Leaner Living's Guide to Cholesterol - 10/10/2009
Spencer Nadolsky
Cholesterol is and has been a controversial topic in the realm of health. Why is high cholesterol bad and how do you fix it? These are the questions being asked everyday. So let's break it down in an easy to understand format.
The terms we hear are "HDL" and "LDL" in regards to cholesterol. HDL and LDL are actually the transporters of cholesterol. So before we get started I want to make it clear that cholesterol itself is not the "bad guy." Cholesterol is used in our body for many things including our hormones and tissue membranes, so it is actually essential. The LDL and HDL carry the cholesterol. So what's the deal with "good" and "bad" cholesterol? In simplistic terms, HDL is considered "good" cholesterol because it picks up cholesterol from the blood and brings it back to the liver or other tissues and its abundance doesn't cause atherosclerosis... in fact it decreases it. HDL is considered the "dump truck" in the cholesterol system because it cleans up the blood vessels by picking up the cholesterol that is stuck to the arteries (atherosclerosis).
HDL is shown to be cardioprotective for this reason among others. LDL can be "bad" because while it transports cholesterol to our tissues, it can sometimes be oxidized (changed) and start wreaking havoc on our blood vessels. The havoc comes in the form of atherosclerosis, or clogged arteries. How does this happen? The oxidized LDL can stick in our blood vessel walls and our body responds to try to fix this. When trying to fix this our body naturally creates atherosclerosis1.
Why do doctors always want our LDL levels lower? High levels of LDL have been shown to increase mortality2. Why is this? From a logic standpoint, if LDL can possibly be oxidized, then having high levels of LDL will lead to a greater risk of it becoming oxidized. So in other words, higher LDL leads to higher oxidized LDL, which leads to atherosclerosis.
Why is one's LDL high in the first place? A few factors play into this such as genetics, diet, insulin resistance, body composition, etc. It is important to figure out which category you fall under in order to fix the underlying problem. You can't change genetics, which is why statin drugs have become so popular.
So what can you change? What you can change is your diet and body composition, which will lead to decreased insulin resistance and a better cholesterol profile. How does this work? In our article, "The War on Diabetes and Obesity," we describe how body composition and insulin resistance are interelated. These components lead to high levels of undesirable oxidized LDL, low levels of HDL, and high triglycerides through a few mechanisms that are beyond the scope of this article. This is one of the reasons we at Leaner Living place a high importance on diet and body composition. In our Diet section we outline foods that will improve your body composition and your cholesterol profile. Lifestyle is number one!
What about when the diet and body composition improvement doesn't help? This is when pharmacologic agents come into play. As 
mentioned before, statin drugs can play a big role in reaching LDL goals by stopping cholesterol from being made and decreasing LDL levels3. Other agents such as niacin are very beneficial4. We here at Leaner Living decided to do some research to create a supplement that can also fight the battle of cholesterol AND insulin resistance. Glycosolve, as we named it, contains berberine HCl, which has been shown to have similar effects of the pharmaceutical agents in lowering LDL and decreasing insulin resistance5.
As mentioned before, high LDL levels and insulin resistance are two big culprits of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. To learn more about Glycosolve click here.
If you are interested in knowing your cholesterol levels schedule an appointment with your doctor and ask for a fasting lipid panel.
1. Navab M et al. (2004) The oxidation hypothesis of atherogenesis: the role of oxidized phospholipids and HDL. J Lipid Res 45: 993–1007
2. Sacks FM. The relative role of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in coronary artery disease: evidence from large-scale statin and fibrate trials. Am. J. Cardiol. 88, N14-N18 (2001).
3. Baigent C, Keech A, Kearney PM et al. Efficacy and safety of cholesterol-lowering treatment: prospective meta-analysis of data from 90,056 participants in 14 randomised trials of statins. Lancet 366, 1267-1278 (2005)
4. Guyton JR. Niacin in cardiovascular prevention: mechanisms, efficacy, and safety. Curr. Opin. Lipidol. 18, 415-420 (2007)
5. Wang YX, Wang YP, Zhang H, et al. (Nov 2009) "Synthesis and biological evaluation of berberine analogues as novel up-regulators for both low-density-lipoprotein receptor and insulin receptor". Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 19(21):6004-8.
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