How much do we really know about fatty diets and cholesterol?
View(s):By Dr. P.F. Noel Perera
We are told that eating fats and oils will increase our blood cholesterol levels. Yet how this happens is not explained nor is there scientific proof. To be absorbed into the liver, fatty foods when eaten have to be broken down in the intestine to fatty acids. Complex fats if undigested will be eliminated. The balance between the production of cholesterol in the liver and its elimination is what determines the blood level.
There was a time, when we were advised by world health bodies not to eat egg yolk
From these fatty acids the liver will make the desired amount of cholesterol on a daily basis under the direction of the brain and genes. Also to form other complex fats. Via the Krebs citric acid cycle, glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids can be incorporated to form all the complex compounds that the body needs.
The world’s largest animals are vegetarians. Yet their livers help make complex fats and proteins, although, their diets are poor in fats and proteins.
The brain is made up in large part of fats including cholesterol. Cholesterol is a constituent of the cell walls of countless numbers of cells in the body, estimated at one trillion cells.
Little is mentioned of the elimination of cholesterol. Two doctors working in Texas, USA discovered units on the liver cells called receptors. The two doctors received the Nobel Prize for medicine some 20 years ago. The “old or spent” cholesterol is brought to the liver by HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol. The receptors take this spent cholesterol and via the biliary system, dump it into the common bile duct and the small bowel to be eliminated. As we age, receptors also age and their numbers decrease. Consequently less cholesterol is eliminated and blood level goes up. Cholesterol is eliminated in the stool daily.
Proof of this phenomenon is available. When the bile ducts are obstructed, as in obstructive jaundice, the bile cannot escape into the small bowel to be eliminated; hence cholesterol levels keep rising with no avenue for escape.
In a condition called Progeria a 17-year-old looks and behaves like a 70 – 80-year-old. These individuals die young of non-communicable diseases (NCD) like heart attacks and strokes. This indicates the importance of old age in NCDs.
Other teenagers suffer from homozygous hereditary hypercholesterolemia. Their cholesterol levels are very high in the region of 12,000 – 15,000 milligrams. They too die young of heart attacks and strokes. Their problem is that they have inherited a dominant gene for hypercholesterolemia from each of their parents. There is no doubt of the part played by genes in the genesis of hypercholesterolemia.
There was a time, when we were advised by world health bodies not to eat egg yolk. Millions of egg yolks were then flushed down the drain daily and the white of egg used for omlettes. This went on all over the world for decades. Eventually these health experts reversed themselves. Now they tell us we can eat one or two whole eggs per day, as eggs also have Omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D. Imagine the waste of good quality proteins and fats.
Likewise we are advised to drink skimmed milk, from which all fats have been removed, and to eat fat free yoghurt, also to cut down on butter, cheese, red meat and bacon and ham.
There is a gene for LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein), triglycerides and HDL. Then it is said that 50% of patients admitted for a heart attack do not have high cholesterol, high blood pressure nor do they smoke. These three are three major risk factors for arteriosclerosis.
Dr. Atkins’ studies confirm that eating a breakfast of eggs, bacon and steak will control cholesterol levels and reduce body weight. A vegetarian diet causes obesity because the carbohydrate diet induces secretion of more insulin, which leads to excessive fatty tissue to accumulate in the body.
Excellent drugs are available in the treatment of high cholesterol. “Truth is so obscure in these times and falsehood so established that unless we love the truth we cannot know it” – Blaise Pascal.