Fish Oils, and specifically Omega 3 fatty acids have shown in study after study to be a beneficial dietary addition.

Their most noted effects are their ability to reduce cholesterol levels- in some studies as well as the cholesterol lowering statin drugs.
Walk into any health food store and you can take your pick of a dozen different types of fish oils. In pills, liquids or even berry flavored, the general public has caught on to the health benefits of Omega 3 Fatty Acid Supplement

Never to be outdone by the supplement industry, Big Pharma has worked their way into an attempt to take over some of the market share of the Fish Oil industry… but it’s not quite turning out like they had hoped.

 

Lovaza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, is a patented preparation of ‘omega-3-acid ethyl esters’ and is FDA approved for lowering high triglyceride levels in the blood. Triglycerides are a type of fat present in the blood. Often checked at the same time as cholesterol levels, a high (over 150 mg/dl) is concerning to most doctors as it can indicate a higher risk of coronary heart disease.

When high triglycerides are present, medical professionals will often recommend some sort of intervention to bring the offending blood fats down sort- either lifestyle change or a prescription drug.

GlaxoSmithKline was hoping that Lovaza would fit that bill as one of the prescriptions recommended in combination with their ever beloved cholesterol-lowering statin drugs in cases where triglyceride levels were considered ‘moderately’ high, 200- 499 mg/dl.

 

But it’s turning out that their synthetically derived chemical ‘fish oil’ isn’t quite turning out to be the darling that the less expensive fish oil is.

 

It turns out that Lovaza, while lowering triglyceride levels, significantly RAISES LDL “bad cholesterol” levels which essentially negates the reason that Lovaza would be prescribed in the first place!

 

www.WorstPills.org reported that a ‘boxed warning’ was placed on Lovaza. The non profit ‘Expert Second Opinion for Prescription Drug Information’ no longer considers Lovaza appropriate for ‘moderately high’ triglycerides and recommends that it’s use be limited only to those suffering from triglyceride levels greater than 500 mg/dl.

While this may deter SOME practitioners from prescribing the $3300 per year Lovaza instead of inexpensive Omega 3 Fatty Acid Supplement once a prescription drug is prescribed, then it can be prescribed for any use a doctor desires.

And with the kickbacks bigger than Fish Oil companies are likely to provide, it’s not likely that Medicare is going to stop paying for this drug anytime soon.

 

Omega 3 Fatty Acids

But Fish oil supplements don’t have the only claim on Omega 3 Fatty Acids, however. You can get Omega 3′s in many different sources like:

Flax Seeds and Flax Seed Oil
Wild Salmon
Sardine Snacks
Chia Seeds (chaa,chaa,chaa,chia!)
Krill OIl
Borage Seed Oil
Green Lipped Mussels

Only to name a few. So you don’t need to take prescription drugs to get the beneficial effects of Omega 3 fatty acids. In fact, The Whole Cholesterol Issue Is a Complete Lie, according to Dr. Lundell- a former Heart Surgeon who saw that heart surgery and prescription drugs are NOT the way to lower the risk of heart disease anyway!

Inflammation is becoming the new villain- and it’s just not as easy to control inflammation with drugs- but that’s how fish oil works- by controlling the inflammation anyway. So, take a look at What Dr. Lundell Says about Cholesterol and Inflammation and learn more about cholesterol and inflammation than you ever thought possible.

 

Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen
Functional Medicine Practitioner
Easy Immune Health.com

The newest guidelines for High Cholesterol levels and treatment are being embraced by some who don’t see cholesterol as being the huge cardiac risk factor that some organizations see it as. Some see the newest studies that have come out as better and more common sense guidelines for treating cholesterol than the “lower is better” crowd that give out the cholesterol lowering statin drugs to everyone with a cholesterol level over 150.

 

Essentially, for the past decade, we have been taught that cholesterol is bad and have been encouraged to get it as low as possible for health and to not eat cholesterol laden foods like shrimp lest it make our cholesterol levels go up even a smidge.

But there are those on the other side of this issue who question the lower is better theory. They see cholesterol as the precursor for every single hormone in the body, a requirement in order to make Vitamin D from sunlight and as a required component in every cell wall of the body. In fact, a former Heart Surgeon is taking on the notion that cholesterol is a problem at all! Take a look at why Dr. Lundell believes that Cholesterol is NOT a problem!

 

So there are doctors who are questioning whether we even SHOULD be lowering cholesterol in the first place. And a new study is finally shedding new on the ‘lower is better’ debate. The study is summarized in an easy to use guideline at the link below:

http://www.clinical-rounds.com/trigly.html

Essentially, they say to take your cholesterol levels and triglycerides and put it into a formula in order to find out your risk. You take your triglycerides and divide them by your HDL level. In other words, you do the following easy formula:

 

Triglycerides/HDL=___

 

Then use the following formula to find out your cardiovascular disease risk:

2 or less is considered ideal with the lower the number the better
2-4 = high risk
4-6  =very high risk

Check out this real life example of a 37 year old female (actually ME!). My:

Total Chol is 199
LDL is 127
HDL is 72
Trigly  are 83
CRP less than 1

According to the (hopefully soon to be abolished) thinking about cholesterol of ‘lower is better’, it’s likely that my doctor would have at least considered if not insisted upon a statin.

But according to this standard, I have very low risk with my Triglyceride/HDL ratio at 1.15 which is VERY low. My family history also agrees with this and I KNOW that I take care of myself VERY well so this article confirms what I already knew anyway. I love it when that happens.

 

Another study also showed that the C reactive protein, also called the CRP level- a marker of inflammation,  is really a more important predictor of heart disease than cholesterol. So my CRP of less than 1 also agree with the conclusion that I am at low risk for cardiovascular disease. And that’s also what Dr. Lundell writes about in The Great Cholesterol Lie. He believes that its INFLAMMATION that is the problem- NOT Cholesterol.

These are much more common sense and livable guidelines for Cholesterol levels that seem to work in real life situations much better than the practically unachievable and possibly detrimental ‘cholesterol level of 150 or less’ that gets just about everyone who sees their doctor on a cholesterol lowering statin drug.

 

Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen

Functional Medicine Practitioner

Easy Immune Health.com