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“A
drug company is concerned about your health in exactly the same way a
lion is concerned about the health of a gazelle. The “lion” will have to eat something else if you aren’t sick.” –
Harold Kraus
Heart Disease
(Notice: This file was damaged this summer. What is here is what I have had time to restore. I hope to fix more later.)
I was surprised when my blood pressure dropped and my total cholesterol went from 198 to 156 on the gluten free diet, without drugs or increased exercise. I hadn’t seen any reference to heart disease on any Celiac Website. So I began to wonder why.
A grain-based diet is low in B12, B6, and Folic Acid unless artificially fortified bread is eaten. B12 and Folic Acid are commonly malabsorbed by people who are gluten intolerance, but still are eating gluten. Deficiency in these nutrients results in toxic homocysteine levels, which cause lesions in blood vessels. Among other problems, these lesions contribute to arteriosclerosis.
Breaded meats, processed foods, and dried or powered milk, cheese or eggs in packaged meals are major sources of oxycholesterol. These sources are usually contaminated with gluten – so a diet that eliminates gluten usually also reduces oxycholesterol and homocysteine and also reduces inflammation, which lets the body work on healing other injuries.
Pericarditis / Pericardia
Myocarditis / Myocardia
Use hypertext link> Heart Failure, Cardiomyopathy and Celiac Disease on Celiac.com.
Study Suggestion: Pericarditis and Myocarditis, both are autoimmune heart conditions that can be associated with gluten sensitivity.
Study Suggestion: Read up on homocysteine and oxycholesterol.
Gluten Intolerance
Drug manufactures are happy to
point out that high cholesterol levels are inherited; hoping to suggest that
there is nothing you can do about it except to buy their drug. However, gluten
intolerance is definitely an inheritable trait, and if gluten intolerance
causes your family’s high cholesterol levels, there could indeed be something else
you can do about it besides just drugs.
Gluten intolerance causes
inflammation as well as the malabsorption of antioxidants, so gluten
intolerance may doubly contribute to elevated oxycholesterol as long as gluten
is eaten. Gluten intolerance should be investigated in cases of elevated
cholesterol test results.
Gluten intolerance causes malabsorption, commonly resulting in long-term mild to severe shortages of B vitamins, among many other nutrients – B12 and Folic Acid shortages are particularly associated with gluten intolerance. So, gluten intolerance should contribute to high levels of homocysteine as long as gluten is eaten. Malabsorption and gluten intolerance should be investigated in histories of heat disease.
Oxycholesterol
In 2004, a number of new cholesterol reducing products were nationally advertised. While the promotions did not directly mention oxycholesterol, these medications are essentially normal oxycholesterol-lowering vitamin supplements with some special chemical added just to make the product patentable.
Oxycholesterol is what results
when cholesterol is oxidized. Your body needs cholesterol to work right, but
oxycholesterol is damaging to your body. Cholesterol is an antioxidant, which
repairs certain oxidation injuries to the body. On the other hand,
oxycholesterol is a free radical, which causes oxidation injuries to the body, literally
burning your arteries. It is not
healthy cholesterol but oxycholesterol that forms artery-blocking plaque.
The body also does not regulate
oxycholesterol. The body will maintain a regulated level of cholesterol even if
there is a lot of oxycholesterol in the blood. But, the doctor’s cholesterol tests report the combined
amounts of oxycholesterol and cholesterol in your blood as your “cholesterol
number”. To lower you “cholesterol
number”, it may be the best idea to try to reduce your toxic
oxycholesterol amounts rather than reduce your healthy cholesterol
amounts.
Oxycholesterol gets in the body in
two ways, either by being eaten or by being formed by free radical damage to
healthy cholesterol in the blood.
Oxycholesterol forms in food when
milk, eggs, and meat are cooked, processed, powered, or dried. The most
oxycholesterol is formed when these foods are dried and powered. Frying causes oxycholesterol. The least
amount of oxycholesterol forms when these foods are baked or boiled.
Oxycholesterol forms in the body when
there are too many free radicals, too little antioxidants, or both. A high
free-radical level may come from toxins in what you eat or from inflammation in
your body. A shortage of antioxidants
may be caused by not eating enough of them or by having inflammation your body.
Study Suggestion: Read up on oxycholesterol.