low cholesterol in vegan diet

[willows]

hi there. i'm looking for some help . . .

my husband is trying to get life insurance. his health examination showed that he is extremely healthy -- except that his cholesterol is "too low". his numbers are 102, and the average american's is 160. they didn't take into acount that he is vegan, and instead said that this would put him into the bracket of the unhealthy "high risk" folks.

does anyone know of any good research out there that we could forward to the insurance company? or any other ideas?

thank you!!!
willow in berkeley

[stephencp]

Do you have a doctor that could get in touch with them?

Stephen
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[Baltar]

There's bad cholesterol (LDL) and good cholesterol (HDL). Which one are they talking about? Or are they talking about the sum of the two? From what I understand you can't have too little bad cholesterol, but it is possible to have too little good cholesterol. According to Wikipedia, good cholesterol should be 60 mg/dL or more. Bad cholesterol should be less than 100 mg/dL. Having less bad cholesterol than an average american is a very healthy thing. If your husband's good cholesterol is high enough, then the insurance company doesn't know what they're talking about. Tell them to pull their heads out of their statistical asses.

Wikipedia cholesterol article
Good cholesterol
Bad cholesterol

[willows]

Thanks for the replies. Very interesting information. My husband's "good" cholesterol is 58, and his "bad" is 35 -- both below the norm. His total cholesterol is 102 (I don't know how they get this number, since it is not a sum of the two). The Wikipedia article is very good, but it doesn't say anything about being vegan as one of the causes for low cholesterol. Either way, I like the idea of telling them to pull their heads out of their statistical asses.

[openeyes]

I'm glad that the rest of the exam described your husband as extremely healthy. I hope that he remains so for quite some time. That said, low cholesterol is increasingly being seen as a significant health risk. Google "low cholesterol health risks" and you'll see what I'm talking about. I almost didn't even post any of this because I prefer to focus on sharing positive news, but it may be useful to know what you're dealing with, at least in the eyes of the medical/insurance profession. Here's a quote from one of my favorite health sites to get you started:

"Just like our weight, there is an optimum with cholesterol as well. Some people believe that the lower your cholesterol, the healthier you are.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If your cholesterol is too low you will have an increased risk of mood disorders, depression, stroke, and violence. And these are only the KNOWN effects right now. There are likely many more currently unknown and unstudied [...]

Unfortunately, many people have low cholesterol who are not taking medications. I am one of them. This is largely due to my having beta thallasemia which is a genetic defect in the size of red blood cells that is also associated with a low cholesterol.

Yes, my risk for heart disease is quite low, but the risk for the other diseases mentioned above is clearly elevated.

It seems that low cholesterol in many individuals is related to a non optimized gall bladder and liver function."

http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/8/suicide.htm

Also:

Abnormally low levels of cholesterol may indicate the following:
• hyperthyroidism, or an overactive thyroid gland
• liver disease
• malabsorption, or inadequate absorption of nutrients from the intestines
• malnutrition

Discovery Health :: Medical Tests :: cholesterol test

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by willows

The Wikipedia article is very good, but it doesn't say anything about being vegan as one of the causes for low cholesterol.

Being vegan in itself shouldn't have any detrimental effect on proper cholesterol levels. People who eat animal products get about 20% of their cholesterol from food. The rest is produced by the liver, so if you don't get it from food the liver will compensate. Cholesterol is produced from fat; saturated fat in particular will increase both good and bad cholesterol levels. Here's a good article that talks about increasing good cholesterol: Tips to Raise Your Good (HDL) Cholesterol Levels. One of the things it recommends is eating more seeds/nuts/legumes: "unsaturated fats (like those found in many nuts, seeds and legumes) can keep good cholesterol levels high and keep bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels low."

Originally Posted by openeyes

low cholesterol is increasingly being seen as a significant health risk. Google "low cholesterol health risks" and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Are you talking about low levels of good cholesterol or bad cholesterol as well? Low levels of good cholesterol are definitely bad, but what about the bad cholesterol? Less than 130 is considered good by the American Heart Association, but according to Wikipedia as low as 50 is optimal based on current research.

Over time, with more clinical research, these recommended levels keep being reduced because LDL reduction, including to abnormally low levels has been the most effective strategy for reducing cardiovascular death rates in large double blind, randomized clinical trials; far more effective than coronary angioplasty/stenting or bypass surgery. For instance, for people with known atherosclerosis diseases, the 2004 updated American Heart Association, NIH and NCEP recommendations are for LDL levels to be lowered to less than 70 mg/dL, unspecified how much lower. It has been estimated from the results of multiple human pharmacologic LDL lowering trials that LDL should be lowered to about 50 to reduce cardiovascular event rates to near zero.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by Baltar

Are you talking about low levels of good cholesterol or bad cholesterol as well?

From what I've read it seems to be the combination of the two. One of the sites you quote from has an article on it linking to many other sources, Low Cholesterol: Overlooked Health Risks

"At 164, my total cholesterol levels are slightly above the levels linked to the anxiety disorder risk groups (160), but still within the hemorrhagic stroke risk group threshold (below 180)."

As you say, the body is supposed to produce most of its own cholesterol, both HDL and LDL, but when levels are very low, that's a sign that the body isn't doing its job for some reason.

[Matthew Shea]

Exercise is a very good way to increase good cholesterol. If he's not exercising regularly, I would suggest he start. Being thin is not necessarily enough to be healthy in the long term. Exercise is key for a number of reasons.

Also, triglycerides factor into the total cholesterol number, too. It's not just HDL and LDL.

[Ibanez]

Check out this site and the book cholesterol myths too.

The Cholesterol Myths - Section 2

2. Blood cholesterol has nothing to do with atherosclerosis
One of the most surprising facts about cholesterol is that there is no relationship between the blood cholesterol level and the degree of atherosclerosis in the vessels. If a high cholesterol really did promote atherosclerosis, then people with a high cholesterol should evidently be more atherosclerotic than people with a low. But it isn´t so.

The pathologist Dr. Kurt Landé and the biochemist Dr. Warren Sperry at the Department of Forensic Medicine of New York University were the first to study that question (25). The year was 1936. To their surprise, they found absolutely no correlation between the amount of cholesterol in the blood and the degree of atherosclerosis in the arteries of a large number of individuals who had died violently. In age group after age group their diagrams looked like the starry sky.

Drs. Landé and Sperry are never mentioned by the proponents of the diet-heart idea, or they misquote them and claim that they found a connection (26), or they ignore their results by arguing that cholesterol values in the dead are not identical with those in living people.

That problem was solved by Dr. J. C. Paterson from London, Canada and his team (27). For many years they followed about 800 war veterans. Over the years, Dr. Paterson and his coworkers regularly analyzed blood samples from these veterans. Because they restricted their study to veterans who had died between the ages of sixty and seventy, the scientists were informed about the cholesterol level over a large part of the time when atherosclerosis normally develops.

Dr. Paterson and his colleagues did not find any connection either between the degree of atherosclerosis and the blood cholesterol level; those who had had a low cholesterol were just as atherosclerotic when they died as those who had had a high cholesterol.

Similar studies have been performed in India (28), Poland (29), Guatemala (30), and in the USA (31), all with the same result: no correlation between the level of cholesterol in the blood stream and the amount of atherosclerosis in the vessels.

But a correlation has been found in a few studies. One of these was the famous study from Framingham, Massachusetts (32). The correlation found by the Framingham investigators was minimal, however. In statistical terms, the correlation coefficient there was only 0.36. Such a low coefficient indicates a desperately weak relationship between variables, in this case, of course, between cholesterol and atherosclerosis. Usually, scientists demand a much higher correlation coefficient before they conclude that there is a biologically important relationship between two variables.

The very low correlation coefficient was arrived at after much study. First, many of the townspeople of Framingham had their cholesterol tested several times over a period of several years. Then, Dr. Manning Feinleib of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, led a team of coworkers in studying the coronary vessels of those who had died. The researchers were eager to learn which of the many factors they had studied was most important in the development of atherosclerosis in these dead people from Framingham. Was it blood cholesterol or the number of cigarettes smoked, or something else?

After carefully describing the atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries of the dead people, Dr. Feinleib and his associates concluded that the cholesterol level of the blood best predicted the degree of atherosclerosis. Neither age nor weight nor blood pressure nor any other factor was as good as blood cholesterol. But again, the correlation coefficient between cholesterol and atherosclerosis was a mere 0.36.

The written report of the study offered no diagrams and no information about the cholesterol and atherosclerosis of each of the individuals whose bodies had been examined. And the report did not discuss the very low correlation coefficient; it didn't even comment upon that matter.

When scientists reach a result contrary to all previous studies, it is routine--not merely usual but routine--to provide a detailed report about the result and also to discuss any possible ways in which the study may have been biased away from accuracy and truth. In the Framingham case, there was an especially great need for this routine scientific procedure to be followed. Not only was the correlation coefficient so trivial, but this study, funded with millions of taxpayers' dollars by The National Institute of Health, could have a major impact on national health care and the American economy. If there was no connection between cholesterol and atherosclerosis, as the previous studies had shown, then there was no reason to bother about cholesterol or the diet. And billions of taxpayers' dollars could have been spent more wisely than in lowering the cholesterol of healthy people.

But the scientists conducting the Framingham study had no reservations. They were eager to stress their own excellence and to highlight the weaknesses of Dr. Paterson's study of Canadian war veterans. In their report, they did not mention the studies of Drs. Landé and Sperry at all, nor the studes from India, Poland, Guatemala or the USA. When the Framingham study authors mentioned their opponents, it was only to criticize without putting their own cards on the table. Some of those hidden cards are fascinating to wonder about.

How were the dead of Framingham chosen for postmortem examination, for example? From 914 dead individuals, the researchers examined only 281. And from the 281, they selected 127 (14 per cent of all dead) who became the subjects of an autopsy program especially designed to investigate the heart and its vessels.

Thus, those chosen for autopsy in the Framingham study were not a random sampling of the population, as they had been in the previous studies. The report from Framingham said nothing about the selection criteria, although scientific studies routinely do. Usually the determining factor is age. A postmortem is seldom performed on people who have died peacefully in old age, as most of us will. Primarily, a postmortem is restricted to young and middle-aged people, who have died before their time, and so it was in the Framingham study. Almost half of those autopsied were younger than 65 years. For this reason, the autopsied subjects had to have included a relatively large number with familial hypercholesterolemia, the unusual genetic disease of cholesterol metabolism. Furthermore, people with this disease are of special interest to scientists studying the cholesterol problem and were probably chosen for autopsy in a program tailored to investigate coronary disease.

[Ibanez]

continued from previous post....

With only 14% of the Framingham dead chosen for autopsy, the risk of bias must have been great because there is one exception from the above rule: patients with the rare disease familial hypercholesterolemia have much atherosclerosis, and very high cholesterol levels in their blood. If many such patients are included in a study of cholesterol and atherosclerosis, a correlation will be found.

The question about blood cholesterol and atherosclerosis has been studied by coronary angiography also. It seems as if every specialist in coronary angiography in America has performed his own study, funded with federal tax money awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. In paper after paper published in various medical journals, using almost identical words, these medical specialists emphasize the importance of the blood cholesterol level for the development of atherosclerosis (33).

But the reports offer no individual figures, only correlation coefficients, and these are never above a minimal 0.36, usually even smaller. And they never mention any of the previous studies that found no association between degree of atherosclerosis and level of blood cholesterol.

Studies based on coronary angiography are fundamentally flawed if their findings are meant to be applied to the general population. Coronary angiographies are performed, mainly, on young and middle-aged patients with symptoms of heart disease, which means that a relatively large number of patients with familial hypercholesterolemia must have been included. Again, there is an obvious risk for the kind of bias that I described above. The fact that this objection is justified was demonstrated in a Swedish study performed by Dr. Kim Cramér and his group in Gothenburg, Sweden (34). As in most other angiographic studies the patients with the highest cholesterol values had on average the most arteriosclerotic coronary vessels.

But if those who were treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs were excluded, and almost certainly this group must have included all patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, the correlation between blood cholesterol and degree of atherosclerosis disappeared.

In Japan the food is meager, blood cholesterol is low and the risk of getting a heart attack is much smaller than in any other country. Given these facts you will most probably say that in Japan atherosclerosis must be rare.

The condition of the arteries of American and Japanese people was studied in the fifties by Professors Ira Gore and A. E. Hirst at Harvard Medical School (35) and Professor Yahei Koseki from Sapporo, Japan. At that time US people on average had a blood cholesterol of 220 whereas Japanese had about 170.

The aorta, the main artery of the body, from 659 American and 260 Japanese people were studied after death. Meticulously all signs of atherosclerosis were recorded and graded. As expected, atherosclerosis increased from age 40 and upwards, both in Americans and in Japanese. Now to the surprising fact.

When degree of atherosclerosis was compared in each age group there was hardly any difference between American and Japanese people. Between age forty and sixty Americans were a little more arteriosclerotic than Japanese; between sixty and eighty there was practically no difference, and above eighty Japanese were a little more arteriosclerotic than Americans.

A similar study was conducted by Dr J.A. Resch from Minneapolis and Dr.s N. Okabe and K. Kimoto from Kyushu, Japan (36). They studied the arteries of the brain in 1408 Japanese and in more than 5000 American people and found that in all age groups Japanese people were more arteriosclerotic than were Americans.

The conclusion from these studies is of course that the level of cholesterol in the blood has little importance for the development of atherosclerosis, if any at all.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by Ibanez

Check out this site and the book cholesterol myths too.

The Cholesterol Myths - Section 2

An interesting book indeed. Another of Dr. Ravnskov's articles that fits this topic well is:

The Benefits of High Cholesterol

[sharonavivdas]

One of the effective ways to reduce blood cholesterol is to combine regular physical activity with low cholesterol diet. A diet with low cholesterol may include foods with high fiber and vitamin content, and must be low on fat.

[aelle]

Since your husband already has low cholesterol, he can try to up his good cholesterol by eating more good fats : almonds, natural peanut butter (not the skippy kind!), avocadoes, flax, brazil nuts, cashews, seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, etc). I tend to grind flax seeds with a coffee grinder and incorporate some in my morning bowl of muesli or in a smoothie. Eating a lower GI type diet might help too : less refined foods and sugar, sweet potatoes instead of white, whole wheat bread instead of white, etc.

Also, were these results based on a single test? To get accurate results on the test, it's very important to fast that morning - not even a cup of coffee. It's also recommended not to have any alcohol 24h beforehand, and no smoking if it can be helped.

I hope the 2 of you (and the insurance company) figure out something that works for you! Good luck!

[Joeschmoe]

There is no link of low cholesterol with health risks, none of the websites linked have any real science to back them up. "The cholesterol myth" is a construct dreamed up by low-carbers, dairy industry, and meat industry to justify their bad habits, and the detrimental effects of their diets. What better way to explain the increase in cholesterol than to claim it doesn't matter.

The reason that the insurance company has an issue with his cholesterol is that there are certain cancers, and other tumors, that will cause a sudden drop in blood cholesterol.

I would have his doctor write a note to the insurance company. They are obviously misinformed, especially since 103 is still within the "normal" range.

[ginkgo]

See this site about Reducing High Blood Pressure. It has a book (Fasting and Eating) at the bottom that is by an MD that cures people of high blood pressure, angina, intermittent claudication and other cardiovascular problems. It sites countless studies.

But vegans will not live longer than average unless they take a B-12 supplement and make sure to get omega-3 fatty acids. He treats very, very severe cases with fasting, switching to vegan diet and exercise program. With a vegan diet your husband can still be killed but with no other problems will very long without cardiovascular problems.

But your question has nothing to do with health. It is a question about money. It took doctors 40 years to accept the stethoscope so do not hold your breath. Instead of trying to spend less maybe you shoud try to earn more. The last that I heard the owner of this site makes about $30,000 monthly. That is $360,000 annually so he will not benefit from Obama's tax plan. He is in the same place as Joe the Plummer.

Also here is a healthy way that your husband can increase his cholesterol (for a month or more) without eating animal foods. He can fast a couple of weeks. This is explained in that book mentioned above. This causes the cholesterol to go very high due to the increase in good cholesterol. A guy with cholesterol of 150 can fast till it goes up to 300.

Can you guess why? The fasting causes the arteries to be cleaned so fast that an old person can get the arteries of a young person. Again though your question is about money, not health.

[ginkgo]

Here is how they figure out cholesterol level. They take the age of your husband. They multiply that by the number of shoes that he has. Then divide that by the number of children that he has. Multiply that by how many miles he lives from Washington DC.

Multiply that number by zero. The answer is zero.

Then you add to that (zero) the amount of HDL (good) and the LDL (bad) and add one fifth of the triglyceride level. That is how they get it. Triglycerides divided by 5 and add HDL and LDL.

[funchy]

Originally Posted by willows

does anyone know of any good research out there that we could forward to the insurance company? or any other ideas?

Check out the info posted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Excerpt of one of the web pages:

"Preventive Medicine and Nutrition


Cholesterol and Heart Disease

Every day, nearly 2,600 Americans die of some type of cardiovascular disease, an average of one death every 34 seconds, and 7.1 million Americans have had a heart attack during their lifetimes.1 Those who survive often go on to have another heart attack later on. But this need not happen. Eating habits and other lifestyle factors play a large role in the risk of heart disease. Moreover, heart disease can usually be prevented and even reversed...

What Is Atherosclerosis?

Atherosclerosis is not caused by old age. When battlefield casualties were examined during the Korean and Vietnam wars, American soldiers had significant atherosclerosis at only 18 or 20 years of age. Their Asian counterparts, raised on a diet consisting mainly of rice and vegetables, had much healthier arteries.

Older people are more likely to have heart problems than younger people because they have had more time to indulge in unhealthy habits, not because they have a hereditary tendency towards heart disease. Usually, the problem is not due to genetics, but to eating and smoking habits. Your doctor can tell you if you are one of only about 5 percent of the population with a true genetic tendency towards heart disease.

Many studies have shown the connection between cholesterol and heart problems. Beginning in 1948, under the direction of William Castelli, M.D., the population of Framingham, Massachusetts, has been monitored to see what influences the rate of heart disease. Castelli’s study has shown that there is a cholesterol level below which, essentially, coronary artery disease does not occur. Framingham data show that only patients with cholesterol levels of less than 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) achieve the lowest coronary artery disease risk. In the first 50 years of the Framingham study, only five subjects with cholesterol levels of less than 150 mg/dl developed coronary artery disease. Rural residents in the developing areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America typically have total-cholesterol levels of about 125-140, and they do not develop coronary artery disease......"

I also have pretty low cholesterol since I am vegetarian. I've never heard my doc or ins company say it's too low though -- too low being bad is news to me.

[funchy]

Originally Posted by Ibanez

Check out this site and the book cholesterol myths too.

The Cholesterol Myths - Section 2

At a glance, it looks hokey to me. I took the time to follow a few of the links to sources for his article. Either I came to a totally different conclusion after reading the link or the link provided was about a different (not related) aspect of cholesterol. Some links such as this or this, if you read them carefully, are studies on how to LOWER cholesterol -- which to me seems to go against his idea high cholesterol is good/normal/healthy.