Complications from Acne

There has been a great deal of fuss raised over the danger of high cholesterol in our blood as a cause of heart attacks and strokes. Since most cholesterol is not derived from the diet, but is created in the liver, it would be helpful to know what the liver uses as a raw material. Surprisingly, it is not the fat in the diet, but it is manufactured from high blood glucose. The more extra blood glucose, the higher the level of cholesterol, especially the more undesirable form, known as Low Density Lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. Here is why LDL cholesterol is so bad for you. Its protective protein coating is not dense enough to provide adequate protection from the damage caused by free radicals in the blood. With holes blown in the protein coat, the interior content of fatty acids of this LDL cholesterol is now exposed to the oxygen of the blood. In this condtion LDL cholesterol is quickly oxidized and becomes a free radical itself. This is very dangerous, and so the macrophages of the immune system try to gobble up as much oxidized LDL cholesterol as they can and get it out of the blood. It has now been found that the macrophages become swollen with this oxidized LDL cholesterol, they try to leave the blood, exiting through the arterial wall as they normally do. Unfortunately once in a while one will be too swollen with oxidized LDL cholesterol, and they can get stuck there. Then the oxidized LDL, acting as a free radical, damages the arterial wall. This injury creates a hole in the inner lining of the artery.As the muscle cells just under that lining go through their normal reproductive cycle, some of those muscle cells have been found to protrude up through the hole in that lining. Then fibrinogen responds and starts laying down a mesh of fibers over this protrusion trying to close it off. Next calcium starts filling in the holes in the mesh and it starts to harden. Finally cholesterol coats the top of this bulge and we now have an arterial plaque. Once started, a plaque tends to grow in size with more and more fiber, calcium and cholesterol added as time goes by. When these plaques are numerous and large enough, they can cut off the flow of blood to the heart or brain, and this results in a heart attack or stroke. Now the astonishing thing is this, half of those who die from a heart attack or stroke have normal cholesterol levels. This is because in addition to getting rid of excess glucose by making cholesterol, the liver has another favorite method, it turns it into fatty acids which then become triglycerides, also known as blood fat. At first, the body of most people will try and get rid of this triglyceride by storing it as body fat. As you can tell by looking around, some of these bodies are pretty good at that. However, in time, the body can not store it as fast as it is being produced and the blood triglyceride level rises higher and higher. There is a grave danger here, because tt is now scientifically acknowledged that high blood triglyceride levels are a far more accurate predictor of pending heart attacks and strokes than your cholesterol level.

When the blood glucose remains higher than the insulin can bring down to normal, the liver steps in and tries to bring the high blood sugar back to normal by converting as much of the glucose as possible into fatty acids. It then joins three of these together with a glycerol unit into what is called a triglyceride. While in the blood, another name for triglyceride is  blood fat. We all have cells located throughout our body into which this triglyceride is poured for storage purposes. Once stored, we call these triglycerides “body fat”. As strange as it may seem skinny people and fat people have roughly the same amount of these fat storage cells. The difference is that in skinny people they are flat, like an empty plastic sandwich bag. For those who gain weight easily, what is happening is that as they eat more and more “simple” carbohydrates, the excess glucose which cannot be burned as energy is turned into more and more triglyceride molecules which are then stored in these fat cells. These fat storage cells just keep getting bigger and bigger, literally stuffed with triglyceride molecules. When you look at the fat which is stored on your body, what you are actually seeing is glucose derived from your diet which was in excess of what your body could use. This excess dietary glucose has been converted to triglyceride and stored as fat.How dangerous to your health is stored body fat? There are a couple of things which have been learned about this which is important to know. If you are a thin person, and you eat lots of “simple” carbohydrates but don’t get fat, it may be that your fat cells just refuse to take up the triglyceride and it is just getting higher and higher in your blood. In this case, you may be in much more danger of having a heart attack or stroke than the person who is more than 20 pounds above their ideal weight. It has also been found that where you store that fat has a lot to do with how harmful it is going to be. Estrogenically dominated fat deposits, with most of the fat placed below the waist tends to keep blood triglyceride levels low. Although large fat deposits anywhere increase health risks, it poses less risk of heart attack to that person than someone who has Androgenically dominated fat deposits. This is when most of the fat is placed at and above the waist. The danger here is that these individuals tend to have higher blood triglyceride levels. The more your waist measurement is larger than your hip measurement, the more likely it is that you will have higher blood triglyceride levels. Scientists have found that consistently elevated blood triglyceride levels is a better indicator of future heart attacks and strokes than is elevated cholesterol. What is important for you to keep in mind, is that both high cholesterol or high triglyceride, as is obesity, is the direct result of a diet that is low in micro-nutrients and high in simple carbohydrates that quickly convert to glucose. Obesity, being more than 20 pounds over your ideal body weight is one of the fastest growing health problems in America. As with diabetes, obesity is a condition which always has more cancer, heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure and shorter life span occur, than with normal body weight people.

Long before the individual becomes a full diabetic, because of these long hours of high blood glucose, the glucose starts to combine with various protein structures in the blood. Everything from blood cells, plateletts and vessel walls to various enzymes. These are now called glycoslated structures, and the really unfortunate part of this is that they can no longer function as they should. Let’s take the red blood cells for example, when they become glycoslated the amount of oxygen they can carry is greatly reduced. This in turn means the cells of the body become deficient in enough oxygen to produce their normal amount of energy. Why? Because those mitochondria energy factories I have been referring to must have plenty of oxygen in order to convert all that glucose to ATP. Once the cell oxygen level drops, acids begin to form in the cell, and because it still needs energy, it starts fermenting these acids in order to create energy. Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Otto Warburg discovered that fermentation of acids for energy instead of respiration of oxygen is the chief characteristic common to ALL cancer cells. The loss of oxygen in the cell due to glucose crowding it out, is one of the key reasons that people with chronic high blood sugar have a much higher rate of cancer.

As the years go by and the body ages just a few more years, those who were early on hypogycemic, will have their cells become less and less willing to take in the glucose. At first the blood glucose level is still, being brought down to normal after meals, but it is taking longer and longer. Eventually this unwillingness of the cells to take up the insulin/glucose combination leads to higher and higher blood glucose levels. Whereas they used to have low blood sugar, now they have high blood sugar. Why is this happening? It is because the “simple” carbohydrate foods which make up such a large part of the diet, are also devoid of the important nutrients, the vitamins, minerals and amino acids which are required to transport the glucose into the cell, into and then through the mitochondria. The co-factor minerals of chromium and vanadium as well as lipoic acid, riboflavin and niacinamide are in short supply. Finally, the lack of these nutrients leads to the day when the insulin/ glucose complex can no longer muster up the important cofactors that allow it to gain entry into the cell. Now the blood fills with both glucose and the ineffective insulin. When this occurs, the level of glucose in the blood begins to rise above normal limits for longer and longer periods of time. If this whole process is not stopped and reversed by halting the excess use of “simple” carbohydrates, the individual will become what is known as a Type II or Adult Onset Diabetic. Always remember, a high “simple” carbohydrate diet is the ONLY cause of this type of diabetes. Because of today’s excessive use of “simple” carbohydrates, Adult Onset Diabetes now makes up over 90% of all diabetics in the advanced nations of the world. Currently there are over 17 million people diagnosed as diabetics in the United States, with over 15 million of these being due to “simple” carbohydrate diet induced Adult Onset Diabetes. It is increasing at an alarming rate that will double the number of people afflicted with this condition every 15 years. It is now the fastest growing disease in America. It is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States, and the statistics are no better in other major advanced nations also pursuing a “simple” carbohydrate diet. What used to be an old peoples condition is now afflicting more and more young people, even people in their early twenties.

In the beginning those who were fortunate enough to be born with a really strong pancreas will find it producing so much insulin, so fast, in response to all this “simple” carbohydrate in the diet, that it quite literally removes so much glucose from the blood there is not enough left to run the brain. These people get sudden bouts of weakness, lightheadedness, nervousness, irritability, poor memory, difficulty concentrating and thinking. All courtesy of a brain that does not have enough fuel to run on. As soon as they eat, the blood glucose level rises and they feel better. However, if they eat “simple” carbohydrates, they will feel terrific, but only for a short period of time, and then a little later as the insulin from their pancreas floods in, their blood sugar drops and they are in the pits again. This is what is known as hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.