Archive for the ‘LDL’ Category
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a synthetic form of HDL (the good) cholesterol to help us fight heart disease. According to Chad A. Mirkin, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, “We have designed and built a cholesterol sponge. The synthetic HDL features the basics of what a great cholesterol drug should be.” The study is published online by the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).
HDL cholesterol is very difficult to manage, and current drugs can cause liver damage. One of the most popular medications, Niacin, causes flushing that requires the use of aspirin to avoid. Dr. Mirkin is one of those patients – “I’ve taken niacin to try and raise my HDL, but the side effects are bad so I stopped. We are hopeful that our synthetic HDL will one day help fill this gap in useful therapeutics.”
Cholesterol medications work well to lower bad, or LDL cholesterol, but without enough HDL, or good cholesterol, we are still at risk for heart disease. Low total cholesterol numbers alone do not prevent heart attacks. Heart disease prevention means keeping LDL levels low, and HDL levels high, in addition to having large HDL particle size.
The primary protein component of naturally occurring HDL is called APOA1. The researchers developed the synthetic HDL by starting with a gold nanoparticle. They then piled attached two layers of lipids, and finally APOA1 protein. The final lipoprotein is a similar size to an HDL particle, about 18 nanometers in diameter.
According to Dr. Mirkin, “Gold is an ideal scaffolding material — its size and shape can be tailored, and it can be easily functionalized. Using gold nanoparticle, which are non-toxic, for synthetic HDL, bodes well for the development of a new therapeutic.”
Shad Thaxton, M.D., assistant professor of urology in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the study in conjunction with Dr. Mirkin says, “HDL transports cholesterol to the liver, which protects against atherosclerosis. Our hope is that, with further development, our synthetic form of HDL could be used to increase HDL levels and promote better health.”
The scientists plan further research to see if they can turn the synthetic HDL cholesterol they have developed into a heart disease fighting weapon.
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Friday, February 13th, 2009
Everyone over the age of 20 should get their cholesterol levels measured at least once every 5 years.
When being tested, your doctor may recommend a non-fasting cholesterol test or a fasting cholesterol test. A non-fasting cholesterol test will show your total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. A fasting cholesterol test, called a lipid profile or a lipoprotein analysis, will measure your LDL, HDL, and total cholesterol. It will also measure triglycerides.
Your doctor may start with a non-fasting cholesterol test and then recommend a lipid profile, based on your results.
Doctors recommend your cholesterol stay below 200.
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Thursday, February 12th, 2009
A variety of factors can affect your cholesterol levels. They include:
* Diet. Saturated fat and cholesterol in the food you eat increase cholesterol levels. Try to reduce the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet.
* Weight. In addition to being a risk factor for heart disease, being overweight can also increase your cholesterol. Losing weight can help lower your LDL and total cholesterol levels, as well as increase HDL cholesterol.
* Exercise. Regular exercise can lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol. You should try to be physically active for 30 minutes on most days.
* Age and Gender. As we get older, cholesterol levels rise. Before menopause, women tend to have lower total cholesterol levels than men of the same age. After menopause, however, women’s LDL levels tend to rise.
* Diabetes. Poorly controlled diabetes increases cholesterol levels. With impovements in control, cholesterol levels can fall.
* Heredity. Your genes partly determine how much cholesterol your body makes. High blood cholesterol can run in families.
* Other causes. Certain medications and medical conditions can cause high cholesterol.
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as found in many beverages consumed by teens is so detrimental to health it should be banned from the food supply. However, a massive lobbying effort by the corn refiners prevented the feeble-minded American Medical Association from issuing a warning on the obesity risk associated with HFCS. The corn refiners have now taken the lack of an AMA warning to be a safety endorsement and are running national TV ads proclaiming the safety of HFCS. Where, might I ask, is the FDA when they are actually needed?
An animal study shows that consuming HFCS makes the animal stupid. Maybe that is why the teen dropout rate is so high.
A rather alarming study (at least to me) showed that HFCS, compared to fruit, inappropriately raises triglyceride levels in the blood over a 24-hour period. Elevated triglycerides block leptin from getting into your brain in the proper amount, a problem that starts prior to obesity and primes the future obesity pump. When leptin does not get into your brain correctly then the hypocretin-driven arousal thermostat will start going higher.
Consuming large amounts of HFCS is sure to throw this system off, causing sleep problems and opening the door for drug abuse. Many children and teens get up to 20% of their calories from HFCS! Imagine the combined effect of HFCS and typical teen stress on the arousal thermostat. Next step – substance abuse.
Parenting Solutions
Parents have tremendous power to help their children have a healthier future. It starts with pre-pregnancy planning for mom. Ensuring her body weight, eating habits, and mood are good before getting pregnant. Ensuring life is stable during pregnancy. Ensuring that good sleep, eating, and exercise habits are taught throughout the early years of life – in an environment that is as stable and stress-free as possible.
There are many natural options that can be employed to help children and teens sleep better. The basics are eating quality food, following the Leptin Diet, developing good problem-solving and stress management skills, taking the time to exercise, and staying on a consistent sleep schedule along with getting enough sleep.
Changing a wound up arousal thermostat can take some time, although many improvements will be noticed early on. Your brain has tremendous capacity to adapt and change circuitry (brain plasticity), including making changes in a positive direction. Part of real health is quality sleep not based on the use of knock out drugs that do little more than put a Band-aid on a very important health topic.
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Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Where do Problems Start?
The key issue is that the hypocretin-driven arousal thermostat is set too high. This activates cravings for pleasure and reward. Keep in mind this is a normal system that enables awakeness and positive motivation. Thus, we are talking about an out-of-balance overheating of stimulatory nerves that not only interfere with sleep but may lead a person into substance abuse.
One way to excessively activate hypocretin is by having a leptin problem. If leptin does not get into your brain properly then hypocretin lacks “parental supervision” and tends to run wild, resulting in an arousal thermostat set too high.
Research also shows that excess hypocretin is driven by stress, and that stress is adequate to reactivate cravings for drugs like cocaine via a wound up hypocretin system. This means that the other primary way of getting your arousal thermostat set too high is from chronic stress that causes your brain to be hyper vigilant.
An enlightening study showed that if mom was depressed before or during her pregnancy, then her child was much more likely to have sleep problems. This brings up the interesting topic of fetal programming. The developing nerves of the fetus are highly influenced by mom’s stress. Too much stress sets the arousal thermostat too high, as the developing nerves learn the lesson that there is a need to be hyper-vigilant to deal with issues. Unfortunately, this type of fetal programming is more like hardware than software – setting a child up for sleep problems.
Likewise, a mother’s weight and leptin-related food problems going into pregnancy can also fetal-program leptin circuits relating to food acquisition. We know that children born to overweight mothers are at risk for future obesity. Mothers who diet during pregnancy (malnourished) as well as mothers who eat too much (over-nourished) create leptin-related fetal programming problems.
Thus, stress problems and food issues while in the womb are the first predictor of a child’s likelihood for setting their arousal thermostat too high. During the first few years of life, once again as the brain is establishing more core circuits, the issues of stress and food will continue to have bearing on this system. How stable is the home environment? How much love is there? How much quality food is available? Is your child learning to eat vegetables and fruit – or are they already on a sugar and junk fat trend? Is your child learning good sleep habits?
The failure of parents to provide stability and quality nutrition in the early years of life (including in the womb) is a prime risk factor for a child having sleep problems and increasing the risk that your child could go down a path of substance abuse.
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Monday, February 9th, 2009
Individuals who are tired from a lack of sleep will typically want to eat extra food the following day so as to get energy from the food. As time goes along the extra calories are likely to be stored as fat, resulting in weight gain and eventual obesity.
The new science paints a clear picture of changes in brain chemistry that actual start before weight is gained. It is a combination of the arousal thermostat set too high and leptin resistance (high leptin in the blood that is not getting into the brain properly)
Hypocretin neurons that comprising the arousal thermostat contain leptin receptors, meaning that leptin speaks directly to them so as to slow them down. When leptin is not entering the brain properly then there is a lack of instruction to not eat. This causes the over-stimulated hyporcretin system to desire excess food, a misguided signal left over from the days of the hunter-gather when extra mental vigilance and less sleep was needed during times of famine so as not to miss a hunting opportunity.
I might point out that there are many teenagers whose arousal thermostat is set too high, who have trouble sleeping, but are not overweight. While their leptin system is being challenged, it has not yet faltered. Their wired metabolism is burning all the calories they can eat and they may even have trouble gaining weight or keeping weight on. Such teens will be at high risk for becoming overweight later in life.
Many teens are not so lucky, and their leptin system has started faltering at an early age, not only causing obesity-related metabolic problems to lock into place but seriously compromising future health.
Current research clearly shows a lack of sleep in children is an independent risk factor for obesity, as poor sleepers have a 92% higher risk of obesity compared to the best sleepers. Researchers have also identified how a lack of sleep produces a stress response (cortisol excess) that also turns down fat burning and helps lock leptin problems into place.
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Thursday, February 5th, 2009
Data coming from the Cleveland Children’s Sleep and Health Study is showing that even in perfectly healthy teens who do not have sleep disordered breathing (snoring/sleep apnea) a lack of sleep is adequate to begin the process of adverse changes in their cardiovascular system.
Teens need 9 hours of sleep per night. The study found that children who slept poorly were 4.5 times more likely to show signs of pre-hypertension, meaning that their blood pressure was elevating (on average 4 points). This placed them in the 90th percentile of such a problem for their age, sex, and height – meaning they are headed on a path to cardiovascular disease.
Children and teens who do have sleep disordered breathing have significantly elevated blood pressure, which gets worse in direct measure to the severity of sleep problem. This is the case whether such children are overweight or not.
Yale researchers have found that in overweight children with the metabolic syndrome, those with the worst sleep problems have elevated levels of adrenaline and leptin in their blood. The elevated adrenaline is evidence that their arousal thermostats are set too high. The elevated leptin means that the children have leptin resistance and that leptin is not getting into their brains properly.
The researchers found that when they treated the breathing problems the leptin levels came down, even though body weight had not changed. These results imply that sleep problems directly disturb leptin, meaning that in some cases sleep problems may be the driving force behind obesity (not just excess food or a lack of exercise). Of course, the more years a child stays in an overweight or obese condition the greater the amount of ongoing cardiovascular damage that will influence their future quality of health.
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Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Cholesterol travels through the blood attached to a protein — this cholesterol-protein package is called a lipoprotein. Lipoproteins are classified as high density, low density, or very low density, depending on how much protein there is in relation to fat.
* Low density lipoproteins (LDL): LDL, also called “bad” cholesterol, can cause buildup of plaque on the walls of arteries. The more LDL there is in the blood, the greater the risk of heart disease.
* High density lipoproteins (HDL): HDL, also called “good” cholesterol, helps the body get rid of bad cholesterol in the blood. The higher the level of HDL cholesterol, the better. If your levels of HDL are low, your risk of heart disease increases.
* Very low density lipoproteins (VLDL): VLDL is similar to LDL cholesterol in that it contains mostly fat and not much protein.
* Triglycerides: Triglycerides are another type of fat that is carried in the blood by very low density lipoproteins. Excess calories, alcohol or sugar in the body are converted into triglycerides and stored in fat cells throughout the body.
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Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
When too much cholesterol is present, plaque (a thick, hard deposit) may form in the body’s arteries narrowing the space for blood to flow to the heart. Over time, this buildup causes atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) which can lead to heart disease.
When not enough oxygen-carrying blood reaches the heart chest pain — called angina — can result. If the blood supply to a portion of the heart is completely cut off by total blockage of a coronary artery, the result is a heart attack. This is usually due to a sudden closure from a blood clot forming on top of a previous narrowing.
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Thursday, January 29th, 2009
US regulators have told patients they should continue to take a cholesterol drug following a review of the efficacy of the product.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that Vytorin – manufactured by Merck and Schering-Plough – works and should still be prescribed.
Last year, a clinical trial of Vytorin suggested that it might not work better than an older, cheaper statin drug.
The FDA said its review of the treatment found that it reduces levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in patients using Vytorin by 56 per cent, whereas just over a third of those taking the older drug Zocor had lower LDL cholesterol levels.
Merck and Schering-Plough said they are “pleased” with the FDA’s decision.
This week, Merck announced that is has entered into a strategic alliance with Galapagos to develop treatments for obesity and diabetes, in a deal which could see Belgium-based Galapagos earn over 180 million euros (£162 million).
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