Does Genetically High Cholesterol Increase Risk of Heart Disease?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]Hey guys, in this video I'm going to talk about genetically high cholesterol or familial hyper cholesterolimeia um and whether or not it creates higher risk of heart disease, but also do people actually have it who've been told they have it. So let's kind of get into it. So first off, u people with familial hypoglymia are people who have much higher levels of LDL than the average person. Now first of all we need to discuss that you know the levels of what's recommended for LDL have been lowered over the years. You know in the 1980s they said oh 250 or lower is what it should be and then over the years the recommendation went to 200 and then 150 and then 100 and now it should be lower than 100 is what they're saying. So to me that suggests we really don't even know what it's supposed to be. Um, but typically people who have familiar hypo cholesterolmia, this genetically high cholesterol, have much higher levels than the 100 that's considered normal.

[00:00:58]Right now, it's said that if you look it up online, it'll say that like 1.3 million people um are affected by familial hyper cholesterolmia. That's genetically high cholesterol. Um, and but they say that like only 10% of people who have it are actually aware of it, which to me it's like if you have a condition that is so bad for you, but only 10% of people are aware they actually have it, doesn't sound like much of a condition to me. Um, so it's just something that I want to point out there. Um, but the American Heart Association website says that familial hypoglymia gives people about a 20 times increased risk of heart disease. Um, and that's just an interesting thing to say.

[00:01:37]So, um let's see if there's any substantial um research that shows that.

[00:01:42]But first of all, I want to say that based on the amount of people that have FH, you know, they they say 1.3 million people have it. The number of people that I see as potential clients that come and tell me that their doctor has told them that they have genetically high cholesterol, um the statistics don't match up. I mean, I see a lot of people on who are already adopting low carb diets. uh and so potentially more of those people will have higher LDL and there's a reason for that which we'll talk about in a minute. Um but it's still a more more than what I would say statistically relevant amount of people come to me saying that their doctor has told them this. So let's kind of explain why this is. So there's uh these new ideas out there um that have been put forth by Dave Feldman and Nick Norwoods and his research team, their research team um about this lipid energy model and it's a completely different way of understanding what the LDL or the cholesterol um lipoproteins in our blood actually mean. So basically what Dave found is that when he goes on a low carb diet, his LDL goes up. Um, and what he found, uh, in researching why this would be is that in generally leaner and fitter people, if they go on a low carb diet, they're only giving their bodies one fuel source to burn, and that is fatty acids, where your body can make those fatty acids into ketones, which is why it's called ketogenic type diets.

[00:03:04]Um, but in order to deliver that many fatty acids to the tissues, your body has to do so via these lipoprotein, these LDL molecules. And so if you only have one fuel source to burn and that is um fats then your body has to deliver more of those fats to the tissues so more LDLs are created so that more um cholesterol can get delivered to the tissues or fatty acids can get delivered to the tissues and so then he basically showed that if he ate white bread then then which is a carbohydrate and he provided his body with carbohydrates to burn it doesn't h didn't have to burn as many fatty acids then the LDL will come down because the body doesn't need to deliver as many of those fatty acids to the tissues because there's carbohydrates present in that white bread. Um, and so basically what our lipids is showing us or what what we're measuring in our lipids is basically telling us about what our body's choosing to metabolize at the time. It's not really a reflection of risk of anything. It's basically just telling us what our body's metabolizing. And so Dave has done a study now in his documentary The Cholesterol Code um kind of uh discusses this study where he looks at people who have this this what he calls lean mass hyper respponder phenotype where they are generally fit and healthy but they go on low carb diet and their LDL goes up. and he studied these people um and he continues to study these people and he's basically shown that despite this high level of LDL with their metabolic health there's no progression of plaque in their coronary arteries based on imaging and that study is is ongoing for him and it was famously shown that what your um what your body's metabolizing and what you're eating can dictate what levels of LDL your your um blood work will show in lean fitter people that was famously illustrated in a study, a one person study done by Nick Norwoods called the Oreo cookie experiment um where he ate Oreo cookies and it lowered his LDL more than a statin drug because the lipids are much more responsive to um what you're metabolizing rather than, you know, interfering with the cholesterol production pathway with a statin. So, that worked better um and eating the Oreos. So, very interesting things here.

[00:05:11]And and the reason I say all that is because um people who go on low carb diets and they look fit and healthy and they go into their doctor's office and the doctor looks at them and they see a fit and healthy person, but they may be this lean mass hyperresponder and their LDL is up. The doctor can't think or doesn't know of any other explanation for why that LDL would be up rather than, oh, they must have a genetic predisposition to high LDL. They must have FH. And so the doctor tells them they have FH. even if they've never done any genetic testing on them whatsoever, they just tell them that's the only reason they can think that they've ever learned that it could be that. And so that's what they tell them. So people come to me saying, "Oh, my doctor told me I have FH." And I say, "Oh, do they do genetic testing?" And they say, "No."

[00:05:51]And I say, "It's just elevated um based on, you know, my my low carb diet." So, and you know, at this point it's it's a little bit speculation, but I'm not convinced that, you know, because people who go on low carb diets and who are overweight and metabolically unhealthy, they um their LDL doesn't go up like that. But then once their low carb diet gets them to a point where they are metabolically healthy, then they start to see the rise in LDL. So, I'm not convinced. I think that, again, it's speculation, but I think that this is just what's normal for everybody. It's not necessarily a certain phenotype. is that when people get metabolically healthy and get fitter um and they're on low carb diets and they're giving their body one fuel source to burn then um their body has to raise the amount of LDL to deliver more fat to the tissues and we get this elevated LDL and this could mean I mean mines can I'm I'm one of these people and and mine can go up to 500 um at times uh my total cholesterol that is and my LDL has been um at at 400 before so so yeah um that's just a caveat there um that we have be conscious of. So I say all that because if someone has told you or a doctor has told you you have familial hyper cholesterolmia, the question is there's more questions to ask to see if that's actually true. A, have we done genetic testing? B, are you on a low carb diet?

[00:07:06]Are you metabolically healthy? Those types of things are very important to ask. Right now, let's say that someone does have the genetic testing and they do and it does show that they have this genetically high cholesterol, this familial hypoglyanmia. The question is, does that increase the risk of heart disease? Does this higher LDL level in the blood increase the risk of heart disease? And so, let's look at some studies here. So, you would expect that if someone had higher cholesterol in the blood and higher cholesterol in the blood was so causitive in heart disease and increased their risk so much that we'd also see an increased risk of death compared to the general population in these people. Um however there was a study in 1966 uh where they tracked um many generations of these of these people with these genes these families with these genes uh these genetically high cholesterol genes and what the study concluded was that there was no evidence that familial hypoglymia appreciably shortens the life of affected individuals and that high LDL levels were clearly compatible with survival into the seventh and eighth decades of life. So even though these people had higher levels of LDL and cholesterol in their blood, they didn't have any um shortened lifespans and they lived into their uh seventh and eighth decades just like many people. Uh and that study also showed that the people who did develop issues um with their health um also were more likely to be inactive uh drink alcohol, smoke, things like that. it was lifestyle things that dictated whether or not they had poorer outcomes in health rather than the genetically high cholesterol. Now another study um looked at looked at um well it was that same study of the 78 people in the study um only 20 of them developed plaque in the arteries. Um and then and so again like if it was about the cholesterol all of them would have developed plaque but in the 78 people they tracked throughout many uh generations in that study only 20 of them developed plaque in their arteries.

[00:09:04]So it suggests there's something other than the the high LDL levels because they all had high LDL levels. Another study from 2001 uh looked at mortality in those with familial hyper cholesterolmia and found that they reached old age and that hyper cholesterolia may have conferred a survival advantage in times of infection um because there is some studies that show that that LDL molecules cholesterol the cholesterol and those molecules can help um with uh infections and things like that um help fight those sorts of things. So um so very interesting the research is not kind of matching up. Now there's another study looking at people with familial hyper cholesterol analmia in Norway and it found it concluded no significant differences were noted in all cause mortality between the FH patients and the general population.

[00:09:51]They also found that 40 a 40% lower rate of death in the the population range of 70 to 79 years old uh with people with FH. So 40% lower rate of death in people who had higher cholesterol. Um now this study did show however there was a higher rate of death from heart disease with those with FH. So specifically heart disease um there was a higher rate of death in in people um from heart disease. But was it the LDL that created that increased risk of death? Now there's other research that shows that it's probably not the LDL. So one study found that in people with FH the number of people who had a heart attack or did not have a heart attack was exactly the same. Right? So again, if it was about the LDL and they all have higher LDL, you'd think that the people who had heart attacks and didn't have heart attacks, there wouldn't be there wouldn't be some who didn't, some who didn't, they all would have an increased risk of it. They also found that in those people with FH, the people that had calcified plaque in their arteries measured by a CC score were much more likely to have a heart attack. So it's about having the plaque, right? But some of them didn't have plaque again. So they all have high LDL. Some of them have plaque, some of them different, but the ones who had the plaque were increased risk of heart attack. Um however, uh this study found that calcified plaque in arteries was varied dramatically in people with FH with nearly half having no detectable plaque despite lifetime exposure to sign significantly elevated LDL. Right? So it suggests there's some other factor here besides the L LDL that's creating risk in some people and not in others. So what could that be? So the answer to this mystery um of why some people develop plaque and some people don't um with genetically high cholesterol is that many studies have shown that those with FH who do get heart disease are much more likely to also have a genetically elevated risk for clotting.

[00:11:39]So they have this genetically elevated risk for high LDL um and um and cholesterol in the blood but they also have the people who develop plaque also have a much higher risk um a genetically elevated risk for clotting. they have some genetically higher um clotting risk. So whether that's higher fibbrinogen or prothroin um or factor 8 or some clotting factor in the clotting cascade they have a genetically higher risk for those things to be activated and developed clotting. And at the end of the day when you analyze clotting tissue or you analyze plaque it's it's u you know a large large proportion of it is clotting tissue. That's what's the mechanism by which this forms. Um so in uh in this here which this this u graph here is from a presentation from David Diamond who's also written a lot of papers um about this coagulation factor being the difference between uh who gets plaque and who doesn't in people with FH but you can see it here clearly in this graph um that those who have the prothroin genetic polymorphism uh have a much higher risk of developing heart disease. Um so here you can see that total cholesterol LDL uh those people had very similar risks. People who had higher amounts of those in their blood does had similar risk as far as who had heart disease and who didn't. But what made the difference is the people who had genetic predication for clotting with prothroin. You can see that red bar there on the end. Much higher risk for heart disease than those who didn't have that. So that seems to be the thing that dictates whether or not people with FH will get heart disease or not is the clotting risk not the LDL. So this makes sense u because studies have shown that again plaque is in arteries is made up of fibroic clotting tissue and that fibbrin appears to be a multi- potential component of aogenesis intervening at every virtually all stages of lesion development. So it's not just that it's uh part of the process along the way it's the whole process is is this fibrosis. So regardless of if someone has FH or doesn't, the most important thing to focus on is preventing heart and preventing heart disease is prevention of clotting clotting mechanisms. Now medicine would tell you oh we can prevent clotting with aspirin or blood thinners or things like that.

[00:13:46]Um but there's a much more effective way to do that and that is uh create structured water in the arteries which I'll talk about in other videos and I have talked about on social media and many other lectures as far as how building structured water actually creates a bioysics way to thin the blood and prevent clotting. But just to real briefly uh talk about what would do that, what would build that structure water would be infrared light exposure, grounding, exercise, avoiding wireless signals, avoiding toxins, uh plastics, herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, things like that, and achieving metabolic health and setting your circadian rhythm. So yeah, um so yeah, that's it for this video. So, um, if you want to learn more, um, subscribe to my YouTube channel, uh, or follow me on social media. Or if you want to work with me as a client so you can get all my information and all my guidance, click the link below to learn more about my heart health mentorship program and book a complimentary call with me so we can see if it's a good fit to work together. Stay healthy out there.