Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States. It accounts for 1/3 of all the deaths, which basically means 1 death every 40 seconds from heart disease even though so many people are on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol and are following low fat diets.
This is because cholesterol per se does not clog the arteries or cause plaque. Therefore lowering the cholesterol should not be the goal. Instead, keeping your arteries clean is what we should focus on.
Let’s take a deeper look at this issue, because it is very important to understand as many of us have been misguided by incorrect information.
In the body we have a network of channels that the food travels through once we chew and swallow it. The first channel it encounters is the digestive tract, and once the food is broken down into very fine particles it absorbs next into the bloodstream and travels through those channels which we call arteries and veins.
Then from there the blood actually becomes things such as urine, sweat, tears, toxins, lymphatic fluids — and all these are also traveling through physical channels until they exit the body into the bowel movement, urine and sweat.
Today’s focus however will be on the channels that carry blood, such as the arteries, since we want to have a clear understanding of how to keep these specific channels open.
If the blood vessels shrink, get clogged, inflamed or become hardened with plaque then we could have a heart attack. So it’s important to avoid the foods which can cause all these issues. For example the nightshade vegetables, eggplant, tomatoes, white potatoes and bell peppers all contain nicotine which immediately shrink the channels down once we eat them.
Next, we should avoid food that clogs the channels. It’s important to note here that the foods which clog the arteries may or may not have cholesterol in them. For example, you should avoid the heavy meats, such as beef, veal, pork, ham, sausage, bacon, deli meats such as pepperoni and corned beef, and also avoid hard aged cheeses (as opposed to the freshly made soft curd cheeses such as cottage, ricotta, panir, and fresh mozzarella). All of these foods do contain cholesterol and could potentially clog your arteries over time.
But then there are a number of foods which don’t contain cholesterol which are also clogging, such as nut butters like peanut butter, almond butter and sunflower seed butter; unfermented soy like tofu, edamame, and soy milk, among others, which we should avoid as well.
Let’s dig a little deeper here and look at one very important fact which doctors and their misled patients are confused about: how certain bad fats may cause plaque in the arteries, independent of what your cholesterol might show.
For example, you could have high cholesterol but your arteries could be squeaky clean. And on the other hand you could have low cholesterol and have clogged arteries if you keep eating the foods which could clog you up, such as lots of tofu or almond butter. So do keep avoiding these to keep your arteries open.
But I would like to spend the bulk of the time discussing good and bad fats, because from what I can see in my very busy Ayurvedic practice, many people, including strict vegetarians, are clogging their arteries, even if they are very thin and physically fit.
So, it turns out that it’s not 100% correct to make a blanket statement and say that cholesterol clogs the arteries. The real truth is that it is oxidized cholesterol which is the main component of artery-clogging plaque. This is more important than what your total cholesterol may be, or even what your LDL or HDL numbers are.
Again, now we know that the type of cholesterol that dangerously builds up inside the artery walls is oxidized cholesterol. Oxidation is what happens when something rusts, it’s a chemical reaction. So oxidized cholesterol has gone through a chemical reaction where now LDL cholesterol can become damaged in much the same way as iron oxidizes and forms rust.
And it’s the oxidized LDL which creates plaque. So you could have high LDL and not create plaque if it’s not oxidized and low LDL if it’s oxidized can cause inflammation and other damage to the arteries.
Only LDL can be oxidized, HDL cholesterol cannot.
So where do we get oxidized cholesterol in our diet: Well, the more processed the oils the more oxidized it becomes. The worst types of fat are vegetable cooking oils like sunflower and safflower oils, canola oil and many others. Be careful when you eat out because most of the restaurants are using a blend of these cheap vegetable oils for that very reason — they are cheap and they cannot afford to run a restaurant on high quality olive oil or ghee.
But here’s the very ironic thing: butter is almost impossible to oxidize! And eating ghee (or clarified butter) is even better as it has the highest smoking point, the temperature at which the oil oxidizes, than any type of fat or oil! 485 degrees to be more exact!
This is why I cringe when I hear all my patients from India tell me they have given up ghee in favor of sunflower oil because ghee contains cholesterol and sunflower oil doesn’t. The same thing happened here in the United States as well as in many other countries.
Since doctors never had a class in nutrition, they mistakenly taught us that cholesterol clogs the arteries and since cholesterol comes from an animal we should avoid butter and eat margarine, vegetable oils and Crisco. Which we all did. And this is when the rates of heart attacks and strokes skyrocketed! And they’ve continued to climb as people follow these guidelines, carefully avoiding butter and ghee.
So let’s clear up this misinformation once and for all. There are several ways oxidized cholesterol builds up in your bloodstream: from eating commercially fried foods, such as fried chicken and French fries, and eating polyunsaturated fatty acids which are found in vegetable oils. Partially hydrogenated oils, or trans fats, are some of the unhealthiest fats you can eat. Processed foods are also sources of oxidized cholesterol, including margarines, fast foods, fried foods and commercially baked goods.
All these foods cause inflammation as the oxidized LDL particles create damage on the inside of your arteries. And here’s the other important thing: you might not consider these foods as “fats” per se and therefore might not realize the damage you are creating in your arteries when you eat the chocolate bar with the hydrogenated fats or your favorite baked goods from your corner bakery which contain trans fats, or that delicious croissant used in making your breakfast sandwich.
The real truth is that the low fat hype and overuse of statins has done nothing to prevent deaths from cardiovascular disease.
We should have good fats in the diet, such as high quality extra virgin olive oil and ghee and milk from grass-fed cows because if the cows are fed grains their milk and butter will contain the dangerous omega-6 fats, however if they are fed grass the milk and butter will contain heart healthy omega 3-s.
The fats from coconuts and avocados are also very good for you, however their oils are a little too heavy to digest, unless you live in a hot climate and have a strong digestive fire to break down and assimilate these somewhat heavy and cold fats. And don’t forget to boil your milk before drinking it to melt down the fats for best absorption into your cells. If you drink the milk cold the hard heavy fat molecules just hang around and clog the channels, which is why so many report that they get mucus from drinking milk.
In addition to good fats, here are some other important tips to keep your arteries clean:
Use spices in the diet, such as ginger, pepper, green chilis, and cinnamon, all of which reduce clumping together of platelets in the blood, which will keep your blood nice and thinned out, which in turn reduces the amount of plaque formation.
Beets and other green leafy vegetables are a rich source of nitrates, which your body converts to nitric oxide, which improves blood vessel function and reduces inflammation. Nitric oxide is a molecule whose most important function is vasodilation, which means it has the ability to relax the muscles of the blood vessel walls causing them to widen which increases circulation.
Oats contain antioxidants which inhibit inflammatory proteins (called cytokines) as well as other types of adhesion molecules which are clogging to the arteries.
Nuts and seeds boost the HDL cholesterol and improve blood vessel function.
Olive oil: a 2018 study showed that one ounce a day improved blood vessel function and reduced inflammatory markers due to its high levels of polyphenol compounds. There’s a reason people in Italy live so long — they drizzle their high quality olive oil on everything before eating. Good quality olive oil can actually lower the bad LDL cholesterol.
The best olive oils to buy are either unrefined, where they are produced without any chemical or heat extraction processes and are higher in quality than the cheaper brands. Cold-pressed is the least refined and the most natural process in olive oil production. That is why cold-pressed oils will be higher in quality and price.
But it’s good to know that most of the olive oils in our local supermarkets are refined, which means they are processed using heat or chemicals and many even introduce other types of vegetable oils into the mix, resulting in an overall lower-quality olive oil. If you’ve ever been to Italy you know how seriously they take their food. Their olive oil is excellent top notch high quality; here in the States most of our cheaper olive oils on the supermarket shelves are overly processed and contain a blend of vegetable oils.
And this is a very important point to always remember: when you heat vegetable oils, whether it’s sunflower oil, Canola oil or a low quality olive oil with vegetable oils blended into it, it wreaks havoc in your body in two ways: when you heat these oils they turn into a poison; and since everything you swallow has to be processed by the liver it ends up damaging the liver, creating much of the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease many of us are diagnosed with. And the second problem associated with these vegetable oils is that when you heat them they form a plastic compound which clogs the arteries.
So think twice before you haphazardly buy olive oil at your local grocer. You might think you’re protecting your arteries by eating olive oil the way people do in the Mediterranean countries, but in fact you could be risking a heart attack or stroke by unknowingly eating poor quality vegetable oils.
Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts reduce arterial calcification. This is important because once there is inflammation in the artery wall calcium will deposit there to protect it.
And this is basically what plaque is: oxidized fats with calcium deposited into it.
So, to summarize, I have seen so many patients in my practice through the years who present with high cholesterol, and yet their arteries are clean, because they eat the good fats, such as ghee and very high quality olive oil loaded with polyphenols.
And I’ve seen the skinny vegetarians suffer heart attacks because they were eating lots of foods which clogged their arteries which don’t contain cholesterol, foods such as tofu and almond butter and artificial cheeses such as soy cheese or vegan cheese. So because there was no cholesterol in these foods they were fooled into thinking their arteries were safe, then suffered the consequences when it was too late and their arteries became clogged.
I hope you understand all the information presented here so you switch your mode of thinking from a low fat diet with an emphasis on keeping cholesterol low, to a diet which has ample amounts of good fats found in ghee, unrefined cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, boiled milk, freshly made soft curd cheeses, avocados, coconuts, nuts and seeds. And always make sure you include fruits, vegetables and spices which can keep your blood vessels opened and the blood nice and thinned out, reducing the chance of clogged arteries, strokes and heart attacks.