Dr. Mark Hyman explains why cholesterol numbers alone don't tell the full story and why statins aren't the only answer. He covers particle size, diet, supplements, and lifestyle changes that actually lower your risk of heart disease.
Hi, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. This week's question is, How do I lower my cholesterol and triglycerides? That's a great question and millions of people are asking this. You know why? Because your doctor, the medical profession, the media, and the government have all told you that the secret to living long, healthy, heart disease free life is lowering your cholesterol. But what if I told you that actually the countries with the higher cholesterol have lower heart disease risk? That as you get older, the people with the highest cholesterol have the least risk of death? What if I told you that the studies don't show that there's any benefit to take cholesterol if you have no risk of heart disease even if your cholesterol is just a little high, or that there's no reason for any woman over 69 to ever take cholesterol medication for any reason to prevent heart disease. What if I told you the studies only show that cholesterol medication works for those people who've already had a heart attack, but not for the 75% of people who've never had a heart attack, which is most of the people taking the drug. This goes in the face of of what's conventional wisdom. But I often say that the scientific establishment is often different than the established science. I'm interested in the established science, not what the scientific establishment says, which is often influenced by pharmaceutical companies. Now, I've written a lot about this, and I encourage you to check out my blogs on cholesterol. But I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest version. Cholesterol is not the enemy. Cholesterol is needed to make your hormones. It's needed for your cell membranes. It's needed for making up your brain cells. Without cholesterol, you can lower testosterone and get with sex drive problems. You can affect your cell function. You can actually block the cholesterol function that's needed to make CoQ10, the same enzyme that's blocked by cholesterol medication, can lead to neurologic problems. So we're seeing the side effects of cholesterol medication. We're seeing muscle damage. We're seeing brain damage. We're seeing memory issues. We're seeing Parkinson's like symptoms. We're seeing all sorts of issues, muscle pain and muscle aching that are the result of these medications that don't necessarily even work. In fact, they're not great medications. You have to take five years, one person, statin drug to prevent one heart attack. You have to treat 50 people to prevent one heart attack. You have to treat 890 people with statins to prevent one death, not a very good drug. So what is the way to prevent heart disease? What is the way to deal with cholesterol? And what is the truth about cholesterol? Well, here's the truth. Most of you are not getting the right cholesterol test. You need to get the test of the 21st century, not the test of the 20th century, which is what your doctors are doing. The 21st century test measures not just the number of cholesterol, let's say 200, but it measures the number of particles that make up that number. And the size of those particles. So for example, I had a gentleman come to see me about six months ago, a year ago, and he was 220 pounds. Now he's 160 pounds. And we got him that way by actually having him increase the fat in his diet, by decreasing the sugar in his diet. And what happened was he was on a statin, and his cholesterol numbers are far better off the statin than when he was on the statin. Why? Because he had a lot of these small dense cholesterol particles that cause heart disease. They're like golf balls that bang in your arteries and cause damage as opposed to large fluffy beach ball like ones that just bounce off and don't cause a problem. So he went from having like a thousand small dense cholesterol particles which was very bad, you want less than 400, to having zero, zero. And he was almost diabetic and we changed it by simply changing his diet and lifestyle. We didn't give him a statin medication. So for the most part, most people don't realize, it's not that that causes your cholesterol to go up. It's sugar. Why? Because when you eat sugar, particularly fructose, which is in high fructose corn syrup and most sugar, it causes your cholesterol producing factory in your liver to turn on. So if you have high triglycerides, if you have a low HDL, if you have a high cholesterol, the best way to fix it is get off flour, and sugar. Eat more quality fat, nuts, avocados, seeds, coconut butter. These are very helpful in balancing your blood sugar, balancing your insulin, reducing this fat production factory in your liver, and making your cholesterol normal. So it's not about having lower cholesterol. It's about having the right type of cholesterol. And how do you get the right type of cholesterol? How do you lower the triglycerides, which you do want to lower, or raise the good cholesterol, which you do want to do? It's by eating the right way. And the right way is very simple. It's cutting out flour and sugar or dramatically reducing them because those are the things that turn on the fat factory in your liver. Second, eat the right fats. Avocados, nuts, seeds, coconut butter, olive oil, fish oil, these are the good fats that help balance your blood sugar, balance your insulin and correct lipid problems. Even taking fish oil can help. Next, you want to exercise and you want to deal with stress because those things also affect your cholesterol. And lastly, there are some supplements you can take to really help balance the whole system. First, fish oil, great. Two to four grams a day of fish oil helps lower cholesterol, lower triglycerides, boost the good cholesterol and helps reduce inflammation. Next, you can take PGX. It's a super fiber that helps lower triglycerides, lower cholesterol, in the right way. Very simple, you take a scoop or five grams before every meal in a glass of water, about 10 minutes before that. Very powerful in helping balance your insulin. There are also some herbs that work. Red rice yeast can help balance cholesterol as well. And we use plant sterols like phytosterols that help to balance insulin and blood sugar and cholesterol. Some very simple treatments we can use. We find them very successful and often we see people getting better cholesterol off medication than on medication. And if you want, you can find the best quality supplements that I've been able to find that I use with my patients on my website. Now I'd like to hear from you. Are you on statin medication? Do you have high cholesterol? What have you tried? Have you tried anything else that's worked besides taking the medication? Have you had side effects? Tell us your story. Share what you've learned with our community in the comments section on the website. Next, share this with your friends and family because I guarantee you I bet you some of them are on statin medication and may not need to be and should be able to find out a different way to do this. Also sign up for the newsletter and hear from us every week in our weekly house call. And maybe you should submit your question so next week I can make a house call to you. Thank you.
