Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Written by Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND For further questions or concerns email me at carcidiacono@invitehealth.com So far in this series we have talked about quite a few different variations of high blood sugar. Metabolic syndrome is a huge risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. However …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. TALKING HORMONES WITH CARDIOLOGIST,DR.DAVIS– INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 592 Hosted by Amanda Williams MD, MPH *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health podcast, where our degreed health care …
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InVite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.†[00:00:34] cholesterol
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Welcome back to part two of my episode ceramides, these fats make cholesterol extremely dangerous. Ceramides are a type of fat that our body makes. And there’s different forms of ceramides and they’re okay at normal levels, in fact, they make your skin and are involved with your cell production, etc., but at very elevated levels, they’re extremely dangerous for your heart. And we discussed, Dr. Jeff Meeusen he’s the co-director of the cardiac lab at the Mayo Clinic. And Dr. Meeusen says that elevated LDL or overeating causes ceramides to build up in our tissues. So LDL is notoriously titled bad cholesterol. It’s not always bad. You need it for certain things. But when it’s elevated or goes rancid, it’s very dangerous, especially the small, dense variety of it, dense meaning, it’s heavy, so it floats out of our blood because of gravity, it is attached in the blood vessel walls and because it’s a small molecule, because it has these small molecules in it, any cracks in the blood vessel walls any opening in the blood vessel walls are can easily insinuate itself into them. So what’s the problem with ceramides, the ceramides literally shoves the LDL, bad cholesterol into the walls of our blood vessels. And according to the Mayo Clinic, 50 times worse than usual. In other words, if LDL, bad cholesterol has a propensity for attaching and damaging our blood vessels and causing a buildup of the plaque that leads to hardening of the arteries, it’s 50 times worse if you’re elevated in ceramides.†[00:02:17]
[00:02:18] So I said in part one of this episode that elevated ceramides, on their own, are monsters for our hearts and they actually affect our survival and inflammation causes them to increase the kind of inflammation you’d see in diabetes or maybe kidney disease or liver disease, not the temporary inflammation you get from an infection that that goes away quickly, hopefully. But also obesity increases ceramides, eating a lot of unhealthy fats, eating a lot of sugary foods like donuts. They all increase ceramides, overeating in general, obesity, blood sugar problems, like I said, inflammation, elevated LDL. All of these increase ceramides, unfortunately. So it’s just a process of aging. That’s why it’s so important for us older adults to have a lot of antioxidants to help protect our blood vessel walls and antioxidants like what’s in blueberries and broccoli and green tea and a little bit of cocoa, if it’s not damage into milk chocolate, things like that. Antioxidants, they help protect us. Vitamin C, natural vitamin E, tocotrienols, version of vitamin E, all those help protect us.†[00:03:37]
[00:03:39] But also you want your bad cholesterol down when you’re older because the ceramides are going to be there. So the bad cholesterol literally becomes more dangerous as we grow older. So we really should discuss at this point what lowers ceramides. And just to cover quickly the Mayo Clinic and many other academic research institutions of high caliber, said that elevated ceramides are involved with severe heart attacks, strokes, severe build up of cholesterol, the blood vessel walls. There’s even evidence for Alzheimer’s disease in older people. Our T cells don’t work well to fight cancer. It leads to massive heart attack strokes, the need for bypass surgery and open heart surgery and stenting and also, unfortunately, mortality, not just morbidity, which is disease, but mortality, which is the end. So you really want to lower your ceramide level.† [00:04:36]
CERAMIDES MAKES CHOLESTEROL VERY DANGEROUS>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:04:37] Now, just a word on this. LDL once again is the number one fat that builds up in our arteries that leads to atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis, etc., you know, hardening of the arteries and blood vessel walls. And a spike, tremendous success which statins for lowering LDL cholesterol, heart disease still remains the number one cause of death everywhere in the planet. So we have to look at other things involved here. We know inflammation is part parcel of these issues. That’s something you could get checked out, I’ve done a couple of podcast episodes on something hs-crp, which is something that can be used for a marker of chronic low grade inflammation that can damage the kidneys or the brain or the heart. We’ve spoken about different kinds of fat previous in episodes, like triglycerides. Now we’re talking about ceramides.† [00:05:32]
[00:05:33] So this is another thing, and by the way, a good diet exercise, not smoking, not drinking a lot of alcohol. All of these things tend to lower all of these bad things. But we need a little bit more help with ceramides. Now, they have found that two types of statin drug do help lower ceramides, rosuvastatin, which is Crestor. If I had to take a statin, that’s the one I would take. I would take about five milligrams a day because, five milligrams a day doesn’t seem to be a problem. It doesn’t tend to make people fatigued, it doesn’t have an effect on the liver or anything like that. It seems to be fine and it does a great job of pushing down the bad cholesterol. A tiny, tiny, tiny bit raises the good cholesterol, but not very significantly. But now they’re finding that rosuvastatin lower ceramides. So that’s another plus. And that might be why out of all the statins, rosuvastatin along with Atorvastatin, seem to be the best for keeping patients alive because Atorvastatin also has a slight propensity for lowering ceramides.† [00:06:37]
[00:06:48] When you look at evidence of something helping, you always want to look at the cell evidence. You always want to look at animal evidence of the animals not being mistreated or being put in pain, etc. So these are researchers from Spain, a bunch of different academic research institutions in Spain. And by the way, if you’ve never been to Spain, it’s a gorgeous country, and the history and the architecture and the food is just amazing. And the art, the arts amazing. In any event, getting back to the podcast episode, researchers from Spain published their findings in the journal Food and Function. And they they were feeding animals a lot of fats and sugar. So that’s not a terrible thing. It’s not like they were torturing the animals. They were feeding the animals fats and sugars. And I saw that, ceramide levels were increasing, so they gave them fish oils in their chow and they found that the ceramide levels were dropping. And this is not the only evidence is mounting evidence now, accruing evidence that fish oils lower ceramides, so that’s another feather in the cap of fish oils. We know that fish oil do help preserve muscle and bone. They are healthy for women’s breasts and your colon, they’re certainly healthy for your heart. They lower the risk of sudden cardiac death, which is amazing. They’re fantastic for your brain and they’re needed by your eyeballs. They need for color vision and fine vision. They are needed for memory and a good mood. Mental health issues. So fish oils are really good supplements. Just make sure you get a really high quality fish oil because you want it to be fresh and clean. † [00:08:27]
[00:08:30] So as ceramide levels dropped in these animals, the ability to control their blood sugar improved. And you know, in part one of this episode, we spoke about ceramides being part parcel of blood sugar issues. So here we have animal evidence that the animals that were becoming chunky and their cholesterol was going up and everything was going up and their ceramides were going up and they were losing control of their blood sugar, which is leading towards diabetes in the animals, simply giving them fish oils, lowered ceramides, and they could see a direct connection. As ceramides levels dropped, blood sugar control improved. So the Karolinska Institute is kind of like our Tufts University or our Johns Hopkins. They do a lot of high quality research, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. They hand out different Nobel Prizes for medicine and physiology, I believe, but they hand out several Nobel Prizes. So they’re highly regarded and they worked with the University of Bergen, which is in Norway, and they published their findings in the Journal Lipids in Health and Disease. And they gave mice, once again in mice, a high fat diet, which is not a terrible thing. They’re not torturing them, roasted, not in pain or anything. They didn’t cut off their tail, so they gave mice, a high fat diet and they found that, ceramide levels were increasing. So then they gave some of the mice, fish oils or krill oil, and both of them were lowering ceramide levels. Fish oils lowered ceramide levels. But the krill oil at equal dosages was superior to fish oil for lowering the level of ceramides. I’m glad I take two Krill oil every day with my breakfast. Just so happens my wife and I, do have a lot of fish, a lot of different kinds of fish. But I still take the Krill every morning because you want that DHA for your memory. You want the EPA, DHA, for your brain, and you want it for your eyeballs. Additionally, Krill oil has a little bit of DPA, which is amazing for the heart. And Krill oil has other things useful for the memory like astaxanthins, phosphatides and choline, it gets into your brain, so I take Krill, fish oil is fine. I think it’s a great supplement, I just prefer Krill.† [00:10:54]
[00:10:57] So here’s a study from Yale University School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It’s published in the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism. And they found that fish oils, yes, they lower triglycerides, which is a greasy fat that when it’s elevated, it’s terrible for your heart, it’s terrible for your liver, and it causes strokes. But besides lowering triglycerides, it lowered ceramide levels and this led to correcting elevated blood sugar. So there’s a connection now, you know, I didn’t even do my intro. You know, my name’s Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist, and you can find all the Invite Episodes wherever you listen to podcasts or just go for free, by the way, or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and you can get all of our podcasts all in one place. And you can also find invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. So when you listen, if you could subscribe and leave a review, it would be helpful for us. But let’s get back to this. I was so psyched about it, I didn’t even do the intro. That’s okay. Who cares about the intro?† [00:12:12]
[00:12:24] So we are concerned about ceramides, just to reiterate, because they increase your high blood pressure, they increase with diabetes, they increase with obesity, the increase with inflammation, increase with age, they increase with eating too many fats and sugars and they cause heart damage. And if they’re really elevated, they lead to fatal heart attacks. And I said that statins can help lower them and fish oils help lower them and krill oil, not a lot of data on krill oil yet with ceramides. But that one study was very, very positive. Oh, and by the way, besides several statins, Atorvastatin and Rosuvastatin, lowering your intake of bad fats and sugars helps lower ceramides, cutting your calories, aerobic exercise and fish oils. They all help lower ceramides, so I just want to repeat these things, they are so important. So eating incorrectly, especially if you overeat, leads to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, many things, it contributes to Alzheimer’s disease, even bone loss and pain, etc. And eating correctly reduces inflammation, supplies antioxidants. Eating wrong leads to bad things, including cancer, eating correctly, good things. I think fish oil should be part of that. They’ve seen, it was, uh, researchers at the University of Manchester in England, University of London. It’s published in the journal Biochemical Pharmacology that, even people who choose a poor diet, high in cholesterol and sugar, if they take fish oils, it helps prevent the inflammation, it helps prevent the rise in triglycerides and it helps prevent the rise in ceramides. So let’s go on with some of these fish oil studies. And in fact, let’s let’s talk about related studies. I mean, fish oils also lowered the kind of inflammation related to over eating, related to diabetes, related to obesity. The FDA actually allows a health claim for fish oils with high blood pressure, recently, and it’s based on 70 different studies. So there’s a new study from the Journal Frontiers in Nutrition. It’s a meta analysis of ten existing studies that fish oils help lower high blood pressure. More importantly, dozens of studies show that it reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death, which is related to high blood pressure. Now, there are several other studies that fish oils lower ceramides. I think that that’s a very positive thing to do. So I want to thank you for listening to part two of our episode. How ceramides make your cholesterol exceedingly dangerous. Exceedingly dangerous. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. And let me just reiterate, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast or go to Invitehealth.com, where it says podcast. So thanks for listening. Hope to see you next time, on another episode of the InViteⓇ Health podcast, Jerry Hickey signing off. †[00:15:33]
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Many people are on diuretics to help control their blood pressure levels, but these medications may be causing you to lose important nutrients such as magnesium, calcium and zinc.
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH:
[00:00:40] One of the most commonly prescribed classes of cardiac medications is the beta blocking drugs. I want to talk about the impact of beta blockers when it comes to different nutrients in your system, because if you are one of the millions and millions of Americans who are prescribed a beta blocker, and this can be something like atenolol or propranolol, metroprolol, they usually end in “olol.” Well, not… Usually they do end in “olol.” Beta blocking drugs are known to really reduce the effect of certain catecholamines, such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, which is key because it helps to relax the blood vessels, which can help with proper blood flow throughout the circulatory system. It can also help to improve upon the nerve conduction system of the heart, as well as regulates or slows down the heart rate. And many people are taking beta blockers.† [00:01:47]
[00:01:47] Now there’s a common symptom that goes along with being on a beta blocker, and that’s what I want to talk about today, because it’s a direct correlation to the nutrient depletion that beta blockers are known for. So I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH. And it’s, it’s key to understand that there exists something known as drug-induced nutrient depletion. This can happen across many different pharmaceutical classes of drugs, and the nutrients to which they deplete can vary from one class of drugs to the next. So when we’re looking at the beta blockers, we know specifically that beta blockers will deplete our natural stores of coenzyme Q10, as well as melatonin. So this is important on a couple of different fronts because one of the most commonly complained about side effects of being on a beta blocker is that you have absolutely no energy. Beta blockers are just known to make people feel tired, and part of this is that that lowering of the the heart rate and the downregulation of their epinephrine and norepinephrine. So once we’re dealing with that, we’re helping to support the heart for whatever condition you’re contending with, but we’re getting this side effect of fatigue. We know that when people are on beta blockers, there is a great likelihood that fatigue will be a common thing that they will complain about. Oftentimes, people will take their beta blocker, maybe in the morning and then by, you know, noon or the afternoon, they feel incredibly tired.† [00:03:37]
[00:03:38] Part of this is due to the fact that we know that the beta blocking drugs depletes over time the body’s ability to produce coenzyme Q10. We know that coenzyme Q10 is naturally occurring antioxidant in the body that is responsible in part for the generation of energy coming from your cellular mitochondria. So hence, when someone is feeling fatigued or lethargic and perhaps also not getting restful night’s sleep, we have to look at the two nutrients that are directly impacted from those beta blocking drugs, which is going to be CoQ10 as well as melatonin. So generally speaking, anyone who is on a beta blocker should at minimum be utilizing CoQ10 Ubiquinol as part of a daily supplementation routine to offset that negation that occurs with natural production of CoQ10 in the body. So you want to make sure that you’re supplementing with that so we don’t create this significant deficiency so your little cells can still generate energy.† [00:04:45]
WHY COENZYME Q10 UBIQUINOL IS SO IMPORTANT – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 233. Listen Now>>
[00:04:46] The other thing that you want to pay close attention to is your sleep cycle. Are you starting to see sleep disturbances? Are you finding it difficult to have a full restful night’s sleep? Is it difficult to, you know, maintain sleep, which is when I say full, restful night sleep. Maybe you’re getting up, you know, episodically throughout the night. And of course, we have to look at other reasons why that can be occurring. You know, if there’s an issue going on with, you know, prostate health, for example, in, in men. But this is an area where I’ve talked to so many people who have been on beta blockers for years and years and years to control their high blood pressure or to, you know, help with heart rate. And they’re like, “Oh, I can’t sleep, you know, I just I have just horrible sleep patterns.” And they’re not even aware of the fact that their beta blocker that they’ve been on for all these years is basically taking a hammer to your natural release of melatonin. And so without adequate melatonin, of course, you’re not going to be getting adequate sleep.† [00:05:53]
[00:05:54] So you have to look at the multiple metabolic and physiological ways in which the beta blockers can negatively impact your health. So with CoQ10 deficiency being a very good likelihood and also looking at melatonin becoming deficient, you can now start to see this association between sleep disturbances, and of course, once you’re not getting restful night’s sleep, you’re going to have, you know, reduction in normal energy production and functionality throughout the day. And then, you know, you have no CoQ10 to allow the cells to drive up any additional energy. So it’s multifactorial here. And what’s interesting is that the millions and millions of prescriptions, I think I can just look at one just metoprolol, it’s like the fifth top prescribed medication in the United States and annually close to 75 million prescriptions written. So what that breaks down to in terms of total number of individual people who are taking that were over 15 million. And that’s just one drug. You know, we have a whole class of drugs, but you have just one drug, metoprolol, which is going to create the situation. And when I say it is going to, we know that drug-induced nutrient depletion is a real deal thing. It’s not a, oh, it might happen. It’s a when it’s going to happen. Does that happen within the first month of you being on a medication? Is it delayed over time?† [00:07:37]
[00:07:38] But you know, the things that you can certainly pay attention to is number one, you can go have your CoQ10 level tested and you can see that that level is low and then you can make sure that you are supplementing to get yourself to the point where you’re having healthy levels once again. With the melatonin, if you are noticing patterns of sleep disruption, then incorporating melatonin into your routine, you may be taking 3mg of melatonin, and that’s usually a good place to start. Melatonin dosing is going to vary from one person to the next, so 3mg may be too much for one person, may be not enough for someone else. So, you know, 3mg is generally a good place for a starting range when it comes to melatonin supplementation. But you have to be cognizant of these things because your doctor will not tell you. It’s just not going to be on the side of the medication bottle saying, “Oh, you know, you know, beware, beware. You may end up with fatigue and, you know, disrupted sleep, and it’s because you’re not going to have enough CoQ10 or enough melatonin.” You are not going to get these warnings. It’s not going to be in the little pamphlet that you get from the pharmacist. This is something that is rarely ever discussed, but yet so wide known and physicians, unfortunately, who are the ones who are writing out the prescription, are usually not aware of the actual nutrients that can get depleted. And so they’ll have a patient who presents who says, “Oh, I’m on, you know, atenolol and I just, I have no energy,” and they’re more concerned about, “Oh, your blood pressure’s good, so that’s all I care about.” But the the person who’s on that medication is dealing with all of these problems in terms of chronic, you know, fatigue, which can then start to impact mood. And we can see these things. We can see how insomnia and depression and this will then start to impact other areas and we can start to see problems in blood glucose fluctuations. So by just depleting coQ10 and melatonin, we’re now impacting other systems. And we’re not going to have that aging gracefully component one, we have low coenzyme Q10, so all of these are certainly problematic.† [00:10:08]
[00:10:09] And understanding that melatonin is far beyond that of just the support when it comes to sleep, we understand that melatonin is doing many different things in our body to maintain our health. Remember, when we think about the endocrine system and you think about different hormones, we have to be cognizant of the fact that these nutrients or these hormones have many different utilizations. So even when we think about cognitive function, cognitive ability. Certainly, melatonin has been looked at as having these neuroprotective properties. So it’s not just about, “Oh, let’s, you know, take melatonin to help us sleep.” We know that there are neuroprotective properties to it. We certainly can see how it can enhance our overall immune defenses, which is really very important as well. So when it comes to our memory, when it comes to attention, focus, all of these matter and all of these can be impacted just because you are on a medication that is meant to help whatever heart condition you’re on. But because you are now depleting out your coQ10 and your melatonin, you can see how you can have that spiraling effect of many other systems becoming implicated into that.† [00:11:30]
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[00:11:31] So the point that I’m making is, if you are on a beta blocker… Remember, those are the drugs that end in “olol.” So whether it’s propranolol, atenolol, and of course, I’m giving you the generic names. But if you are on one of these medications or if you know someone and mind you, the beta blockers are usually the more common drugs that are prescribed in that setting of heart disease. Also, the ACE inhibitors, and I’ll do another podcast where I zero in on ACE inhibitors and the nutrients that you have to watch out for in terms of depletion when being on an ACE inhibitor. Then I’ll also do one on statin drugs because we know that when it comes down to ACE inhibitors, beta blockers, statin drugs, these are commonly prescribed medications that millions of Americans are on. And if you are not aware of the nutrients that are depleted, you will pay the price in the end with systemic involvement of many other systems. And this is what we are trying to avoid. So if you’re on a beta blocker, you know someone on a beta blocker, make sure that they are taking their coQ10 and to really monitor their sleep cycle. And if they find that they’re struggling with that, then the addition of melatonin certainly would be advantageous at that point in time.† [00:12:48]
[00:12:49] So that is all that I have for you for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast.† [00:12:49]
