Five Reasons To Start Eating More Cholesterol

One of the most important subjects I wanted to look into since I started questioning everything was cholesterol.  I knew that heart problems were common in my family and it seemed that I was destined to be on a statin before I turned 40.  What I wondered was how this seemed to keep happening to my loved ones and what are we doing wrong?  I mean, I know some of the people in my family who are seeing bad lipid profiles are pretty health conscious.  Once again, I turned to literature to get some answers.  I found The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease.  This book, written by Dr. Stephen Sinatra and Jonny Bowden, delves into the $30 billion a year industry of statins and how they are raking in the cash prescribing drugs that 99% of us don't even need!  Based on what I have read in this book and many other sources, I am going to give you the top five reasons to start eating good natural sources of cholesterol and stop worrying so much about your total cholesterol number.

Reason #1: Promotes Optimal Brain Function

Approximately 25% of our body's cholesterol is housed in the brain.  Our brains need this substance to function at an optimal level.  That is why many people who eat a vegetarian/vegan diet tend to complain of a "foggy" feeling, citing it as a reason they switched to the Paleo lifestyle.  People with no cholesterol in their diets also tend to have memory issues after a prolonged time of cholesterol deficiency.  Eat a kale salad with avocado and extra virgin olive oil and you are eating the true definition of brain food!

Low blood cholesterol (<150) can also lead to a number of disorders related to the brain and nervous system, such as: increased risk of depression, suicide, aggression, Parkinson's Disease, dementia, and cancer!

Reason #2: Supports Your Libido

Simply put, cholesterol is needed for the body to synthesize sex hormones.  Your body cannot possibly create enough testosterone/estrogen on it's own to drive your libido in the right direction - UP!

Obviously, there are other factors that you will need to consider in this discussion.  High levels of "bad" cholesterol and triglycerides can lead to lower circulation in many important places inside the body.  If you don't want this issue, I have a secret for you: Sugar is causing your problem.  Consumption of sugar and carbs in most processed foods is the primary culprit.  If you minimize sugar and only eat it in fruits, you will see major improvements.  Oh, and...

Reason #3: Helps You Lose Weight

Cholesterol has kind of an indirect relationship to weight loss.  I will explain.

Fat and carbohydrates are inversely proportional to each other in a diet.  In other words, a low-fat diet usually means high-carb and vice versa.  In the 1990's we were all told to stop eating so much dietary fat.  This was a direct result of the obesity rates in America.  When we did that, what do you think all of the fat calories were replaced with?  Carbs, of course!  They weren't good carbs either.  No, it was High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and other highly processed sweeteners and flavorings.  (The sweetener industry is another huge topic that cannot possibly be done justice in this post.)



Fat free?!  I can eat as much as I want, right?!?!

When you adopt a high-fat/low-carb diet, you will do two things: 1. Fill yourself up quicker, and 2. Eliminate the carbs that are truly causing the spare tire and love handles.  Eating good organic sources of fat (i.e. coconuts, avocado, olives, nuts, seeds, grass-fed beef, fish, and fowl) with the protein that accompanies this fat, will fill you up way before you eat too much.  Plus, it will keep you going long after you take the last bite.  If you keep your carb count below 200 grams per day (or about 20% of your caloric intake), you will likely see huge results on the scale.  I try to keep it around 150 grams eating only vegetables and minimal fruit.  Eating your carbs primarily in vegetables allows you to keep your net carb count below 100 grams.  High dietary carb loads cannot all be used by the body for energy unless you are using it in a high-intensity workout.  It has to go somewhere, so your body turns it to fat and stores it away!

Reason #4: You Need It To Reach Peak Fitness

Now, this one requires a transitional period if you are still high carb right now.  If you plan to make the switch, your energy level will stink for a short period of time since most people's bodies are extremely inefficient at using fat for energy.  It doesn't have to be efficient on a high-carb diet, because it has an abundance of carbs to use.  Carbs are used by the body quickly and efficiently, so your body will take the path of least resistance to keep you going...as long as it's available.

Once you switch to a diet high in healthy fats, your body will get more efficient at using fat for energy.  Your body will utilize a process called gluconogenesis to fuel your body instead of relying on all of that sugar, wheat, and other processed carbs.  Not only will this help fuel your workouts, but it will allow you to go much longer periods of time without eating or physically crashing.  The more efficient you are at this process, the more sustainable your activity level will be, thus helping you reach a better level of fitness.

I do use a relatively small amount of high glycemic fruit to help fuel a high-intensity, short duration workout.  Now that I am so much more efficient at "burning" fat for fuel; I can sustain a solid energy level throughout the day.  That means, more playing ball with my boys, ability to help with house work, energy at work, and more quality time with my wife.  All which lead to better overall fitness.

Reason #5: High Cholesterol Doesn't Even Cause Heart Disease!

The entire reason we have been given the advice to lower our dietary cholesterol intake was based on a study initiated in 1973 called the Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial.  This trial took 4,000 men with existing high serum cholesterol levels and gave half of them a cholesterol lowering drug and half a placebo.  The medicine did what it was designed to do, lower cholesterol.  That was about the only successful aspect of this study.  What it showed is that the likelihood of suffering a heart attack was reduced 1.6% in the group who took medication.  Most scientific experiments and/or statistical analyses have, at minimum, a 5% margin for error.  In this case, it pretty much proved nothing.  However, a committee of scientists still did not hesitate to say that lowering cholesterol in the blood lowers the risk of a heart attack!

Since this study "proved" that dietary cholesterol consumption needed to be curtailed, how do you think our heart attack risk has changed in 40 years?  According to the CDC, heart disease still accounts for over 33% of all US deaths.  It doesn't seem like much has changed at all!  In fact, more than half of people who are hospitalized due to a heart attack have normal cholesterol levels!  For more information, go to www.thincs.org.

Conclusion

In short, heart attacks are caused by chronic inflammation in the body.  Sources of inflammation can be a large number of things: stress, sleep deprivation, blood sugar spikes, even over-exercising.  In the diet; alcohol, gluten, casein, processed foods, and sugar are the most inflammatory triggers.  Do you see fat or cholesterol in that list anywhere?  Neither do I!

So, why should you believe me?  As always, you shouldn't!  I will keep saying it until the day I die: Do your own research!  Seeing is believing.  If you base your health decisions solely on some blogger who read some books and articles, you just might be crazy!  Talk to your doctor.  Ask the tough questions.  Ask him/her to explain it.  Do your own research.  The only thing I ask you not to do is NOTHING!  Statins are not the answer.  Regulate your blood sugar by eating healthy whole foods and getting the proper amount of healthy fats and proteins in your diet.  Take care of your body and it will take care of you.

Secrets of your Meat

Five months ago, I knew shockingly little about where the food I ate (and fed to my children) came from.  This was back when I thought that the USDA and FDA looked out for us and foods on supermarket shelves were safe, mind you.  I had no idea that such a dark, dangerous world surrounded the meat industry.  And what I have read in researching for this post, requires a strong stomach.  But I feel that it is important for our readers to know, especially if you have children, because it involves our health and the risks we are taking without our knowledge or consent. This post will paint a very unflattering picture of the world we live in, but I believe we need to be educated to make informed decisions.

In short, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) are basically large-scale animal concentration camps.  Thousands of animals are confined to small spaces, fed an unnatural diet to make them grow faster and quicker to maximize profit and minimize labor costs, until they are ready for slaughter and processed into the plastic wrapped packages we recognize.

The first small scale CAFO was created by accident.  Before 1920, chicken meat was not an industry, but a by-product of raising egg laying hens. Their meat was often tough and only after a hen stopped laying eggs was it butchered and thrown in a stew or soup.  In 1923, a woman named Cecile Steele, of Ocean View Delaware, received a shipment of 500 chicks instead of the requested 50.  She and her husband had a small farm and only intended on raising them for eggs for their family and to sell at local markets.  She decided to capitalize on this error by building a small shed and raising them indoors for meat, and unknowingly launched the broiler industry. Eighteen weeks later, 387 had survived and were sold for $.62/lb.  The next year, she ordered 1000 chicks and her husband quit his job to help raise them.  By 1927, their hen house was home to 25,000 birds.   Other area farmers took notice of her success and followed suit, and by 1928, there were 500 farmers raising their own flocks in surrounding communities.  But it's modern developments like, cross breeding, medications and processing advancements that helped turn it into a billion dollar AgriBusiness.

If you are like me, you probably don't put much thought into the meat you're selecting at the supermarket.  You don't think about where it came from, how it was treated, where it lived, etc.  And if you do, the picture in your head is probably vastly different than the truth.  More than likely, you picture a big beautiful farm with rolling hills and the sounds of livestock happily singing their tune.  When, in reality, that couldn't be further from the truth.  Sadly, animals raised in CAFO's are constantly abused, treated with massive amounts of antibiotics from living in their own filth, and most never see the light of day before they are taken for processing and packaged for your supermarket.  If you've seen the documentary, Food, Inc., you know exactly what I am talking about.  If you haven't, a preview can be found here.  If you want to stay in the dark or have a queasy stomach, stop reading now!  Let's get into the specifics, shall we?

The Animals

There are more than 15,000 CAFO's in the United States, and they dominate livestock and poultry production.  They are each home to tens of thousands of cattle or pigs, or several hundred thousand chickens.  Buildings are referred to as "production facilities" and instead of animals or livestock, they are known as "production units".  The chickens are force fed antibiotics in their feed to speed up their growth rate.  It states in the preview that it typically takes 90 days to raise a chicken the natural way.  CAFO's do it in 49.  This allows them to increase their production numbers and add to their bottom line.  But at what cost?  The short lives of these animals aren't even good ones.  They are confined to vast buildings under florescent lights and are lucky if they have one square foot to move around.  A lot of them grow so quickly that their bones can't support their own weight and they just sit there in their own waste.  And that's if their heart can tolerate the conditions in order to even make it to processing.  Operators (I can't even call them farmers) go through on a daily basis and dispose of the ones that don't survive.  They aren't free to forage for bugs, but are fed mass produced, genetically modified grains.  

CAFO Laying Hens

Pigs in CAFO's live their lives on cement with as many as 20 crammed into a pen the size of a big closet.  They don't get straw to sleep on or mud to roll around in.  CAFO animals do NOT have lives that resemble those of their wild counterparts.

CAFO Hogs

I think cattle and dairy cows may have it the worst.  Dairy cows (along with pigs) are artificially inseminated, just one of the many ways humans are controlling the lives of these animals.  They lead a life of confinement and their only exercise is moving to be milked.  They are at an increased risk for lameness, abrasions, bone deficiencies and udder infections.  Yet instead of caring for these sick animals, they are often 'culled'.  I will admit that I was not familiar with this term, so I looked it up.  By definition, to cull an animal is to take out from a herd; get rid of.  Other phrases include, picked out and put aside as inferior, and to reduce the size of by killing a proportion of its members.  The cull rate for dairy cows in the U.S. is over 20% annually and they are usually culled for hamburger meat.

Now instead of trying to prevent this abuse from happening, the CAFO industry is working to prevent people from finding out about it, by introducing Ag-Gag Bills.  These bills prevent a person from documenting the happenings in these animal facilities from exposing abuse.  So you can be now sued for taking pictures or video of unsanitary conditions or abusive treatment of these animals without permission. In 2012, Iowa, Utah, and Missouri passed ag-gag bills and North Dakota, Montana, and Kansas have had these bills in place since 1991.  However, ag-gag bills have been defeated in 11 states this year, including Indiana.  Watch this short, 5 minute clip on Whistle-Blowers of the CAFO industry.

The Environment

With such a large number of animals crowded into such a small area, the concentration of manure is very high, leading to serious pollution risks and public health concerns.  The waste from all these animals has to go somewhere, so they create what's known as Manure Lagoons.  These giant lagoons pose real threats to surrounding soil, air and water quality and create wildlife dead zones.  In 1995, a CAFO was responsible for a massive environmental spill, one of the largest in U.S. history.  It happened in North Carolina, when a lagoon dike burst, releasing 25 million gallons of hog feces and urine into the surrounding fields and river.  The spill killed 10 million fish in local waters and caused an outbreak of human Pfiesteria Piscicida in the area.

Typical Manure Lagoon

Animal waste is the primary source of E.Coli and Salmonella. It has the potential to pollute our drinking water and our crops and make us extremely sick.  The CDC estimates that 3 million people get sick every year, and 1,000 die, from contaminated meat, thus introducing the need for meat recalls.  In 2012 alone, there were a total of 82 meat recalls, stemming from things like E.Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and "Undeclared Substance".
These lagoons also emit dangerous gases like ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide.  These gases pose real health risks in humans like, asthma, headaches, eye irritation, nausea, weakness, and other respiratory problems.  Confined dairy cows have been shown to create five to ten times more ammonia than pasture raised animals. In 2008, Minnesota Attorney General, Lori Swanson, filed a suit against Excel Dairy (a CAFO home to 1500 diary cows) for air emission violations.  Nearby residents were forced to evacuate their homes due to very high hydrogen sulfide readings.  Their symptoms were flu-like and included headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath.  Since the 1980's, U.S. farms have been required to report their levels of emission of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide to the EPA, which admits that high levels of the gases pose a health threat to humans, however, the EPA doesn't set a limit on the release, just requires reporting the levels above a certain threshold. CAFO's have, for years, repeatedly tried to get exemptions from odor emissions and waste discharges.  Even going so far as to being constructed in states/counties that are more lenient or where regulations can be manipulated.
As you can imagine, all this does a number on local property values as well.  Right?!  (Click Here to find out if you live by one - Indiana residents only)  Would you want to get in a bidding war and pay top dollar for a home anywhere in the vicinity of one of these CAFO's?!  That's the American dream right?  Send your kids out back to play in a cow manure swamp and inhale the fresh ammonia air on a sunny summer day?!

SuperBugs

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, now we get to address the over-use of antibiotics!  Confining animals in small areas necessitates the use of antibiotics to minimize the spread of disease.  To maximize production, CAFO's must use an increasing amount of these antibiotics, which leads to increased resistance in the bacteria, creating these SuperBugs.  So these animals are eating it in the feed to grow faster and bigger, then by living in their own filth they get sick and are injected with more antibiotics and when that doesn't do the trick they get MORE antibiotics.  I am sure it wouldn't surprise you to know that in other areas of the world, the use of antibiotics in animal feed has been banned.  Places like Denmark, who stopped using antibiotics in pork 14 years ago, has since confirmed a much lower rate of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their livestock, and it didn't even hurt their bottom line.  In fact, their pork industry grew in the first 12 years without antibiotics.  Here in the good 'ol U.S.A., our FDA only asks producers to limit their use, not even setting a recommended level.  They've even gone back on their 1977 promise to reduce antibiotic use in feed, as this was announced in the Federal Register in December of 2011.  Anyone remember hearing about that?  Yeah, me either.

MRSA

SuperBugs like MRSA are resistant to many common antibiotics and cause life threatening infections in humans and livestock.  Drug manufacturers supply four times the amount of antibiotics to animals as it does to humans.  It is this constant use of antibiotics by CAFO's that allow pathogens to survive, adapt to their environment and thus, thrive.  The FDA has reported that as much as 10% of all chicken breast sold in retail are contaminated with a form of salmonella and resistant to at least 1 antibiotic.  Plus, nearly half of all chicken sold is contaminated with antibiotic resistant Campylobacter, a food-borne bacteria.  You can read about the addition to arsenic in meat here.  Hungry yet?

How it should be

Our country needs to get back to true family farming, not the big industrial 'factory' farming of today.  We shouldn't be focused on highest production at the lowest cost.  And our tax dollars should not be subsidizing this form of animal agriculture.  There needs to be a switch to sustainable livestock operations, even if there is a greater cost to us.  There will be less health risks, farms will produce less waste, we can then forgo the hormones and antibiotics and there will be less environmental impact.  Our best chance for a better, more safe food system is one in which food production is humane for the animals and safe for the workers and the environment.  We should all know where our meat comes from and how it lived it's life and how it was treated for the duration of it.  I definitely want my dollars to support the ethical, humane treatment of the animals that do provide us food.  They are serving a purpose, so give them what they deserve while they are on this earth.  Grass-fed, not grain fed, pastured pork and poultry, not confined to cages and crates and fresh air, not fumes!  Let them live and be animals not 'units'.

Our grass fed beef

Mass produced, CAFO, grain fed beef 

What you can DO

By now you may be asking yourself how you can avoid this meat.  It is important to know that there are other options.  You get three votes per day.  You vote with your dollars.  By buying CAFO meat from supermarkets and the fast-food industry (a big purchaser of CAFO meat), you are supporting the lifestyle forced upon these animals.  I highly recommend the internet!  Use this resource to learn more about your meat.  We have used www.eatwild.com, and www.localharvest.org/ to find things in our area.  We now go through a humane farmer that raises their animals on pasture and no GMO grains!  We know what we're eating and it feels amazing.  On top of that, it tastes great and is healthier for you, too.  Many farmers have CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) options or you can make individual orders.  There are plenty of humane farmers out there, you just have to know how/where to look.
There are also places to order grass fed beef online, like US Wellness Meats and Tendergrass Farms, and American Grassfed, just do a little research and know what you're buying.  You don't want it to say 'grain finished', that just means they took the cheap route to fatten it up for processing.  But if you must buy from a supermarket, look for organic meat that is antibiotic free, not from a CAFO.
Lastly, spread the word.  Tell your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors.  More than likely, they don't know either and are supporting it without their knowledge.  Tell them what you've learned and how they can make changes to make their family healthier.

***some photographs borrowed from: CAFO; the book