Heart Disease: High HDL Reverses, Prevents Heart Disease – Niacin, Pantethine, Carnitine, Policosanol Raise HDL

Heart disease can be reversed by raising your HDL level with certain nutritional supplements that raise HDL, with an HDL raising diet, and by avoiding lowering HDL. Your HDL level should be 60 mg/dL or higher. HDL removes the plaque buildup of heart disease and HDL also removes the oxidized LDL that causes plaque buildup of heart disease. HDL also neutralizes free radicals. Fewer free radicals creates fewer oxidized LDL which creates less new plaque buildup. Most centenarians have a very high HDL level; 100-150mg/dL

Total Cholesterol / HDL Ratio

HDL, LDL, and VLDL are lipoproteins – protein shell with cholesterol inside. Total cholesterol is HDL+LDL+VLDL. Often you hear “Keep your total cholesterol low.” or “Your total cholesterol is too high.” Raising your HDL is good but if you raise your HDL then when you mathematically add HDL+LDL+VLDL then your total cholesterol number will be higher. Why? Because “total cholesterol” is nonsense. You can’t add HDL to LDL and get a meaningful number because increase in HDL is good and supposedly increase in LDL is bad. If you add $30 in your pocket (good) to $20 in unpaid bills (bad) you get $50. What does this $50 total mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Total cholesterol by itself has no meaning at all. Total cholesterol has meaning when used as the sum of all lipoproteins divided by one or more of the lipoproteins (such as HDL).

If you divide your “total cholesterol” by your HDL and get 3.5 or less, most doctors admit you have a low risk for heart disease – Raising HDL is the way to prevent and stop heart disease. In an effort by the medical industry to avoid losing sales of statin medication and repeat visits, now reference ranges on lab reports are starting to say you’re total cholesterol / HDL should be an unachieveable 2.5.

Niacin In Heart Disease

Niacin raises HDL. HDL removes oxidized LDL. According to the FDA, “Niacin is the best agent known to raise blood levels of HDL, which helps remove cholesterol deposits from the artery walls.” Naturally the FDA removed this quote from their FDA website.

Niacin is nicotinic acid. Niacin raises HDL significantly. Factually, you don’t need as much niacin to raise HDL as many doctors prescribe. Doctors often prescribe so much niacin to cause symptoms of too much niacin to get patients to stop taking niacin in favor of the cholesterol drug they’re prescribing. Twenty-five milligrams of niacin each day for a few weeks is a good start then possibly twice a day. If twice a day makes you irritable, restless, forgetful absentminded, spacy or a nervous wreck, you’re taking too much niacin (“overdose”). Take several days off and go back to 25mg a day, otherwise see if you can take 25 mg of niacin 3 times a day. I take 100-200mg a day (for reasons unrelated cholesterol) and my HDL is “92″ mg/dL on a scale of “40-70″ mg/dL.

Niacin on an empty stomach and too much niacin causes a niacin flush (face turns red and itchy for about 15 minutes). Niacinamide doesn’t cause a niacin flush but doesn’t raise HDL either.

Pantethine In Heart Disease

Pantethine is a precursor of pantothenic acid (vitamin B-5). According to the government, pantethine lowers LDL and triglycerides and raises HDL. HDL removes oxidized LDL and removes plaque from artery walls. Pantethine is available in health food stores.

Carnitine In Heart Disease

Normal heart function is dependent on carnitine. Low carnitine level is common in many heart illnesses, meaning in these illnesses the liver is not making the optimal amount of carnitine. Carnitine improves heart muscle use of oxygen and energy, lowers triglycerides, and raises HDL. The liver makes some carnitine from the amino acid lysine. The heart uses the LPC form of carnitine more rapidly than other forms of carnitine. Carnitine is a big deal in the nutrition world. The recommended dose for carnitine on supplement labels is probably way too much, try very small doses first.

Policosanol In Heart Disease

Policosanol is derived from sugar cane and available in health food stores across the U.S. and is a popular nonprescription product for treating high cholesterol. According to the government’s National Institutes of Health (the NIH), “Policosanol (10 mg day-1) increased HDL-C by 15.2%.”

HDL

HDL is known as “good cholesterol”. HDL is not cholesterol. HDL is a globular shell shaped protein/lipid complex (lipoprotein) and moves harmful molecules to the liver for dismantling, including, oxidized LDL, excess LDL, plaque buildup on artery walls, and triglycerides. Simply put, HDL is garbage pickup service for the body.

If HDL is low, LDL molecules will circulate longer, increasing the number of LDL molecules that will become oxidized by free radicals, increasing each cell’s chance of receiving and being damaged by an oxidized LDL molecule. LDL carries cholesterol to cells to make hormones, vitamin D, bile, cell membranes, brain tissue.

According to the government, “Recent studies have shown that high levels of HDL are associated with a reduced risk for heart disease and stroke and that low levels (less than 35 mg/dL), even in people with normal levels of LDL, lead to an increased risk for heart disease and stroke.”

A healthy HDL level is considered to be 60 mg/dL. Most (80% in some studies) centenarians (100+ years old) have little or no heart disease and have livers that make a lot of large HDL molecules. HDL level of centenarians in their 70s is as high as 140mg/dL and by 100 years old between 55 and 100mg/dL, enabling these people to maintain a higher level of health in an unhealthy environment (most of them eat whatever they want).

Here’s a simple analogy: Free radicals turn LDL into zombie LDLs (ox-LDL). HDL kidnaps zombie LDLs and brings them to the liver for dismantling and removal from the body. Obviously the solution is to keep free radical creation low and find ways to increase HDL to an optimal level.

LDL

Medical propaganda managed to name LDL “bad cholesterol”. LDL is not bad and it’s not cholesterol. LDL carries cholesterol to cells for making hormones, vitamin D, bile, cell membranes, brain tissue, etc. LDL does not cause plaque buildup, Oxidized LDL causes plaque buildup. Free radicals are bad because free radicals oxidize LDL.

Raising HDL By Lowering Trans Fat