Overview
We have all heard that the secret to living a long, healthy, heart disease-free life is lowering your cholesterol, but is that really true? The reality is, most of us have little understanding about our cholesterol levels in our blood and the whole topic is much more complicated than we thought. Moreover, the standard cholesterol testing is outdated because it doesn’t check for particle size and particle number, and this information is what is needed to tell what’s really going on with your cholesterol.
In this episode, Dr. Hyman sits down with Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss why cholesterol is only one factor in determining your overall health. They also discuss the factors that influence your cholesterol and whether or not statin drugs are the most effective way to prevent heart attacks.
Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesity for the Rankel Textbook of Family Medicine. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the functional medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well.
For more information, please visit drhyman.com/uwc
This episode is brought to you by Perfect Keto. Right now, Perfect Keto is offering Doctor’s Farmacy listeners 20% off plus free shipping with the code DRMARK. Just go to perfectketo.com/drmark, and make sure you try their Nut Butters and Keto Cookies.
In this conversation, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discuss:
- If elevated cholesterol is always a problem
- The cholesterol test you should be getting (either an NMR Lipid Panel from LabCorp or the Cardio IQ Test from Quest Diagnostics), and why cholesterol particle size matters
- How diet, lifestyle, environmental influences, and genetics influence cholesterol
- The role that insulin resistance, pre-dabetes, diabetes, and metabolic health play in heart disease and overall health
- Oxidative stress, free radicals, and their influence on heart health
- The benefits, side effects, and risks of taking statin drugs
- Patient cases
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