Homocysteine – The Silent Killer that Framed Cholesterol and That Very Few Doctors Look At

PART 1

By: Dr. Jin Sung – April, 2014

Today more than ever, there is a huge confusion as whether or not cholesterol is good or bad. If you or someone you know suffer from any of the symptoms or diseases listed below you need to read this article. It may be that high homocysteine is the main culprit to your problems and not cholesterol. Some of the symptoms/ diseases high homocysteine can cause are:

• Atherosclerosis

• Heart disease

• Hypertension

• Brain fog

• Depression/Anxiety

• Fatigue

• Lingering autoimmunity (especially thyroid autoimmunity!)

• Migraines

• Erectile dysfunction/ Infertility

• Any neurodegenerative condition (especially Alzheimer’s)

Cholesterol was framed.

We have a real crisis on our hands in America. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, affecting about 1 in 4 people. The American Heart association released a statement saying that this number is expected to rise from roughly 25% in 2010 to over 40% in 2030! This means that in 2030 almost one of every two people in the U.S. will have some form of Heart disease! Not to mention that they also projected total direct medical cost of heart disease will triple from $273 Billion in 2010 to $818 Billion in 2030. What does this mean? It means that mainstream medical approach to treat heart disease is flawed, mostly because they are looking for the wrong marker in the blood – cholesterol.

Cholesterol does not cause heart disease.

When cholesterol was found to be a major component of arterial plaque, the

“cholesterol theory of heart disease” was born, thinking that high cholesterol levels cause atherosclerosis. The truth, however, is not so simple. In fact cholesterol is a vital part of the body’s chemistry. Many of our bodies hormones, including sex hormones like progesterone, estrogens, testosterone (and many others!) come from cholesterol. Cholesterol is used in almost every cell membrane in the body to make it stronger and less permeable. Without cholesterol we cannot benefit from sunshine and can’t convert it to Vitamin D. Cholesterol is used to make bile salts, which helps us digest fats and helps us absorb our fat soluble vitamins. Cholesterol is even used as an anti-oxidant in our bodies!

Cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as statins, cause more than twenty different metabolic pathways that are vital for human life to come to a screeching halt.

Unfortunately, drug companies jumped the gun a little too quickly and invested millions in developing cholesterol-lowering drugs when this new “cholesterol theory of heart disease” was born. Now, even though modern science has disproved the “cholesterol theory of heart disease” these big drug companies have a great interest into keeping this “cholesterol theory” alive and well – and they are doing a great job at that! They have spent billions of dollars into making the general public believe that lowering your cholesterol will make you healthy. If this was the case, America’s heart disease problems as well as neuro-degenerative problems would have stopped with the discovery of statins in the mid to late 1970’s.

“ By 2030, 40.5% of the US population is projected to have some form of Car-diovascular Disease. Cardiovascular disease and costs are projected to in-crease substantially”– The American Heart Association

The French have the highest cholesterol in Europe, averaging around 250. Ironically enough, they have the lowest incidence of heart disease and they only have half the amount of heart attacks as we do here in the States. European diet also differs greatly from the standard American diet. With a diet high in fish and healthy oils, Europeans have a diet that is closer to the ideal 1:1 Omega-3 (very anti-inflammatory) fat to Omega-6 (very inflammatory) fat ratio. The standard American’s Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio ranges anywhere from 1:20 to 1:50. We are a very inflamed nation!

Cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease. Inflammation causes heart disease.

We test for a lot of inflammatory markers here at our clinic, but one of the main ones we look at is homocysteine levels. The thing to know about inflammation is that whenever you have immune system activation, you have inflammation. You cannot have one without the other. Our immune system’s job is to clear out things that don’t belong in our body – It is usually activated by two different things: Pathogens (like viruses and bacteria) and tissue destruction. Homocysteine is like taking a brillo pad to the inner lining of your arteries. This leaves a massive trail of tissue destruction. And with tissue destruction comes immune system activation to clean up the damage, and as you learned before with immune system activation comes inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is found to be one of, if not THE main factor to virtually all of our chronic diseases we suffer with in America.

Think of homocysteine as like a sharp piece of glass flying around your blood stream. When homocysteine tears up the inner lining of our arterial walls, it makes them narrow and inelastic. Our body then tries to patch it up with cholesterol. Cholesterol is our bodies is part of the healing mechanism. This is the same cholesterol they find in people with heart disease, however, the cholesterol would have never stuck to the artery in the first place if homocysteine wasn’t there to damage it. Newer research is suggesting that raised homocysteine levels alone are an independent risk factor for: hardening of the arteries, coronary heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, abnormal blood clotting, depression/anxiety, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, spontaneous abortion, placental abruption, neural tube defects, renal failure and type II diabetes.

PART 2 of this article in next months addition.

Dr. Jin Sung is a chiropractor and the owner of Functional Chiropractic, Inc. He manages chronic patients both neurologically and metabolically to achieve the best outcome. He can be reached at 978 688-6999. Or visit his website at www.DrJinSung.com

I would like thank my friend and mentor Dr. Ed Beyer for the content of this article.