Cholesterol: Believing this is Hurting your Health

Dispelling Health Myths: What you Need to Stop Believing

I am doing a series on health myths. These are questions that I get asked often or health myths that people are following and by doing so are actually hurting their health.

MYTH: “Having Low cholesterol is good for me”

Why This Thinking is Harmful: Many people strive for and pride themselves on their low total cholesterol numbers.  Research shows that low TC below 160 is associated with depression, suicidal ideation, anger, irritability, cognitive issues and outbursts. A healthier range is between 180-210 depending on your age.  (older people, studies, show benefit from levels even higher).

 It is harmful for you to think that low cholesterol is good. Here is why:

• We need cholesterol for hormone productivity and for vitamin D production


• We need it to produce bile acids, to improve absorption of vitamins A, D, K, and E.


• Cholesterol is vital for immune function and for neurological function. It is needed to make brain cells.


• Low cholesterol is associated with increase cancer risk (those with TC of 160 or below as compared to those with TC of 200)


• You may have cholesterol clogging your arteries so you may think that reducing cholesterol and fat in your diet will help reduce your risk of heart disease. But your clogged arteries are caused by inflammation in the arterial wall and your body protects itself by packing cholesterol there. So, while cholesterol may be at the scene of the crime, cholesterol did not cause the crime!


• For people, over 60, high cholesterol is associated with better health and greater longevity.

Cholesterol is not the enemy!

Do this Instead: Don’t just look at your TC. Look at your HDL and LDL numbers.  But even LDL numbers can be misleading. More labs are breaking the LDL down.  You can have high LDL but if it is the “good” kind, the large, fluffy LDL then this is a positive thing. But if you have more of the sticky, dense LDL this is not the case. This type of LDL is oxidized and contributes to systemic inflammation in your body.

If you want this type of testing, ask your doctor for a Vertical Auto Profile (VAP) test or the lipoprotein Particle Profile (LPP) test.

Bottom line: Don’t fear and avoid healthy foods such as grass fed butter, grass fed/organic meats, eggs, raw dairy (if tolerated), wild caught Alaskan salmon and “real” olive oil.  Avoid instead low fat processed products!

Sources

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/underreported-dangers-low-cholesterol

http://www.functionalmedicineuniversity.com/public/924.cfm

http://www.drsinatra.com/defining-the-different-types-of-cholesterol/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395608002525

Other Sources

Bauman, E. & Friedlander, J. (2014) Therapeutic Nutrition.  CA: Bauman College

If you are sick and tired of feeling sick, tired, fatigued, depressed, anxious and more and have given up hope then Karen’s simple, effective, individualized and sustainable approach may be what you need.

Karen Brennan, MSW, CNC, Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition (candidate) is the author of Tru Foods Depression Free Nutrition Guide; How Food Supplements and herbs can be used to lift your mood and owner of Tru Foods Nutrition Services, LLC.  

For more information visit her site at  www.trufoodsnutrition.com

Get her Food Swap Guide here to get started on your health journey today! Want more information, then like here fb page here

As a nutrition professional, Karen does not treat, cure nor diagnose. This information is for educational purposes only.

 

Cholesterol: Believing this is Hurting your Health

Seeing Is Believing: Infographics Revolutionizing The Patient Knowledge

By: Nicole Fisher and Ben Heubl

Infographics and visualizations are hugely common in all cultures, and there is unlimited opportunity to use them in a complicated discipline like wellness care. However,  according to data from Tony Haile of Chartbeat. The data also suggests that folks do not read content on the web the way we believe they do, as considerably as visualize it. Overall health visualizations then, like media, only have mere seconds to get a patient engaged. With this kind of excellent opportunity for strengthening overall health literacy, patient activation and outcomes, better well being visualization should be easily digestible, and need to engage the reader’s feelings instantly.  According to Devin Gross, CEO of Emmi Answers, “Images, voice and text are all critical elements of creating rich, emotional material that is related to men and women experiences. The purpose is to bring true interconnectivity to the wellness room.”

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Phrases

Images can give a patient a complete concept in seconds, where words alone often fall quick. Inform a patient, “Don’t consume that up coming piece of cake, simply because extreme consumption of cholesterol increases the threat of heart disease and stroke”, and they will either disregard you or hear “Don’t eat cake, it kills you”. That is neither true, nor encouraging. Visual cues can describe the chance for improvement in a much more informative, fun and intriguing way.

Emmi Options Interactive Carotid

However, to use visualizations effectively – to engage and grab the consideration of the two the nicely and the unwell – demands truly understanding people.  But if completed appropriately, genuine enhancements to public health might be achievable. As David Spiegelhalter, Professor at Cambridge University in public understanding of danger says, “Often, numbers do not communicate for themselves. They are portion of narrative, and so there are no proper or goal techniques of communicating them as text.”

At London’s recent WIRED Wellness conference, speakers produced heavy use of data visualization to communicate the advantages of utilizing certain technologies in overall health care and wellbeing. Even though that was to an audience of healthcare specialists, entrepreneurs and media, information and charts could have been replaced with a wholly diverse narrative and disseminate the same story if require be for a lay audience.

Information visualization is not for every person however. A critical blunder in overall health would be to identify patients as a single cohort – particularly when they are a group of people struggling the very same affliction. As a result, Infographics and interactive visuals are one particular piece of the overall patient engagement objective.

Psychology Of A Patient

In a recent Company Insider submit, columnist Milo Yiannopoulos asked why information journalism does not always function at least, not for most people who aren’t “data nerds.” He contends that news suppliers have forgotten that ordinary people are moved by pleasure and displeasure rather than spreadsheets. This is why money, intercourse appeal and humor all play main roles in media.

Ironically, several in the health space also seem to neglect that sufferers are also men and women, and raw stats just will not cut it. Health communicators need to innovate to inform compelling, visual stories beyond the numbers. Or, as Emmi Solutions CEO says, “The dynamic of any romantic relationship and subsequent well being-relevant action come from feeling like you’ve been receiving tips from a trusted pal. Studying in a pleasant and meaningful way is truly an extension of a romantic relationship constructed on believe in.”

Any communication professional will inform you, all men and women are diverse. Persona gurus Myers-Briggs split us into sixteen broad persona sorts, describing how people perceive the world and make selections. Primarily based on analyses such as Myers-Briggs, we know that some folks prefer the written word even though others will want credible datasets to perform by means of. Older individuals have a tendency to have the time to want to do their very own study and younger individuals tend to have no problem trading time for simplicity. But as a complete, almost all people have a wish to connect with and relate to other folks.

Emmi Solutions “Plate Method” Finding out Device

A lot of charities understand this effectively, such as Cancer Analysis Uk, which collaborates with very good PR agencies to tell trusted stories that tug at heartstrings. Yiannopoulos says that these stories get the most attention in the media since by the finish, tears – whether or not from laughter or discomfort – are dripping onto the page.

Engage, Play, and Interact

The JBS3 chance calculator, developed by David Spiegelhalter and Mike Pearson Pearson at Cambridge University, is a device to aid visually communicate the risk of cardiovascular conditions and the advantages of interventions, regardless of whether lifestyle or pharmacological. It is a very good illustration of how to develop engagement via instantaneous feedback. Suggestions is essential due to the fact it contributes to the determination and the emotional bond amongst data, great guidance, comprehending and future choice-generating.

Seeing Is Believing: Infographics Revolutionizing The Patient Knowledge

When It Comes To Rest, Believing Is Very good Medication

In my final report I talked about research that put the “sleep debt” concept to the test. In some ways the concept held up – catch-up rest aided ward off daytime sleepiness and reduced tissue irritation. What catch-up sleep did not do is return attention amounts back to what they had been before a few days of rest deprivation. Mental target took a hit that paying out back the rest debt couldn’t reverse.

In an additional current review researchers wanted to discover out if our psychological performance can be enhanced by simply believing we’ve slept more than we in fact have.

Researchers polled a group of 50 participants on how properly they’d slept the earlier evening. They have been then hooked up to machines that, they have been informed, measured their brain waves, pulse and heart-rate, and would be ready to assess the accurate top quality of their rest. This was truly a trick the researchers employed to make half of the participants believe they obtained sixteen.2 % REM sleep the earlier night (effectively under common), and the other half think they obtained 28.7 % REM sleep (nicely above typical).

Participants were then asked to comprehensive a set of difficult math inquiries. These advised they received below-average REM rest scored an common of 22 factors on the check – significantly worse than participants informed they received above-average REM sleep (who scored almost 35 points, on regular).

A stick to-up study used the exact same trickery, but this time asked participants to complete a handful of distinct kinds of tests: a math check, a word-choice test, a process designed to measure visual-motor processing velocity, and yet another developed to test quick-phrase memory. The comply with-up also enhanced on the 1st study by including two control groups that completed the exams but have been not tricked into considering they’d slept well or poorly.

Believing they’d slept effectively did not increase participants’ performance on the visual-motor or memory tasks. But–for both the math and word-choice tests–perceived sleep high quality correlated with functionality. In fact, participants told they’d slept nicely not only outperformed the other groups on the word-option test, they also performed effectively above the regular score on the test for anybody taking it.

What these final results propose (particularly those from the stick to-up study) is that believing we’ve slept properly can make a massive distinction in psychological functionality.

Understanding that aids me recognize the advertising and marketing appeal of the black band I’m wearing on my proper wrist. It is known as the UP 24, made by Jawbone, and it is a single of several products on the market place that use your smartphone to track, amongst other factors, the high quality of your rest.

In a future article I’m going to report a lot more on the $ 150 band I’m wearing, and its counterparts, and allow you know if they’re well worth the investment. Until then, keep counting your sheep.

The review was published  in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Understanding, Memory and Cognition.

You can locate David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his internet site, The Day-to-day Brain. His most current guide is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Power To Adapt Can Alter Your Existence.

Related on Forbes…

When It Comes To Rest, Believing Is Very good Medication