S2 Ep 20 Part 2 – Cholesterol the most misunderstood molecule – The IMPACT of STATINS!
EatPrayFaith_DrTracey
PART 2 – In this episode, we continue our deep dive into cholesterol, exploring its vital yet often misunderstood role in the body and the profound impact of statin drugs on health. Cholesterol is not a “bad guy” in heart disease—it’s essential for cell structure, hormone production, brain health, and digestion. Yet, statins, widely prescribed to lower cholesterol, can disrupt these critical processes, leading to unintended consequences.
We discuss how statins affect:
• Cell Membranes
• Energy and Antioxidant Production
• Brain and Nerve Health
• Immune System Balance
But there’s hope. We’ll also discuss practical solutions to support your health:
1. Phospholipid Support
2. Lifestyle Choices
3. Dietary Focus
Whether you’re on statins or considering them, this conversation will empower you with knowledge and actionable strategies to prioritize your health.
Join us as we unravel the complexity of cholesterol, the effects of statins, and how to harness the power of lifestyle and natural solutions for optimal wellness.
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Thank you for joining us! We would love to hear from you. Send us a message. ~ Dr. Tracey (https://www.buzzsprout.com/908758/fan_mail/new)
A note from Dr. Tracey ~
Our bodies, when given what it needs, will do what is needs to be healthy!
God’s design is perfect and good. He is a way maker and has made a way back to health when we abide in all that HE said is VERY GOOD! I hope you embrace the beautiful opportunity before you.
God bless you all ~ Dr. Tracey
Thank you for joining us here. Find out more about our health services and educational opportunities plus get all the wellness products you need.
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*The information presented here is not medical advice.
Full Transcript
Introduction to Cholesterol Part 2 0:00
well guys welcome to the eat pre Faith podcast with Dr Tracy that's me and today we're going to be doing part two of our um lecture on cholesterol and I think you know part one had a tremendous amount of downloads so if you missed that just go back uh it's in season two I have to look at the episode but it's right before this one or so make sure that you go and you listen to that first because you're going to want to understand all the benefits of cholesterol before we start diving into this lecture which is primarily going to be about statins how they work in the body what they do to create breakdown uh and then I'm going to give you some solutions if you are um diagnosed with high cholesterol which we now know isn't a bad thing the only bad cholesterol in the body is unused cholesterol so if it's being produced by the liver there is a reason for it and we want the body to actually use it so we're going to go through some highlevel again um information based in cholesterol so let's get started without further Ado let's just go so what are statins well these are a class of prescription drugs that help lower cholesterol and they actually block an enzyme that the body uses to make cholesterol in the liver I'm going to talk more about this enzyme but I want to give you an overview first because we're going to spend some time on this enzyme and this biological function of this enzyme in the body because when these statins are utilized to break it down and to inhibit it from actually producing cholesterol that has a secondary impact not only on the structures and physiological need of the cholesterol in the body but also what does this particular enzyme do in the body and if we stop it what secondary issues can we get and we can see these from the side effects of the stat and Drug very interesting the correlation so I think sometimes we look at side effects of medications and we think oh it's just a toxic side effect it's not a
What Statins Are and How They Work 2:06
lot of times when a medication is inhibiting a process it's creating a biological breakdown in your body a disease engine in your body and so I want you to hear me today when we talk about these statin drugs I am am in no means telling you to stop your prescribed medication what I am telling you is to research on your own make sure you learn and have hard conversations with your doctor and if that doctor is not willing to listen to you then you need to fire your doctor and find somebody who will second make the necessary changes in your life in order not to need these Pharmaceuticals which my personal opinion and I am a practitioner but I'm not your practitioner is that satin drugs are a fraud they truly are there's no correlation with the reduction of cardiovascular disease with their increased use over the last two decades we still have more cardiovascular disease even prior to the jab um people died of cardiovascular disease more than all cancers combined and that was pre jaab so let's stay with that thought process shall we so what what happens here well the liver produces about 75% of the body's blood cholesterol so we learned that last time we learned the benefits of cholesterol we've learned that cholesterol is utilized in the production of hormones in repairing endothelial tissue which is part of your bloodb brain barrier it's part of your digestive system it's part of your vascular system including your renal system we also learned that cholesterol helps rebuild brain neurotransmitters so it does a multitude of things it helps with vitamin D so many things that it does again go back and listen to it but today we're going to talk about stattin because it's very important that we understand what they are and how they work so first let's go through um some common name Statin just so you realize what they are um there's about from 2013 until now there's been 149% increase in the use of prescription stattin that's amazing 149% increase now if these things were doing their job wouldn't you think there'd be a decrease but that's not the case so here's your types of statins we have lipor we have SIM simvastatin which is zokor Lovastatin which is mevacor U pav vastin which is these names honestly can we just name something easy lielo uh rasu vast Statin Crestor that's Crestor lesol and then we have prostatin which is prol lipostat and Celine so nice names um yeah we just couldn't call them like statins right that'd be too hard so you know in Natural Health we call vitamin C vitamin C it's pretty much how it works but anyway I digress so these are the types that are out there so if you're on these medications again not telling you to stop I legally can't do that but you can make your own educated decision however I am going to give you the risks that are associated with these and I'm going to tell you how they work so the very first thing is to understand this little enzyme that statins block because uh extremely important so they work by lowering the level of LDL specifically that's your low density lipo protein what the alpath would tell you is bad cholesterol but now we know that LDL is vital and so this cholesterol flows from the liver into the bloodstream and the LDL production is blocked by an enzyme excuse me the statins block the enzyme that helps produce LDL which is called three hydroxy three methyl glutaral co-enzyme a holy mackerel that's a mouthful isn't it so for the point of this lecture in particular we are not going to call it
HMG-CoA Reductase and Cholesterol Pathways 6:30
that we are going to call it something simple something pretty something that excuse me everyone can remember because that's a level of ridiculousness we don't need to have so for the point of this lecture we're and it is called this we're going to call it HMG COA reductase okay so this enzyme HMG COA reductase reduces down acetyl choline a now a lot of initials are coming your way don't get overwhelmed I just want you to understand okay the process begins at the top with acetyl cholina this acetyl a is a two carbon molecule and it's sometimes referred to as the building block of life okay so right here we have a cocoline a it's called the building block of life and there are three acetylcholine a molecules that combine together and they form this six carbon HMG COA reductase this specific enzyme is formed by three acetyl choline a known as the building blocks of life form this enzyme that is going to create cholesterol and so if you have something called the building block of life that combines to create an enzyme that's going to create cholesterol why would you make a drug to stop it what statin drugs do is work by inhibiting the enzyme HMG COA hence the formal name is called statins are called hmgcoa reductase Inhibitors these are HMG Inhibitors that's what statins do they stop this enzyme from doing its job to make cholesterol now here in lies one potential for numerous side effects because statin drugs inhibit not only just the production of cholesterol but a whole family of intermediary substances many if not all which have an important biological function in their own right that come from this acetylcholine a forming HMG COA and creating cholesterol so not only are we reducing this enzyme but we are reducing all of the biological chemical Pathways behind it and if you could see a chart of all of the biochemical Pathways that are disrupted simply by inhibiting this HMG COA you would be shocked but that's what side effects are and as my good friend Joe M says they're called Direct effects right they're not side effects they're just actually Direct effects so let's talk a little bit again making cholesterol important roles it builds strong cell membranes the cell walls right are made from cholesterol and other materials we're going to talk about it creates steroid hormones those are hormones such as as cortisol now people think that cortisol is bad it's not necessarily bad cortisol at the right amount your stress hormone gets your body processes moving it's telling you like get up go run hurry long-term cholest or long-term cortisol is an issue it also helps with estrogen and testosterone production which are your sex hormones it helps produce bile acids and digest fat and it also helps make vitamin D which keeps your bone strong and also supports your immune system especially against viral issues now when we start to inhibit the hmgcoa with statins we are not only disrupting all of those processes I just talked about because that plays a key role in creating the cholesterol after all that does those things but in turn it also is in the action of helping create energy during things like fasting and low carb diets now think about this so someone's on a Statin drug and they want to change their life and they come off the standard American diet and they start going low carb or they start doing intermittent fasting well when you're not eating enough carbs like during a fast your body turns to fat for energy a mgca the enzymes that stat and blocks is vital in creating what are called Ketone bodies so ketones are an alternative fuel source for your brain your heart and your muscles okay stop right there Ketone bodies are an alternative fuel source for your brain heart and muscles now I want you to think about what statin drugs do and what some of the side effects are muscle pain right they also have neurod degenerative long-term studies on high use of statin drugs why well we just talked about that in the last podcast cholesterol helps build your brain so when we take away this enzyme that produces cholesterol in our body cannot create Ketone bodies that are fuel for your brain heart and muscle what do you think is going to happen to your brain heart and muscles well they're going to become atrophied so is this going to help long term cardiovascular disease is this going to help long-term brain health is this going to help long-term muscle retention I think not I mean Common Sense would have you draw that parallel so there's three types of kein tone bodies that are produced from this HMG COA and one is the main energy molecule and I'm not getting into all the big names because it's not important one is an efficiency energy source especially for the brain and then one is a byproduct that's exhaled and that's called keto breath and that's how you measure Ketone bodies right you can also do that through urine so these ketones are lifes Sabers and when glucose is in short supply where you have somebody that's diabetic and they can't regulate the insulin or whatever that looks like you have a secondary issue over it or if somebody's on the standard American diet and they have high sugar in their onist Statin well they're definitely not going to be able to produce enough ketones and definitely going to have brain heart and muscle issues all right third this HMG COA enzyme that produces cholesterol that helps produce cholesterol so it basically is a catalyst for cholesterol production I want to make sure I say things correctly that statins inhibit is part of a process that adds these anchors to certain proteins called um priation prolation prolation I'm sorry so these anchors actually help proteins stick to cell membranes now this is important because this is supporting protein function in cells so when you have this penol and these anchors help stick proteins to the cell membranes they do their job and so what do they do well they help cells communicate and work together they also organize cell structures they transport important molecules within the cells without this process cells will struggle and not function properly okay number four HMG COA is a starting point for creating what are called isoprenoids now these are chemical building blocks that are used to assemble things called glycoproteins and glycoproteins are proteins with a sugar molecule attach attached and they are essential for cell communication and immune function so when you're taking a Statin you are not creating isoprenoids you are not helping assemble glycoproteins and you are not helping your cells communicate and your immune stay your immune functions stay optimal also
Why Blocking Cholesterol Production Causes Problems 15:00
CoQ10 ubiquinone that's a molecule that helps your cells make energy and acts as a powerful antioxidant to protect them from damage when you inhibit HMG COA these isoprenoids cannot build CoQ10 third it can't build he a which is an important part of the Machinery cytochromes um in your cells or energy factories for your mitochondria so you have weak non-energetic cells you have cells that don't have a powerful antioxidant to protect them from damage which is called Co CoQ10 and you can't assemble glyco proteins because you've inhibited this HMG COA all right this is a lot I know but I I want you to understand how important cholesterol production is in the body body and this specific enzyme that is involved in more than just cholesterol apparently and when we take a Statin it doesn't discriminate and say oh okay some of the HMG COA you can go do these things like fuel your immune system and make other important molecules and you know create energy and mitochondria and support protein function no it just stops the entire thing and so everything that I'm talking about today is inhibited due to the consumption of this prescription that has been propaganda into society through indoctrination for you to believe that you need it and they scare the be Jesus out of you if you don't take it okay let's talk about more molecules made from hmgcoa again if you're just tuning in this is the enzyme that is the Catalyst in the production of cholesterol it is also the enzyme that statins Target and inhibit one so cholesterol cannot be produced specifically LDL but we're now learning that if we inhibit it or just cholesterol production we're also inhibiting this enzyme from making other molecules so it helps regulate the immune spon response for for example um they assist in activating white blood cells to fight infections wait hold on so wait hmgcoa helps regulate immune responses by activating white blood cells but if we're inhibiting it what does that do it also helps build and repair sugarcoated proteins that your immune cells use to recognize Invaders so we can definitely say that this means that HMG COA indirectly helps your body fight off diseases and that by inhibiting it you are more susceptible all right HMG COA is critical for cholesterol obviously which forms tiny patches in cell membranes called lipid rafts now this is interesting this helps cells send and receive signals it also controls cell growth divide and death and you're like wait I don't want my cells to die yes you do you do not want zombie cells you want healthy cells or dead cells there's no such thing as a good zombie cell remember they eat brains but this is more important in wound healing also inflammation management and maintaining normal growth one of the things that I look for in kids is a lipid panel if kids are having an issue with growth I will check their lipid panel and see if it's low it's the little key for you all right um we also know that cholesterol that comes from hm GCA is turned into steroid hormones and vitamin D it also provides antioxidant protection it's involved in creating that CoQ10 that we talked about it also connects different Energy Systems in your body um so hme acts like Traffic Control director for the energy in your body so depending on what need what is needed it can help cholesterol if your cells are growing or repairing it can make ketones if you're fasting uh it can balance your carbohydrates fats and proteins and direct them to the right places where energy is needed so when processes evolving HMG Co are disrupted or inhibited it's going to lead to problems such as low energy production especially if Ketone production is impaired it can also lead to low blood sugar energy crashes um it can also um when when this enzyme is blocked or reduced to lower cholesterol it can also reduce that CoQ10 antioxidant which is going to lead to that muscle pain and fatigue so we now know that HMG CA is much more than a step in cholesterol production it's kind of like the Swiss army knife for your metabolic function and helping your body so why would we take something that's going to reduce something so vital in biological processes why would we take something that they're telling us is going to prevent heart disease I mean guys we have to be smart we want from 37 million people in 2013 to 92 million users in 218 and 219 the annual number of Statin prescribed increased from 460 million to 818 million that's a 70% increase between 2008 and 2019 with no reduction in cardiovascular disease I want you to understand that there are things that you can do that are going to help you and I'm going to give you one simple solution today and I'm also going to link the protocol in the show notes for what I want you to do okay so first let's talk about the standard American diet guys if you don't know better by now I don't know what to tell you and I don't mean men I mean everybody okay now if you are that person listening to this podcast and you eat terribly and you are on cholesterol meds and you do not want to change your nutrition then you can stop listening right now because all Health begins at the end of your fork you can't outrun a bad diet and so you need to
Lifestyle, Testing, and Root-Cause Health Changes 22:00
switch to Whole Foods organic non-ml take inflammatory foods out of your nutrition plan that doesn't mean no fun that means stop eating your white bread sandwiches your bagels and cereal for breakfast and your processed Uh Hungry meals or hungry man dinners uh at dinner stop doing those things that are not real food remember as my my friend Jamie dorly always says there's no such thing as junk food it's either junk or food it's either going to produce life in your body or it's going to destroy life in your body so that's first if you need a nutrition plan you need to talk to somebody that can help you reach out to me I'll put my link in here I have practitioners that can help you we can help look at your lifestyle look at your nutrition and help you make better choices second you know one of the things that people tell me all the time is I'm doing all the right things but my cholesterol is still high okay if that's the case you're going to look at your hormones especially women guys remember high cholesterol is not bad unused cholesterol is bad we don't want cholesterol that's not being used because it has a vital thing to do in your body it's not about the cholesterol number it's about the fact that it's not being used in your body to do what it's supposed to do you're more worried about that piece of paper than the actual deficiency that your body has in using the cholesterol that's kind of like having a bottle of vitamin D and not taking it it's on your shelf I always tell people it works better out of the bottle you have cholesterol in your body it's being produced by your liver for a reason why isn't your body using it and it's probably because you don't have enough enough what well I'm going to give you that here in a second but I want you to pay attention to your markers you can't guess the problem you know why guess when you can test do a simple Baseline panel it will literally cost you $75 to $100 to go get a blood draw cash out of pocket it is worth it if you have a PCP if you have a practitioner that will do a blood draw on you you want a CBC with differential you want a CMP that's a comprehensive metabolic panel you want a total serum iron and you also want your lipid panel you want all four of those those are a good Baseline to start with you should have that drawn once a year and you should have somebody that can interpret it with new eyes not pharmacological eyes but eyes on how to address your life style your nutrition your hydration your movement your sleep your elimination your emotional spiritual Wellness the doctor of the future will not prescribe medication but adjust your lifestyle because the issue with your cholesterol production is because of you and the environment you are putting yourself in which your body is trying to save you from you are either toxic or deficient or both and you can overcome that with a few nutritional changes a few lifestyle changes and a little bit of supplementation if you're not willing to do that then you're listening to the wrong podcast because guys I can't want it for you more than you want it for yourself what I will tell tell you is over time that Statin everything that we talked about today will become an issue as you keep that HMG COA enzyme inhibited all of the things that it does biochemically in your body when you inhibit it will stop and the result of that will be cellular death how long I don't know again I'm not telling you to stop your meds I'm telling you to change your life okay so good nutrition hydration movement sleep elimination emotional spiritual Wellness get your blood draw balance your hormones fix your life there are no easy way out no one's going to come save you and there's no magic pill even all these glp ones you hear out there yes it's going to help you lose weight yes when you overdose on a medication it works but if you don't learn how to eat right think right move right pray right poop right and do all those things right you will end up in the exact same place prior to that first needle and even with natural products that people are pushing if they're not talking to you about your foundational Health your lifestyle Health your Nutritional Health your movement Health your spiritual health your emotional health your mental health all of those things and giving you proper supplementation and fixing your gut and balancing your hormones wrong practitioner they're just as bad as someone who pushes a Pharma drug yeah yes I I yes I just said that and if you're offended because you're listening to this and you're one of those people change you can either get mad or you can get better that's up to you you should be doing that with your clients if you have somebody that's coming in for weight loss we have to remember that weight is not a product of always eating too much it's a product of metabolic dysfunction that starts at the digestive system it starts with L cell production of what are called anchor tins if you don't know what those are go watch my course the quick and dirty peptide course I explain everything in there how this works with gp1s it is not a Magic Bullet and you have to overdose people if it's a pharmaceutical if they're not doing all the underlying things and if they're not doing all the underlying things and you're using a natural one you may get results initially but the body always catches up you cannot outs supplement or outm medicate a lifestyle all right soapbox speech over let's move on to Solutions all right so first cholesterol has to combine with things called phospholipids which help create new and healthy cell membranes it also helps them patch things it also helps them rebuild things so when they work synergistically they create this lipid biolayer which is just a fat layer lipid meaning fat by meaning two layers around the cell phospholipids form a double layer because with their hydrophilic which means water loving head facing outward and they water fearing Tails facing inward cholesterol inserts itself right in between there and it has this little protective boat and they form this cell membrane so it helps regulate the fluidity of the cell it helps maintain the permeability of the cell so substances can't pass in or out it also helps support membranes of the lipid rafts that we talked about really important because those lipid rafts are those specialized areas of the cell membrane which are rich in cholesterol in certain phospholipids now there's four different kinds we're not going to talk about all of those but like phospholine is a phospholipid they also serve as a platform for signaling and proteins they facilitate lipid transport that means phospholipids form an outer shell of lipoproteins remember we learned about that lipoproteins from our first lecture making them water soluble for travel in the blood and then cholesterol resides in both the outer shell and the core of these lipo proteins so this helps the boat not sink it also helps with cellular communication membrane protein function we talked about the function of protein here also helps with signal transduction so that means that while cholesterol helps organize the membrane for optimal receptor function the phospholipid provides the signaling so we have this Synergy that goes on between these good phospholipids a phosphate group on a fat with cholesterol to really protect cells from cell damage it also supports myin sheath and brain Health stop supports myin sheath and brain
Phospholipids as the Main Solution 30:30
health hear me the milin sheath surrounds the axon so you have the neuro the neuron has a head an axon it kind of looks like a tail and at the bottom of it has these little tentacles the axon the milin sheath is what surrounds that axon and protects it milin sheath degradation is associated with several neuro de generative diseases several if we can't protect our neurons our brains will die if we can't facilitate rap rapid signal transmission we can't think we can't find words we can't move and if we can't support brain cell structure and neurotransmitter release we can't communicate neurologically phospholipids and cholesterol also vital for digestion they help biof formation together they help emulsify dietary fats making it easier to break down and absorb they balance membrane stress so cholesterol prevents membrane phospholipids from clustering too tightly because you know too much of a good thing is still too much of a good thing and conversely phospholipids prevent excess cholesterol accumulation so there's that so if you have too much cholesterol according to ever what do you have a deficit of a phospholipid so it also acts as a precursor for key molecules um cholesterol derived molecules such as steroid hormones so again we're getting back into hormone balancing we just talked about brain health it's funny you know the vascular damage which is really the patching is All About Cellular Health throughout your body right so it's not just about patching vessels your cholesterol and phosph lipids are used to repair your cells I mean that's amazing so I just want you to hear me okay when we're talking about Solutions one simple thing that you can do is increase your intake of phospholipids so that cholesterol has a partner in maintaining the architecture and functionality of your cell build strong and adaptable membranes help your body facilitate communication and signaling support fat transport and energy it's really important so I'm going to um put into the show notes my favorite product that I love love by um body bio um it is a PC a phos phosph acetylcholine and also an oil called balance oil those two together I have seen work amazing magic in combining with cholesterol and helping the body overcome this excess nonuse cholesterol in the body for me if cholesterol is going up it's not being used that's a deficiency in cholesterol you need it so I want you guys to understand that high cholester ol is your body telling you it needs something now if you want natural sources of phospholipids hang on guys wait for it eggs provide 100 grams eggs what did they tell you to stop eating a few years ago to lower your cholesterol I mean what kind of morons are up there doing this research I'm sorry that was really mean what kind of non-smart people are up there doing this research organ Meats has tons of phospholipids 5.4 G per 100 G and I'm sorry egg yolks have 10.3 grams per 100 grams Meat and Fish soybeans uh oh there it is I said soy oh my gosh people are GNA freak out you don't have to eat soy beans guys calm down oats dairy products no Dairy yes Dairy just not processed Dairy can we just stop drinking processed Dairy go back to Raw whole Dairy if you're going to have dairy okay again you don't have to do it fruits and vegetables so guys phospholipids are a major component of biological membranes if you don't want to eat them you can swallow them in a pill or an oil again I'm putting the protocol below uh with the phospholine um as well as the balance oil get both it will help you optimize and utilize the excess cholesterol that is not being used in your body that you need for brain health cardiovascular health vascular Integrity Health endothelial repair and Hormone Health ladies when I see women come on with hormone issues first thing I do is give them the phosph acetylcholine and the balance do you need it forever no but you are deficient in it so what I would recommend is supplement this for a month or so and increase your um protein intake your Macros good fats always organic nonong gml decrease your processed food increase your fruits and vegetables if you do those things you're going to be heart healthy you're going to feel great and you're going to utilize your cholesterol in ways that your body needs in order to be healthy throughout your life thanks for joining me if you need me you can always reach out at my website www. trcy strap andy.com I'll link it in the show notes make an appointment take some of our classes at the Academy of abiding Wellness we are here to serve thank you for joining me make sure you subscribe share this with somebody that needs to hear this information and give me a like and follow on Facebook Instagram and all the social channels God bless you
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