It’s pretty common knowledge these days that sugar activates the receptors in the brain for pleasure therefore leading to addiction. The long term myth that FAT and cholesterol is bad has also been busted in recent years, generally speaking the sugar industry that paid the doctors and media to promote that sugar isn’t the problem, the demon was fat and cholesterol! So is high cholesterol bad? Well it depends on your markers, not just the total Cholesterol number. So what drives up your cholesterol, that your GP will say you need to go on medication-statins, which have a range of adverse side effects.
According to research, sugar and carbohydrates from wheat and grains is the major driver for high cholesterol. Easy to see how the picture evolves…driving up the sales of wheat and carbs-creating a food pyramid, demonising fats, adding hidden sugar to everything, making people sick=more sales of the drugs!
What the science states about how LDL (“bad cholesterol”) numbers increase, is due to sugar and amylopectin in grains. If you eat over a net carb count (carbs minus fibre) of over 15gram per day it activates smaller LDL particles, these are the ones your liver doesn’t recognise and are more damaging than the larger LDL particles. These smaller particles run a muck on your arteries, activating inflammation, oxidation, glycation and promoting cardiovascular disease. The major problem with going over the (generalised as maybe slightly different per person due to age, size, activity etc) 15gm net carbs per day is that this process last for 5-7 days!!!
These smaller LDL particles, the liver doesn’t recognise and lets the particles recirculate and create havoc, and the body doesn’t clear it. So that one small “OVER indulgence” can lead to a week of disturbance and increase in your cardiovascular risk (also insulin-resistance).
If you have these overindulgence’s every day? or once per week? Or your children do? Whereas Fat- say from bacon, butter or meat produces larger LDL particles which the liver recognises and easily clears, so these larger LDL particles are cleared within 24hours. Very quick compared with the smaller LDL particles created from sugar and grains. There are other obvious factors that eating too much sugar is bad for health such as tooth decay, changes to the oral microbiome, blood sugar disturbance, type 2 diabetes, appetite provoking, insulin resistance, fatty liver, heaps of other chronic illnesses. The goal is to eat your net 15grams of carbs per day, eat sufficient fats to satiate, plenty of vegetables, fibres and small amounts of fruit. Food for thought 