New research on LDL (bad cholesterol) shows interesting results

Do you sit down to a meal and automatically categorize the food on your plate as being a “bad” food or a “good” food?  Do you avoid certain dining establishments because the food that is served is full of butter, fat, or grease?  Most of us have been conditioned to think that fatty foods raise our “bad” cholesterol, LDL, while lowering our “good” cholesterol, HDL.  Millions of individuals in the United States are on statins to control their cholesterol, yet the number of people developing or even dying from heart disease continues to grow.  It appears we have taken all precautions to fight heart disease (by taking the fat out of our foods, taking a lot of medications, exercising regularly, etc.), and yet still our heart disease numbers continue to grow.  According to an article in Men’s Health, perhaps the reason is due to the flawed logic and studies behind demonizing fat and LDL cholesterol as a whole.

The prevailing idea over the last number of years has been that LDL is wholly bad and that a high number in LDL testing is a marker for heart disease.  Additionally, we have been taught that saturated fat consumption raises our chances for developing heart disease.  All of this is now being called into question by Dr. Ronald Krauss of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the director of the atherosclerosis department.  He has developed an instrument, using ion mobility process that separates the LDL particles down to small components.  The theory behind using this machine is that LDL is made up of many sub particles and not all of them are “bad” or cause heart disease.  Therefore, simply relying on one number associated with LDL could lead many people to begin using drugs they have no need for, changing their diet when it doesn’t need changing, and more importantly, actually putting them in danger of developing a heart problem.

According to Men’s Health, LDL comes in four different types:  the benign, big fluffy type; the medium, relatively harmless type; the small, dangerous types; and the very small, very dangerous types.  Researchers have found that individuals who eat a diet high in saturated fat boast the big fluffy LDL particles, while those who eat a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet have smaller LDL particles.  Because the standard blood test does not differentiate these types, Dr. Krauss and his team decided to use the ion mobility analysis on blood samples from 4600 healthy Swedish men and women.  They found that the strongest indicators for heart disease, from highest to lowest were: high levels of medium and small LDL particles combined with low HDL; low HDL levels; and high total LDL levels.  What is even more concerning is that because a standard lipid test only shows the total LDL number, most of what makes up that number can be large, fluffy particles.

Dr. Krauss also wanted to test the impact of diet on cholesterol, specifically on LDL numbers.  Using data from the Framingham Heart Study, he found that a diet high in saturated fat did in fact increase LDL numbers, but only the large, fluffy, benign type.  Meanwhile, individuals who ate a low fat, carbohydrate heavy diet increased the small LDL, thereby increasing the overall heart disease risk.  Strikingly, people who change their diets in the hope of decreasing their overall cholesterol number may be doing more harm than good.