Cholesterol is not very soluble in water; therefore it must be carried around our bloodstream in various transport molecules. Certain proteins called apolipoproteins can wrap around cholesterol and other blood fats (lipids) to form what is called lipoproteins; these are essentially a combination of protein and fat. A description of the major fats in the bloodstream follows:
Chylomicrons
These are the largest lipoproteins, and mainly transport fat from the intestines to the liver. They mainly carry triglyceride fats and cholesterol which came from the diet, and those manufactured by the liver.
Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL)
These are the lowest density lipoproteins because they are highest in fat; (the more dense the liproprotein, the more protein it contains). VLDLs are made in the liver and deliver triglycerides to various tissues, especially muscle (for energy production), and body fat (for storage).
Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL)
This is the so called “bad cholesterol”. It is the major transporter of cholesterol and triglycerides, taking them from the liver to other parts of the body, where they can be used for various functions. You need your levels of LDL to be as low as possible.
There are other types of LDL:
Small dense LDL
This form of LDL is more likely to be taken up into the inner lining of arteries and promote atherosclerosis.
Oxidized LDL
This is what happens when free radicals cause damage to LDL molecules.
This makes them more likely to promote damage to the inner lining of arteries, and for atherosclerosis to develop.
High Density Lipoprotein (HDL)
This is the so called “good cholesterol”. It is high in protein, which makes it denser and lower in cholesterol. This lipoprotein takes cholesterol from various parts of the body to the liver, where it can be excreted in bile. HDL carries antioxidant enzymes and vitamins to prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. You want your HDL to be as high as possible.
Triglycerides
These are a storage form of fat, made up of three fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule. High triglyceride levels in the blood make it thick and sticky; they are a major risk factor for heart disease. Both excess carbohydrate and fat in our diet are converted into triglycerides in the liver.
Lipoprotein (a)
This particle is similar to LDL, but carries a sticky repair protein called apolipoprotein (a) which is used for tissue repair. It is a major risk factor for heart disease because it thickens the walls of the arteries.
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Most couples who seek fertility treatment find out a great deal about sophisticated medical technologies but very little about the relatively simple measures they themselves can take to improve their chances of conceiving. These highly effective self-help strategies include easily implemented dietary and lifestyle changes. Such measures cost little or nothing, their success has been scientifically documented, and yet most of these couples will not have been told about them. Why on earth is this?
The cynical answer is that infertility has become ‘big business’. As Professor Robert Winston points out in his book Making Babies, there are now at least 21 IVF units in London alone. And more and more units are opening because they are ‘highly profitable in the private sector’. Couples who desperately want to have a baby are very vulnerable. Even though some IVF units have extremely low success rates, such couples are still willing to gamble a great deal of time and money in order to try to conceive.
In contrast, there are no big financial gains to be made in helping couples to look at their lifestyle or to correct their vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Yet this approach makes such sense, and its success can now be measured -thanks to an organization called Foresight, of which I am the Chair.
Over the last 20 years, Foresight has pioneered an approach to fertility that looks at the fundamentals of health, including lifestyle, diet, pollutants, infections and environmental and occupational hazards and gives an unprecedented 80 per cent success rate. Researchers from the University of Surrey followed the progress of 367 couples over a period of three years (1990-3). The women were aged between 22 and 45, and the men were aged 25 to 59. In all, 37 per cent of the couples had a history of infertility, and 38 per cent had experienced between one and five miscarriages (others had had other problems, including still births, malformations and low birth-weight babies).
Many of the couples were older, coming to the trial as a ‘last resort’. They were all asked to eliminate smoking and alcohol, and to follow the recommendations (such as buying organic food, having infections checked and having mineral analysis). All the couples were given personal supplement programmes and were then re-tested to make sure their levels had returned to normal.
By the end of the three-year trial, 89 per cent (327 of the couples) had given birth. Out of those couples with a previous history of infertility, 81 per cent conceived and had babies. Out of those who had experienced a previous miscarriage, 83 per cent had a baby within the three years of the study, without experiencing another miscarriage.
Of the 327 babies born to the couples in the study, no baby was born before 36 weeks and none was lighter than 51b 2oz (2.368kg).There were no miscarriages, perinatal deaths or malformations. The national average for miscarriages is one in four so one could at least have expected 80 miscarriages, but there were none. No baby was admitted to a special care baby unit.
A number of the couples had already tried IVF – sometimes two or three times – without success. Yet 65 per cent of this group conceived naturally on the Foresight programme without needing another IVF cycle.
These results are undeniably impressive and speak for themselves. Yet sceptics maintain that they are ‘too good to be true’. To date, the results have been published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine but not in a standard medical journal. This is because, in order to be accepted by a medical journal, there must be a control group.
In a normal double-blind placebo controlled trial, to assess the efficacy of a headache remedy, for example, volunteers are randomly assigned to either a control group (placebo) or a treatment group (headache remedy). The volunteers don’t know if they are taking the placebo or the remedy, and nor does the scientist running the trial. All the volunteers in the treated group get the same dose of headache remedy.
However, in the Foresight study each person was given an individual supplement programme according to their needs. So they were all taking different dosages and supplements, depending on how deficient or toxic they were.
This is an important point because the double-blind placebo controlled trial is the ‘gold standard’ in medicine but it cannot take into account that we are all unique and that we may need different treatments to increase our fertility. And it is this ‘individually tailored’ approach which I believe is the key to finding a natural solution to infertility. The fact is that 37 per cent of the couples in the Foresight study had an established history of fertility problems and had undergone medical investigation. They did something different – changed their dietary habits and lifestyle – and then conceived.
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Different guys need different amounts of sleep. So how do you know how much is right for you? Sorry, there’s no standard formula. But there are tests you can take to find out. And don’t worry: They’re strictly pass-fail.
The feelings test: Drowsiness during the day or early evening is a dead giveaway that you need more sleep. The problem is that you may never slow down long enough to find it out. So schedule some quiet time and pay attention. “If you fall asleep reading or just sitting quietly before your usual bedtime, you’re not getting enough sleep,” says Dr. Michael Stevenson of the North Valley Sleep Disorders Center.
The alarm clock test: Did you use your alarm clock this morning? “Anybody who answers yes to that question is at least partially sleep-deprived,” says Dr. Michael Bonnet of Wright State University School of Medicine. The idea is that if you’re allowing yourself the right amount of sleep, you should wake up just before the alarm goes off.
“Start going to bed a half-hour earlier this week, and if your alarm is still waking you up, keep going to bed a half-hour earlier each week until you find the point where you don’t need an alarm,” Dr. Bonnet recommends.
The max-out test: Next vacation, do some sleep research on yourself. A common study technique is to put volunteers in bed for 10 or more hours a night for weeks at a time to see how long they’ll sleep when they have more time than they need to do it. Try it. When you wake up, see how long you slept. That’s how much sleep you need, says Dr. Timothy Roehrs of the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center. If you’re like most study subjects, it’ll be around 8 hours.
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The most common type of gall-stone is made of cholesterol and is the result of altered bile metabolism produced by dietary changes in the West. It is difficult to be sure exactly how common gall-stones are because many produce no symptoms at all and are discovered by chance on X-ray or at autopsy. However, accurate enough figures enable us to say that the proneness to gall-stones of westernized countries varies between 30 and 60 per cent-the highest figures being from Chile, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. Third World countries have much lower figures, for example: Uganda 3 per cent; Thailand 4.4 per cent; and Ghana 0 per cent. A survey of hospitals in Africa, India, Arabia and New Guinea confirmed that gall-stones are extremely rare in the rural parts of these countries. On the other hand, in the urbanized black population of Johannesburg, gall-stones are quite common (12 per cent in elderly women).
Since World War II there has been a worldwide increase in the number of people undergoing surgery for gall-stones. The increase has been between 2.5 and 6 times, depending on the country. There has been an increase not just among older women -the most susceptible section of the population-but also among young people and in men. This suggests that whatever is causing gall-stones has increased its influence since the last war.
All this evidence suggests that gall-stones are directly related to a western way of life. It is also interesting that people with one of four other western diseases are much more likely to have gall-stones. These other conditions are obesity, diabetes, diverticular disease and hiatus hernia. A woman with gall-stones has on average put on more weight since maturity than one without, even if she is not seriously overweight.
The common factor between all these conditions is the over-consumption of refined foods and of high-energy foods. A reduced calorie intake is the best treatment for maturity onset (Type II) diabetes as we have seen; it also reduces harmful blood fats and is slimming. But-more to the point when it comes to gallstones-it results in a lowered concentration of cholesterol in the bile and so in fewer gall-stones. Wild animals rarely have gall-stones but they can be made to have them by being fed artificial diets such as our western diet. Of all the dietary factors that have been studied in the laboratory and clinical trials the lack of dietary fibre and too much sugar and white flour are the main culprits. Increasing the intake of these reduces the likelihood of an individual forming gall-stones.
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Vicki Rogers Givens adores chocolate. She craves chocolate. She eats chocolate. And she has still taken off 70 pounds.
How has she done it? By being choosy about her chocolate treats.
Ever since she was a child, Vicki, an administrative assistant from Indianapolis, has fought the battle of the bulge. In college, she reached 225 pounds, the most she has ever weighed.
These days, at age 42, Vicki is a fit 155 pounds. She says that she reached her goal weight by making smart food substitutions that save calories and still satisfy. For example, if she gets the urge to eat something salty, she chooses pretzels over potato chips. In restaurants, she orders baked potatoes instead of french fries.
Some of Vicki’s smartest substitutions happen when those chocolate cravings hit. “Instead of high-fat chocolate chip cookies, I eat a handful of chocolate animal crackers,” she says. They do the trick with far less calories and fat. Other favorites include fat-free chocolate pudding, Fudgsicles, and hot chocolate.
It took Vicki only a year to hit her goal weight. She feels that she succeeded because she feeds her cravings instead of starving them. But she feeds them with smart choices.
Who says you can’t outsmart a sweet tooth?
WINNING ACTION
Want chocolate? Then eat! If you crave chocolate, go ahead and indulge. After all, this sweet treat may actually be good for you. According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, chocolate contains flavonoids, compounds that may help protect against heart disease.But try to sticLwith something low-fat and low-calorie, as Vicki does. You may yearn for a huge bowl of triple-chocolate-chunk ice cream, but low-fat chocolate yogurt with a drizzle of chocolate syrup will probably do the trick.
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