Spinal Cord Injury and Paralysis Community

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. - Hippocrates

Hot off the presses, a blood pressure follow up, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, raspberries and lingonberries can lower your blood pressure. Yep, after 8 weeks of 2 cups a day (I know that seems like a lot to eat in a day) the people in the study experienced “significant” improvement in systolic and diastolic pressure, that’s our 120 over 80 numbers. The berries have an enzyme that relaxes our blood vessels so they go, ahhh.

Ok, let’s talk cholesterol, the good, bad and the ugly triglycerides. I hear you saying, really enough already with the blood and gore. First the blog on diabetes, then heart disease and now cholesterol. These blogs fit together like a beneficial jigsaw puzzle guiding us to our good for us virtuous health. Well, I admit it, I’m obsessed currently with the state of my blood and heart and I’m dragging you along. Please hang in there it’s really good stuff and as far as I’m concerned there is always a light at the end of the tunnel when considering our bodies.

Let’s get down to it shall we; here is the 411 on cholesterol and the meaning of the acronyms LDL, HDL and LOL. I’ll start with LOL, I know of two meanings, lots of love and laugh out loud and I can never get too much of either. Little joke. All right, LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein and HDL stand for high-density lipoprotein and both travel through our blood streams performing different functions, but together, so just think of both these lipoproteins as dial a ride for cholesterol.

HDL is responsible for getting cholesterol to the liver for disposal and along the way the HDL can grab the sticky LDL cholesterol off the arteries. That’s why it’s considered “good” cholesterol; it’s kind of a janitor sweeping as it goes. The LDL cholesterol spends more time traveling throughout our blood streams fueling our cells and has more opportunity to get stuck in our arteries and why it’s known as icky-sticky “bad” cholesterol. But really LDL and HDL work as a tag team if the correct amounts of each are present in the body.

Actually I must make a point here that none of these cholesterol's are “bad.” Each has purpose in our bodies, a good purpose, but when abundant beyond necessary chaos ensues. It is my job, as the owner of this body, to care for and monitor all fluid levels just as I do my vehicle. My body is my vehicle to move through the world. And just because a food exists doesn’t mean it nourishes my body.

All right enough of my soapbox, back to this purposeful blog. We tend to ingest way more LDL then we need and not enough HDL. So let’s talk numbers to shoot for LDL below 129 and HDL if you can get up to 60 your golden. Now on to the ugly, the triglycerides, which are basically energy resources, stored in our fat cells until hormones release them when we need energy. Triglycerides are made up of animal and vegetable fat, fat, fat, fat and that’s that. If you have a lot of fat in your middle earth, your waist, then your triglyceride numbers could be too high. The numbers please, above 150mg/dl makes me/you a candidate for heart disease (HD). And high triglycerides are a piece of that metabolic syndrome puzzle.

Scary movie? Not really it’s pretty much the same old love story. First get your numbers checked and then let food be thy medicine be our sound track with the bass heavy on a low consumption of saturated and hydrogenated trans fats, which means required reading will be food labels. Three hours a week of aerobic exercise, which can be broken up into ten minutes blast to whittle our middle, keeps all the HDL, LDL and Tri numbers within range. Weight workouts are in, smoking is out and alcohol in moderation.

I don’t smoke so that’s a plus for me and I have to say I don’t drink because I can’t remember the last time I imbibed a cup o’cheer or maybe that’s my old timers kicking in. Hummm idea for a future blog. I don’t eat pig, dog, cow, chicken, lamb, horse or cat so what to eat? Well almonds raise the HDL, OJ and asparagus can help lower the LDL as does fiber in oatmeal and pinto beans. And remember the blueberries I started this blog with well they help our HDL janitor sweep away the sticky goo, woohoo!

Blessings and Wellness to all! In Joy, Candace

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