthier. So your lipid panels are telling you two things. How your body is handling dietary fat, and your metabolic response to infectious burden. Separating those and getting meaningful information is hard if not impossible right now.

Excellent, Psilociraptor - thank you.

-p

Psilociraptor said...

PeteZa said...
And, this plaque rupture is not instantaneous, is it? I have seen many people take a stress test and they have a heart attack a day or two after. So the stress was there to disrupt the plaque, but it was slow getting to the heart?

Inflammation sure wrecks havoc on our bodies.

Added: also there was a reason for the stress test in the first place. Symptoms.

I don't think a clot would travel that slow but that's not to say a chain of events can't occur that takes several days. I don't really know all the factors involved. I would say more likely those people were getting tested because they were high risk as opposed to the test itself triggering it, but i don't know for certain.

This was my thought also.... there was a reason for the test initially. thanks..