Welcome to our blog. In the first couple of posts I would like to share some interesting facts about myths regarding health and fitness.
On the Home page you might have read the first striking "news":
Cholesterol is essential for survival, salt is good, egg yolk is not evil, cereal is, sugar is addictive and it serves a purpose in increasing sales, milk and dairy are not the primary source of calcium, the most polluted environment for people is often their home.
Surprised?
Here is the first one, Cholesterol is essential for survival, now many would agree that it cannot be true because their doctor said it clogs up the arteries so we should stay away from fat especially saturated fat as its the most evil one. But we are never told that actually long term stress coupled with an inactive lifestyle is what clogs up the arteries. How? Here is what happens when you realize you overslept, missed the last bus and will be late or find out you lost your wallet. Your symphatetic nervous system switches your body fight or flight mode, your blood pressure increases as blood rushes to the muscles, fat, protein and sugar is mobilized to give you maximal strength and energy to prepare you for fight or flight the same way as it did 10 000 years ago, our genetic make up has changed very little since then, but our lifestyle did a lot, back then we would run or fight for our life when we had to survive and the physiological changes are the same we are under stress, but what happens today is that all that fat that is mobilized when you realize you have lost your wallet is not being used so it keeps circulating in your system, now the other thing what happens is that cholesterol has its role, it has to repair certain tissues if they got damaged, one of these bodily tissues is the wall of the arteries, when you are stressed and your blood pressure is elevated the blood rushing through your veins with a much bigger force damages the arteries, first of all at places where arteries branches split into smaller arteries, cholesterol repairs the damage and everyone is happy.
So why do you think the same physiological response kills us today?
Today most of us live in constant low level stress coupled with short periods of very stressful everyday things considered to be normal in our society. That means our blood pressure is constantly higher than it would have been average thousands of years ago, plus we don't use up the mobilized energy sources and there if "food" around 24/7/365.
I said "food" because today most people eat meat from commercially raised kettle that is high in toxins and low in nutrients but it is going to be explained at another time. Bottom line is fat and thus cholesterol is as healthy as the animal was, fat stores toxins so unless you buy organic meat stay away from the fat. Eat organic, learn how to balance stress and recovery and you can stop worrying about cholesterol.