Why High Cholesterol Is God’s Secret To Living Longer

Invariably, the two worst fats that would absolutely kill you, and these are the worst ones for your heart for sure. They would say saturated fat and cholesterol. Well, I'm here to tell you that arguably those two fats are the most important. Uh, for years teaching doctors how to fix cell membranes and hormones, I focus on those two fats as the foundation for our cell membrane. They literally give our cell membrane a cementing of the membrane, meaning it holds together.

It gives us stability and increases proper fluidity in the membrane. So it is absolutely a part of what our hormones uh rely on. And here's what I mean by that, because on every cell, we have hormone receptors that our hormones have to attach to. And on these hormone receptors, they ride on something called a lipid raft, made of fat. It's a raft made of fat in your cell membranes. And the health of that fat determines the health of the receptor.

The health of the receptor determines the health of your hormones and how good you feel. So most people are trying to take hormones when, in fact, it's the receptor uh in their cell membranes. Cholesterol and saturated fat are at the cornerstone there. And did you know LDL cholesterol is at the top of the hormone chain? What I mean by that is you need LDL cholesterol. Wait, don't they say that's the bad cholesterol? And yet we need it to make all of our hormones?

Okay. All right, well, what about this study? Because I find this fascinating. This is called the Farmingham Study from Farmingham, Massachusetts. This particular study is known as the Farmingham Heart Study. And the reason it's so absolutely amazing is because it started in 1948. And because the results were so staggeringly different than maybe what they expected. And by the way, they looked at over 5,000 men and women and they tracked them for years.

And here's the cool part in 1971, they started tracking their children. Meaning, let's look at the genetic factors with heart disease and all of these types of things and how it applies to heart disease. And then in 2002, they started looking at the grandchildren, three generations, and it still goes on today. Every two to four years, they look at blood parameters and you know everything that they've been measuring in these people for so long.

That's why this study is so groundbreaking, because in a nutshell, this is what they found. First of all, if you're over 50, guess what? There is pretty much no association with cholesterol in heart attacks. That's right. Meaning high cholesterol, I should say, in heart attacks. As a matter of fact, they said that often it is inversely associated with mortality, meaning the higher cholesterols in older people, the longer they lived without disease and problems.

And even in younger people, the association with cholesterol and heart attacks was so weak that it really shocked everybody. Okay, so this is the longest-going heart study out there, and yet it shows those types of results that really cholesterol isn't the factor that we thought. Okay, what about some of the studies on statins? Well, first of all, I want to say this at the top of the show. I'm not telling anyone to take a statin, not take a statin. Be clear, uh, that is not my goal here.

My goal is for people to have a different look at cholesterol and think, huh, maybe we have it all wrong. Oh, and by the way, you know, the old normal for cholesterol way back when was 350. Then it went to 300. Not that long ago, it was 250, which I think somewhere between 250 and 300 is a better normal for sure. Because look, your brain relies on cholesterol. Your hormones, as I already pointed out, relies on cholesterol. So many things.

Uh, cholesterol in your cell membranes function because of cholesterol. You need cholesterol for something called cholesterol sulfate when you get sun, and that has a dramatic impact on inflammation in general, how well your hormones work. So, again, cholesterol in itself, I don't think is the enemy. But what about the LDL, the bad cholesterol? I already made the point that it's the top of the hormone chain needed for hormones, but maybe even that isn't so bad.

So I want to show you something because I think a picture picture is worth a thousand words. I think that there can be some problems with cholesterol, which actually can throw off some of the studies. First of all, I want to give you an analogy. There's something called a particle. This is really hard for me to draw, by the way, it's really hard for me to draw anyway. But what do you think that is? We're gonna play pictionary for a minute. That's a car, actually.

I think that's a pretty good car. Is that a pretty good car? That's a good car. Okay, so first of all, here's what you have to understand. Cholesterol doesn't just float around your blood, it has to be carried in a particle. The analogy that I'm making is that this car is like a particle that carries cholesterol. So if I would draw, I'm looking over here, if I draw a particle, it probably looks like this, but this is what I want to show you.

How filled these particles that carry cholesterol in your blood are is really how we measure high cholesterol, low cholesterol. So using LDL as, because this is considered the bad cholesterol, as our example, this would be somebody with high cholesterol, high LDL, I should say, to be specific. Why? Because the particles are very full. Now, if the particles were less full, we would measure that as being low LDL. Okay, so here's the analogy that I want you to understand.

Let's call this particle that carries a cholesterol a car. Now, that would make the people in the car. That was probably not as good. But anyways, let's just say there's two people in this particular car. Okay, so the people then is analogous to the cholesterol that the particle or the car is carrying. Okay, you with me so far? So the car is the particle carrying the people. So therefore, if someone had high cholesterol or high LDL, that car would be loaded with people. Understand?

Let's say it just had one person, that person would have what? Low LDL. Okay, now here's the question. Pay attention. Very important. In a traffic jam, what matters? The number of cars are the number of people in the cars. Give you a minute to think about. That's a hard one. The number of cars or the number of people in the cars. My assistant off screen, what matters the amount of cars? She got that right. I was just seeing if she was paying attention.

The amount of cars matters, meaning it's irrelevant to how bad the traffic jam is based on how many people are in cars, right? Matter of fact, that's why they want people to ride share, because if we can get more people in cars, arguably we can get less cars. So the point is, is that if that's our analogy, that the number of cars is what matters, not the number of people in the cars. Now, let me bring it into the human body.

Likewise, it's the number of particles that actually can be problematic and drive cellular inflammation, or we'll say arterial inflammation, which is the real cause of heart disease when in when arteries actually inflame. So more particles can drive more inflammation and be a problem. How many people or how much cholesterol they're carrying, in this case, the total LDL, is irrelevant to the inflammation. Now there's one other factor here. The size of the car matters. Size matters.

Okay, so the smaller the particle actually is a problem. So we want a test that looks at the number of particles and the size of the particles. So meaning smaller particles can actually be problematic because they can get into the luma of the artery. So think of that like surrounding, making sure I can see that on my drawing. So think about this artery as having an arterial wall. And what happens is these little particles can get inside of that and drive inflammation.

Now, the bigger the particle, the safer. As you could see here, my analogy is when the particles are big, they don't typically get into the arterial wall and drive inflammation. So bigger is better, size matters, and also the number of particles matters. So what test is this, Dr. Pompa, that I would ask my doctor for instead of just doing a random cholesterol test. Now, listen, very high cholesterol can be problematic for different reasons.

It could show that your liver is not packaging cholesterol normal. Typically, when I see really oddly high cholesterol, I actually address and think about the liver as opposed to worrying about their arterial inflammation. That said, sometimes you could have high cholesterol and have high particles and even more small particles. That's why when you look at some of the studies, it gets a little confusing. Okay, but fact is, is I want to give you the test. Let's see if I can write this.

It's an NMR. NMR. It's kind of like doing an MRI of the blood where they can actually look at the particle size, the number. In modern day NMR tests actually even provide further breakdown of the different types of cholesterol. But you've heard of HDL, right? That's considered the good cholesterol. Well, and again, it's the same with the HDL, is that yes, it's good, it's important, it has anti-inflammatory effects.

But again, arguably the LDL is maybe more important because all your hormones are made from LDL, but the size of the particles matters and the number of particle matter. Now here's the problem. If you go to your doctor and say, I want an NMR test, I want to look at my particle number and size and some of these other factors, it even give you insulin scores, things of that sort. They'll say, Well, you know, we don't do that here. They're not going to want to do it. Why?

In their defense, because a test they're not familiar with and don't know how to read, they're not typically going to want to run. That said, my advice to you would be tell your doctor, I don't expect you to read it. I have somebody that will, ChatGPT. Because if you put your test in ChatGPT, guess what? It does a marvelous job of reading your result.

So, you know, we don't actually, well, I don't want to say we don't need doctors, we need doctors for other things, but you get my point, is that um I you just have to take the pressure off the doctor that he's not going to be the one reading it. And I would say that increases your odds pretty greatly that they might give you a script uh to get the NMR test.

And by the way, Lab Corp, I think Quest does one too, but most of the places where you just go and get a blood draw do an NMR test, but you will need a script for that. Okay, so that gives us a little better understanding of why the cholesterol, I don't want to say problem, but the cholesterol myth, as I said. And there's some great books on this. I think one is called the cholesterol myth. Google that to make sure. Um, but there is some great cholesterol books.

But you know, that said, I I do want to put, I want to tell you the story first, actually. My father was an Italian bricklayer who raised me with the philosophy I have we don't take drugs. I didn't take a drug, I didn't never took an antibiotic growing up, never had to. I mean, I got sick, of course, but I mean there's a time and a place for an antibiotic, so praise God I didn't have a major infection, but I got strep throats, I got sore throats, I got sickness, just like any other kid.

And back in those days, we were sent down to get measles, mumps, and all those chicken pox, uh, childhood conditions. Of course, I had all those, which gave me better immunity today. But the bottom line is that my father just had a philosophy of not using drugs. And probably the way he was raised, obviously the way I was raised. But my father had a cholesterol level above 350 for as long as I could remember. And the doctors, they probably weren't as pushy with drugs back then.

But my father never took a medication, even. Some of the doctors were very concerned. I remember his cholesterol being in the 360s, to be exact. I remember the number 363. I probably read it and with my dyslexia, I remembered the number. But the fact is, my father never did anything. Now, my father smoked for 55 years and ended up with lung cancer at age 84. And that's when I lost my dad. But the fact is, is he lived a very good life.

And the fact is, is he would have, without smoking, I'm sure he would have lived to at least 100 years old. But his heart was fine. His arteries were fine, even with that high cholesterol. I myself genetically run higher cholesterol. I'm typically on the high side. Matter of fact, when I was sick, the oddest thing happened. I all of a sudden was like 180s on my cholesterol, which I found very odd. I thought it was a mistake.

I called it a mistake, and then a year or so later, I got another blood result back, and it was in you know the same 180s, 190s. And I thought that is the oddest thing because my cholesterols were typically 230, 240, even up to 250. And that's just kind of where I was, and I never worried because my father had higher cholesterol than I did.

But the fact is, is that what I had learned later is that cholesterol, low cholesterol, I should say, is an open window for neurotoxicity, meaning neurotoxic people oddly end up with lower cholesterol, but oddly, some of it can be driven up in the body's protective mechanism to actually be high cholesterol. So at one point my cholesterol was low, and then another point it actually went high.

And I forget, I was probably about three years into it, where I was told that my cholesterol is driving up to protect the blood-brain barrier and to protect me. But lower cholesterol, as I found out, was an open window for neurotoxicity. I don't remember what my theory was then of why my cholesterol ended up going low, but it actually put me in greater risk for neurotoxins going into the brain.

I think it was the diet that I was doing at that time, and I just never thought it would have lowered my cholesterol to that degree. My point is, is when I look at this Farmingham study, and one of the findings is that it's oftentimes associated with a lower mortality, meaning low cholesterol, and higher cholesterol is associated with a lower mentality. Lower cholesterol is associated with a higher mentality.

So the bottom line is that high cholesterol has a protective measure on the brain, and obviously it has some other benefits of the body like having healthy hormones. One of the things I always see with people with very low cholesterol is that they oftentimes have hormone trouble, and we like to get their cholesterol up. You know, it's not as simple, by the way, this is a myth that just eating cholesterol will raise your cholesterol. It's not that simple. There's a lot of factors here.

So you can put people on carnivore diets, for example, and you might think, my gosh, all they're eating is meat and fat. Their cholesterol must go through the roof. Oddly, many actually come down. And I know it has a dramatic effect on the particle and the particle size as well. And I'm not saying anyone should stay in a carnivore diet or even a keto diet. I utilize those diets moving people in and out. But the point is, is it can have a dramatic lowering effect just eating meat and fat.

So it's not that simple. Yeah, in the old days, they would tell us don't eat eggs or don't eat egg yolks. Remember when I think it was in the 80s when everyone was running from saturated fat and cholesterol. Some people are still today, but everyone was eating egg whites, egg white omelets. Egg whites was the big thing because low fat was the big thing. Remember the Seinfeld episode? They all went low fat because they were trying to lose weight and they all gained weight.

They were eating the low fat yogurt and they realized that that's what was causing them to gain weight. Why? Because it was loaded with sugar, which is actually the real problem, right? So I just thought that episode was funny. I'm dating myself. But the bottom line is that we can't just look at cholesterol levels uh and say you're at risk of heart attacks. Okay, so I did want to point out a few things about the statins. And again, I want to repeat that I'm not telling anyone to stop a drug.

You have to talk to your doctor about that. But I do want you to understand, I it this was a study that um I did in one of my Instagram videos, but it was the dangerous effects of taking statins and its effect on the mitochondria and its effect on energy. So, what they noticed in the study is a decrease in respiratory capacity, and you don't have to have enough energy.

The people in the study they didn't have enough energy to make it through the day because of the impact of the statins on the mitochondria. So it affects the way the body makes ATP. Now, it also affected their joint health. Now, we know that one of the side effects uh with statins is more joint pain. We also know that it affects the brain. We also know that it's there's an association with more higher rates of dementia. So, but I thought this was interesting.

It lowered the effects of cellular energy and it cut muscle recovery by 23%. So it affects the muscle. Well, if you're affecting the mitochondria where you make energy, of course you're affecting the muscles. And that's just common sense. But anyway, so I feel like that we've been lied to a bit as far as you know what we think about cholesterol and how we need to rethink it. And I think we've been lied to about statins as the answer.

Now, look, I'll be the first to say if you look at some of the studies, their uh statins have a slight effect, a bonus towards lowering risk of heart attack and stroke. But they also have a slight anti-inflammatory effect. Okay, I think I'm quoting one of the Cochrane studies when I say that, is which could attribute to that result. But it's the effect of what?

Or I should say, do we have a greater risk then of some of these effects on the mitochondria and other problems that they're finding with statins, even liver problems. So I think that we always, when we take a drug, have to outweigh the benefits and the risks. And when I personally do that with a statin, I don't see that the small anti-inflammatory effect really outweighs some of the risks that I see.

Now, again, it's very complicated because when you look at some of these studies, you have to look at who's actually doing the studies and for what, because studies are very difficult to just take a study headline and say, look, statin reduced heart attack up to 50%, because there's a lot of factors regarding that, right? So we can't look at the risk versus the reward just by reading a title of a study.

But I get I think looking at this Farmingham study, when we actually look at people, over 5,000 people was the original study. I actually don't know the number uh since the 1971, all the way to the 2002 to currently, how many people they've actually looked at for how long. But the fact is, is that for me, when that study says, wow, cholesterol really doesn't have much of an effect, and quite the opposite.

People with higher cholesterol seem to actually live longer, healthy, and have better functioning brains and hormones. Okay, so it just says why lowering using statins lowering cholesterol won't prevent heart disease. And of course, if you get the book, there's they're quoting many, many studies, more than I just quoted beyond the the Farmingham study. But the fact is, is that I think that again, we need to really do our own homework.

I wouldn't trust any physician, any doctor, I wouldn't trust even me. You need to do your own homework when you're about ready to make a decision to take a medication because there are, in fact, risks. And I think more importantly, I think we need to re-educate ourselves in the importance of cholesterol and what bad cholesterol really means.

You need to share this podcast because many, many people are getting sucked in to certain medications or even lifestyle changes for that matter, that could be harmful and definitely could actually be shortening their life unnecessary, and people just need to hear the truth. A lot of myths around cholesterol, so to get the book, the cholesterol myths, right? Is that what it was called? The great cholesterol myth. That's what it's called. I always forget the great cholesterol myth. Check it out.

There you have it.