My father died of a massive heart attack in January at the relatively young age of 58. Granted he had a lot of risk factors, his mother died of a heart attack, he had high cholestrol which was under control with diet and drugs, he had high blood pressure, again controlled by drugs and he smoked.
As soon as I returned from the funeral, I went to my doctor for a physical (for work), part of which was a blood test. When I got the results, my doctor told me that my cholestrol was nice and low (I didn’t get the exact figure) and my blood pressure was good and neither of those were likely to change because they’re usually hereditary (ie I inherited my mother’s genes in that area).
I know you can control high cholestrol with diet and drugs, but my question is:
To what extent does diet play a part in raising cholestrol levels if you’re genetically predisposed to have low cholestrol?
In other words, can I eat all those yummy heart-unhealthy foods like bacon, steak and butter and not worry about my heart?
My cholesterol tends to be on the high side; I take medication for it.
My doctor told me that research indicates the main factor in your cholesterol level is heredity. He said that although my cholesterol level isn’t seriously elevated, changing my diet wouldn’t make a ton of difference. Perhaps it would matter if my cholesterol level was way on the low or high side.
While diet does play a role in your cholesterol level, it takes a back seat to heredity. I don’t think this gives you carte blanche to eat whatever you want, though; diet can still play an important role in your long-term cardiac health, regardless of your cholesterol level.
Thank you for that, but it’s an incredibly long and complicated document and quite frankly, I don’t need that much information. Besides, it’s all about High Blood Cholestrol and as I said, I have low cholestrol and just want to know how much diet actually does affect someone like me in terms of heart health.
[/quote]
can I eat all those yummy heart-unhealthy foods like bacon, steak and butter and not worry about my heart?
[/quote]
My father had a very high-fat diet, and a cholesterol count that never exceeded 180, although I don’t know what the LDL/HDL ratios were. He died of a heart attack at 69. I was always amazed at how (relatively) low his numbers were given what he ate.
Probably very little if there truly is a genetic predisposition.
This works both ways - if you’re predisposed to high cholesterol, dietary fat and cholesterol is of little added effect, and if you’re predisposed to low cholesterol, dietary fat and cholesterol is of little additional burden.
Even in “normal” people, the contribution of diet is modest at best. Most people get little more than a 10 or 15% reduction by dietary measures (although more is possible if you’re extremely strict, eg. Dean Ornish diet).
However: most people do NOT have a true genetic predisposition to very low or very high cholesterol. So, most people should be take a prudent diet (low in saturated fat, i.e. low in animal fat and low in hydrogenated oils).
Here’s a link that may may interest you re: lack of effect of diet on cholesterol if you’re genetically predisposed to low cholesterol. Actually, it’s just a title (no abstract available), but it says plenty. LINK.
I love eggs, but I’d get very sick of them if I ate 25 a day! Thanks for your info .
It’s interesting to note that your father died of a heart attack even with low cholestrol levels, Earl. In other words, one can have heart disease without high cholestrol and therefore I should watch my diet.
You’d think that after all the posters spelled “cholesterol” correctly, you’d get it right, biddee.
There are many other factors besides high cholesterol, but even with cholesterol, the ratio of HDL to LDL and total cholesterol is more important than the total cholesterol. Other implicating factors in cardiovascular disease (note that this is reference to CAD [coronary artery disease] and not to heart disease itself) are homocysteine levels, calcium in the coronary arteries, and the most recently discussed factor is a chemical that indicates that the arteries are inflamed. It is not the cholesterol itself (and it is always LDL, since HDL does not stick to the artery walls), but the inflammation plus the LDL, or VLDL, that are the main factors.
There are, of course, many diseases that affect the heart, most of which are a direct result of CAD, but not all. Some are hereditary. Others are caused by inflammation, and one is caused by a childhood history of rheumatic fever.
For some interesting information about a contemporary revolution in the explanation of heart disease, search on these keywords:
+McCully +homocysteine
Apparantly artherosclerosis is usually a vitamin B6 deficiency disease. It’s not caused by cholesterol. McCully did the research decades ago, but then spent intervening time fighting the “killer cholesterol” dogma. In recent years his ideas are finally taking hold, but not to the extent where doctors’ focus has significantly shifted away from cholesterol and towards curing the disease.
Homocysteine is ONE factor. To say it is THE major, or sole, factor is inaccurate. This study suggests that it is as important as, say, smoking. Still, it may be prudent to take folate supplements (to reduce homocysteine). I do.
