inflammatory, it supports vessel health by promoting the
creation of nitric oxide, a gas that keeps your blood vessels
dynamic and open, and it may even have an anti-clotting
component.
Okay, so you love HDL as much as we do. Now how do
you make it more functional?
You guessed it—a lower-carb diet. Adults with
metabolic syndrome (more than one in two US adults)
generally have low HDL, high triglycerides, and elevated
blood pressure, blood sugar, and abdominal fat. A lower-
carb, high-fiber diet reverses all of these factors, and returns
you to a state of metabolic health. When you consider that
even mildly elevated blood sugar alone increases your heart
attack and stroke risk by 15 percent, this is a no-brainer.
One last thing—HDL proteins are probably no less
sensitive to the “biochemical blowtorch” of oxidative stress
from rancid polyunsaturated fats and sugar than the LDL
proteins are, so you can kill two birds with one stone by
reducing your consumption of processed vegetable oils!
Statins: The Brain Drain
One result of the widespread fear surrounding cholesterol is
the meteoric increase of prescriptions for a type of
cholesterol-lowering medication called statins. If you’re still
a few decades away from being prescribed one, chances are
you’ll find a bottle in your parents’ medicine cabinet. It’s