This article is intended to help those who are suffering from low cholesterol. There is a great deal of time, energy and money spent treating high cholesterol. Would you be surprised to learn that low cholesterol, and low lipids in general, are no healthier for you than high cholesterol? In fact, while it is the standard of care in medicine to put their patients on cholesterol-lowering statins if the patient has even a mild increase in cholesterol, most in the medical system will do nothing for low cholesterol. To make matters worse, instead of getting help to raise cholesterol, most patients are encouraged to maintain low cholesterol numbers as if that is somehow a benefit to their health. Well the truth is that low cholesterol and low tryglycerides (TG) is no better for you than having high levels. Low cholesterol is associated with infertility, hormone imbalance, increased mortality from infections and violent behavior. What if the medical system took the same approach to blood pressure as they do with cholesterol – that low is good, but lower is even better? That would be dangerous because low blood pressure happens to very sick patients and blood pressure drops to zero at death. The truth is that blood pressure has an optimum range, not too high or too low. Cholesterol and lipids are in the same boat. Health is all about balance.
Low cholesterol presents serious health challenges, esp. to females of child bearing age. One cause of low cholesterol can be stress. Cholesterol is used to form stress hormones – for example having a new baby and losing sleep can be stressful. Stress depletes the availability of cholesterol to make high amounts of cortisol and other stress hormones. Another reason for low cholesterol is pregnancy itself. A woman’s body must build a child from scratch and this places a major drain on the mother’s cholesterol and hormone reserves. A third reason for low cholesterol is chronically skipping meals and not eating right kind of food. These are by no means the only causes of low cholesterol but they represent the large majority of cases in females. In many patients not only is their cholesterol low but so are their triglycerides (TG). This indicates that the body is going through repeated hypoglycemia each and every day. The body produces TGs with when blood sugar rises, using the excess acetyl-Co A to produce TGs and cholesterol. Low TGs and/or low cholesterol means the patient has not been eating enough food, skipping meals, etc. If a person has low TG they may not have low blood glucose on a fasting blood test because they are using the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis – epinephrine/cortisol – to eat their own tissues. HPA activation liberates stored fat and esp. protein for conversion into glucose thus giving the impression of normal fasting blood sugar. The only problem is that the patient is breaking down their lean mass in order to raise blood sugar. Over time this will create its own major set of issues. Since TG are formed mainly from the dietary consumption of carbohydrates, eating your own muscle protein and fat will likely cause you to have low TG with relatively normal blood sugar – as we see with patients with low lipids. Catabolizing your own body to make blood sugar is just like eating a “paleo” diet. Except in this case you are basically cannibalizing yourself and eating your own fat and protein…Yuk! High lean protein and healthy fat diets are now known to reduce fatty liver and protect against atherosclerosis and heart disease. TGs specifically reflect the dietary intake of excess refined carbohydrates, and generally reflect calorie intake beyond the body’s need, and little else.
Cholesterol and TG share a common starting point and that is the molecule Acetyl-Co A. Acetyl-Co A exists in the cytosol just outside the mitochondrial membrane. If there is not enough Acetyl-Co A to produce TG, there will NOT be enough to manufacture cholesterol either. Again, same issues are applying here if the cholesterol is low and the TG are low then we know we are dealing with inadequate dietary intake. Meal skipping and improper food selection are the main culprits that drive this process. Because patients get a boost from the release of epinephrine, many patients mistakenly push through hypoglycemia only to become adrenalin-junkies awash in cortisol from over use of the HPA. Taking nutritional supplements without fixing the dietary component will create frustration and lackluster results as it will do nothing to stop triggering the hypoglycemic stress response. To raise cholesterol patients will need to eat more frequently than 3 meals per day. One meal every 3 hours is more helpful and is required to boost the blood levels of glucose to the point where the glycolysis pathway becomes saturated. Only by saturating the glycolysis pathway will levels of Acetyl-Co A rise high enough to start replenishing both TG and Cholesterol levels. The solution to low cholesterol resides in frequent eating, eating fatty and cholesterol-rich foods, and by avoiding excess HPA activation.
The overall strategy is to saturate the pathways involved with the production of cholesterol and triglycerides. If you are starting from a deficient standpoint, you are going to need to take a lot more than you think is necessary in order to start seeing results. This is due to the fact that human biochemistry is not a 1+1 = 2 system. In fact, there are multiple steps and mechanisms at play even with something as basic as cholesterol production. In order for cholesterol numbers to rise, all of the roughly two dozen steps that must occur before cholesterol is produced must be going full speed. Only by saturating all the precursor pathways to their maximum speed will the body be able to make more cholesterol and cause levels to rise. While most patients in our country have high cholesterol, which indicates their pathways are already over-saturated, there are many who are suffering from low cholesterol and are getting poor treatment.
At Red Mountain Natural Medicine we use the latest tools in natural healthcare including chiropractic care, nutritional supplements, detoxification, laboratory testing, food allergy testing, and more. This allows Dr. Rostenberg and the team at Red Mountain to take better care of our patients. By using a holistic model treatment can be aimed at the root cause of the problem instead of at the symptoms. If you would like more information please call our office 208-322-7755 today!
