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Functional Medicine Articles

2/20/2017

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Silent Bug and Heart Disease

 
Ronald Grisanti D.C., D.A.B.C.O., D.A.C.B.N., M.S.
How secure should you feel if your doctor tells you that your cholesterol levels are normal?

Are you immune to heart disease just because you have been informed you have normal cholesterol levels?
If you have been a reader of my weekly articles for any length of time, you should know that cholesterol is not the culprit we have all been led to believe.
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Remember, half the folks who die of a heart attack never had high cholesterol.

There are other more important markers to consider if you want to know your risk of getting a heart attack or stroke.
Again, remember correcting elevated cholesterol does not guarantee immunity from a heart attack.

Today, I want you to learn one unappreciated cause of silent coronary artery disease.
This silent cause is from a bacteria called Chlamydia.

In fact, 4 out of 5 coronary artery plaques examined contain antibodies to this bug.
Chlamydia is a bacterial pathogen that will eat away at your coronary arteries.

Tests like C-Reactive Protein (CRPhs) and fibrinogen are indicators of raging inflammation or hidden infection, signaling the need to check for, among other things, Chlamydia.
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I also recommend you ruling out Chlamydia in the event you have a high calcium score. Click Here to read more about the calcium score.


You may be wondering how do you get Chlamydia?

This bug is a common cause of colds, flus, or bronchitis, and we've all had these.
But for some folks this is not the end of the story, for the coronary plaque can emerge decades after a common cold.

Again if you have have coronary artery plaque found from a Heart Scan (calcium score), elevated hsCRP and/or fibrinogen, your next step is to get the antibody test to Chlamydia pneumoniae.

The problem is not many doctors including cardiologists are familiar with Chlamydia as a diagnosable and treatable cause of coronary artery plaque.

You now have increased knowledge to prevent or minimize your risk of a heart attack or stroke.

References:Linnanmaki E, et al, Chlamydia pneumoniae---Specific Circulating Immune Complexes in Patients with Chronic Coronary Heart Disease, Circulation, 87:1130-34, 1993
Gupta S, et al, The effect of azithromycin in post-myocardial infarction patients with elevated Chlamydia pneumoniae antibody titers, J Am Coll Cardiol, 29:209a, 1997
Gupta S, et al, Elevated Chlamydia pneumoniae antibodies, cardiovascular events, and azithromycin in male survivors of myocardial infarction, Circulation, 96:404-07, 1997
Vojdani A, A look at infectious agents as a possible causative factor in cardiovascular disease: part II, Lab Med, 4; 34: 5-9, April 2003
Bachmaier K, et al, Chlamydia infections and heart disease linked through antigenic mimicry, Sci, 5406; 283: 1335-39, Feb 26, 1999
Muhlestrin JB, et al, Increased incidence of Chlamydia species within the coronary arteries of patients with symptomatic atherosclerotic versus other forms of cardiovascular disease, J Am Coll Cardiol, 27:1555-61, 1996

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8/5/2014

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The Benefits of High Cholesterol

 
Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD

People with high cholesterol live the longest.


This statement seems so incredible that it takes a long time to clear one´s brainwashed mind to fully understand its importance.

Yet the fact that people with high cholesterol live the longest emerges clearly from many scientific papers.

Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol.

Supporters of the cholesterol campaign consistently ignore his observation, or consider it as a rare exception, produced by chance among a huge number of studies finding the opposite.

But it is not an exception; there are now a large number of findings that contradict the lipid hypothesis.

To be more specific, most studies of old people have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease.

This was the result of my search in the Medline database for studies addressing that question.

Eleven studies of old people came up with that result, and a further seven studies found that high cholesterol did not predict all-cause mortality either.

Now consider that more than 90 % of all cardiovascular disease is seen in people above age 60 and that almost all studies have found that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women.

This means that high cholesterol is only a risk factor for less than 5 % of those who die from a heart attack.

But there is more comfort for those who have high cholesterol; six of the studies found that total mortality was inversely associated with either total or LDL-cholesterol, or both.

This means that it is actually much better to have high than to have low cholesterol if you want to live to be very old.

High Cholesterol Protects Against Infection

Many studies have found that low cholesterol is in certain respects worse than high cholesterol.

For instance, in 19 large studies of more than 68,000 deaths, reviewed by Professor David R. Jacobs and his co-workers from the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.

Most gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases have an infectious origin.

Therefore, a relevant question is whether it is the infection that lowers cholesterol or the low cholesterol that predisposes to infection?

To answer this question Professor Jacobs and his group, together with Dr. Carlos Iribarren, followed more than 100,000 healthy individuals in the San Francisco area for fifteen years.

At the end of the study those who had low cholesterol at the start of the study had more often been admitted to the hospital because of an infectious disease.

This finding cannot be explained away with the argument that the infection had caused cholesterol to go down, because how could low cholesterol, recorded when these people were without any evidence of infection, be caused by a disease they had not yet encountered?

Isn´t it more likely that low cholesterol in some way made them more vulnerable to infection, or that high cholesterol protected those who did not become infected? Much evidence exists to support that interpretation.

 



Medical References


Krumholz HM and others. Lack of association between cholesterol and coronary heart disease mortality and morbidity and all-cause mortality in persons older than 70 years. Journal of the American Medical Association 272, 1335-1340, 1990.

Ravnskov U. High cholesterol may protect against infections and atherosclerosis. Quarterly Journal of Medicine 96, 927-934, 2003.

Jacobs D and others. Report of the conference on low blood cholesterol: Mortality associations. Circulation 86, 1046--1060, 1992.

Iribarren C and others. Serum total cholesterol and risk of hospitalization, and death from respiratory disease. International Journal of Epidemiology 26, 1191--1202, 1997.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Grisanti and his functional medicine community. Dr. Grisanti encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. Visit www.FunctionalMedicineUniversity.com to find practitioners thoroughly trained in functional medicine. Look for practitioners who have successfully completed the Functional Medicine University's Certification Program (CFMP). This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Grisanti is required.

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