“Can sugary cereal and a chocolate drink really lower your
Cholesterol?

This sub-section appears to be largely based on a Review by Rosanoff, A. and Seeling, M from 2004 (which can be found in full at http://www.jacn.org/content/23/5/501S.full.pdf+html ).

While this blog article would clearly disagree with some of the ‘claims’ for the efficacy of statins noted in the Review, it is an interesting exposition of the importance of maintaining the ‘proper’ level of magnesium required to facilitate a ‘natural’ control of mevalonate production.

It would be interesting to know whether the UK diet is as poor at providing the essential ‘mineral’ Magnesium as the US diet – which Dean claims provides about 80% of RDA for men, and only 70% of RDA for women.

Mike S: There are many references that attest to the cholesterol-lowering effect of thyroid hormone. The mechanism is not controversial. (Here is one such study http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/86/10/4860.full. You can google others.)

The controversy relates to eligible candidates for such therapy. Conventional medical wisdom is that only those who are diagnosed by blood tests as hypothyroid would benefit from thyroid supplementation.

Some claim that thyroid supplementation is undesirable due to “cardiac effects”:

“Thyroid hormones [predominantly 3,5,3′-triiodo-l-thyronine (T3)] regulate cholesterol and lipoprotein metabolism, but cardiac effects restrict their use as hypolipidemic drugs.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1177400/#!po=72.2222

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists acknowledges,

“Normalization of a variety of clinical and metabolic end points including resting heart rate, serum cholesterol, anxiety level, sleep pattern, and menstrual cycle abnormalities including menometrorrhagia are further confirmatory findings that patients have been restored to a euthyroid state.”

But the AACE states in its guidelines that high cholesterol should not be used to indicate hypothyroidism.

https://www.aace.com/files/hypothyroidism_guidelines.pdf

Despite the AACE guidelines, there is a school of thought that claims that hypothyroidism cannot be ruled out by reason of normal blood tests. Mark Starr is one such proponent. He claims that hypothyroidism is a disease of the mitochondria and that blood tests are only indirect measurements of thyroid function. (Google his book on Amazon. There are also podcasts and Youtube talks.)

Starr, and other ‘functionalists’, such as Blanchard, claim that the only way to determine whether some is hypothyroid is to try supplementing the hormone and see whether symptoms resolve. According to this school of thought, high cholesterol would be a sign of hypothyroidism.

The argument against the functionalists is that their claims are too ‘non-specific’. Anything and everything could be due to hypothyroidism, say the critics. The functionalists reply that anything could be due hypothyroidism because thyroid is required by every cell in the body and so a deficiency could manifest itself in any or many of numerous ways. And on and on goes the debate.

My feeling is that normal cholesterol levels indicate that lipid homeostasis is functioning properly: ie, cholesterol is being taken up by the liver and excess dietary cholesterol is being eliminated as bile salts.

Given the choice between a pharmaceutical that blocks the production of cholesterol or a hormone that facilitates its utilization which would you prefer?

You can find the entire paper here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1663605/pdf/bmj00192-0015.pdf

I still have happy memories of my first trip to Florence, almost 30 years ago, when I discovered that the preliminary pasta was served in very small portions, and the T-bone steak, in all its glory, covered most of the plate…

Any reference for thyroid supplementation? And I assume you are suggesting it when there is hypothyroidism. Turned around, maybe high cholesterol suggests hypothyroidism? No idea. Just a thought.

Rita:

The majority of modern Greeks and Italians don’t eat “Mediterranean” any more. And yes, it would be interesting to see what the typical untreated level of cholesterol is for a variety of diets (Masai, Kitawans, Okinawans, etc).

Finally, this is an intriguing study, suggesting many interesting human-based experiments. Wonder why it hasn’t been followed up by anybody.

But a similar finding in humans, although it may have relevance, is so extreme in its implications that I have a hard time taking it very seriously. And I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s bad to eat saturated fats or that cholesterol per se is the enemy.

There are societies whose diets tend them towards lower cholesterol (I’m thinking of the Mediterranean countries where folks eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, olive oil and fish, such as Greece, for example). The Greeks don’t strike me as any more suicidal or violence prone than any other group.

However, if the study subjects had such artificially, radically lowered cholesterol levels that they were more or less lacking cholesterol all together, then aberrant behavior might be expected, because cholesterol is essential for life. So I’d be curious to know just how low the serum cholesterol of violent or suicidal subjects was. What was the definition of “low” in this study?

There are two ways in which high serum cholesterol can be lowered to ‘normal’ levels. First, one can choke off the production by pharmaceutical means, depriving the body of the building blocks for cell walls, steroid hormones and vitamin D and perhaps leading to violence and suicides, as the study suggests.

Secondly one can improve the ‘clearance’ or ‘utilization’ of cholesterol in the liver by thyroid supplementation. The former method treats cholesterol as a toxin. The latter treats cholesterol as a nutrient and I doubt that such a method of cholesterol reduction would result in violence and suicide.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the significance of serum cholesterol, especially if it indicates that your thyroid isn’t functioning optimally. There are many benefits to be had, besides lowering a cholesterol number, if suboptimal thyroid function is remedied.