Thread by @craigbrockie

French people eat high-cholesterol foods daily yet have lower heart disease than Americans.

We avoid cholesterol and our hearts are failing.

Their secret?

The exact opposite of what American experts recommend:

First off, cholesterol is absolutely vital to our biology.

It's the structural foundation of cell membranes, enabling proper cellular communication throughout your entire body.

Your brain is 25% cholesterol by weight.

It's concentrated in myelin sheaths that wrap nerve fibers, acting as electrical insulation for efficient nerve conduction.

Your brain literally runs on cholesterol for cognitive function, memory, and neurological signaling.

Cholesterol is the sole building block for ALL steroid hormones:

• Testosterone
• Estrogen
• Cortisol
• Aldosterone

Without enough cholesterol, your body can't produce hormones that control metabolism, reproduction, and stress response.

Cholesterol is also the precursor for vitamin D synthesis and bile acid production.

Extremely low cholesterol levels impair these physiological functions.

The goal should be optimizing cholesterol balance, not obliterating it.

Why do doctors aim to do so?

Most doctors focus on dietary cholesterol while ignoring the real problem.

When blood sugar exceeds 100mg/dL, your liver automatically converts excess glucose into triglycerides.

This process oxidizes LDL particles, making them dangerous.

High-carb, low-fat diets (the "heart-healthy" advice) reduce LDL slightly but simultaneously increase triglycerides and create small, dense LDL particles.

That's exactly the wrong direction for cardiovascular risk.

Clinical evidence on LDL/low HDL shows the solution is counter-intuitive:

→ Increase fat intake while reducing carbohydrates.

This directly contradicts the American Heart Association's recommendations that have dominated medicine since the 1970s.

The "lipid hypothesis" that demonized dietary fat was based on flawed studies.

Analyses of the 1977 U.S. dietary recommendations found NO scientific support that reducing fat intake would prevent heart disease.

Modern controlled trials prove the opposite works.

Let’s talk about berberine.

Many are aware that it can support a healthy heart.

The problem with most berberine is that it is poorly absorbed.

I created ULTIMATE Berberine Phytosome for optimal absorption, up to 9.6X higher than regular berberine:
amazon.com/dp/B0CTMZ6DPS?…

In randomized trials, low-carb higher-fat diets significantly raise HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, and shift LDL particles from small to large.

Even independent of weight loss.

The supposed benefits of low-fat diets were an illusion.

→ Not all fats are equal, though.

The worst ones were ironically sold as "heart-healthy."

Industrial seed oils like canola, corn, soybean, and sunflower oils barely existed in human diets until the 20th century.

Our bodies never evolved to handle them.

→ These omega-6 seed oils oxidize even at normal body temperature, generating inflammatory compounds.

When integrated into LDL particles, they trigger oxidized LDL that directly damages blood vessel walls and accelerates plaque formation.

We replaced butter with poison.

→ Traditional fats (olive oil, coconut oil, butter, ghee, tallow) were safely consumed for millennia.

They're far more stable and don't generate oxidized debris.

The seed-oil switch in the last 100 years is linked to increases in heart disease drivers.

→ Blood sugar management through <25g daily sugar intake prevents the lipogenesis cascade.

A 2023 review concluded that consuming under 25g of "free sugars" per day is ideal for health.

This prevents your liver from being overloaded with glucose and turning it into fat.

→ Resistance training increases muscle glucose uptake, reducing liver glucose overflow.

Weight training increases glucose transporters in muscle, turning your muscles into metabolic sponges for blood sugar.

Aim for 2-3 sessions per week targeting major muscle groups.

→ Sleep optimization (7-9 hours) regulates cortisol and insulin sensitivity.

Even a single night of short sleep makes your body less effective at managing glucose.

Sleep is when your metabolism resets and stress hormones normalize.

→ Sun exposure naturally increases vitamin D without depleting cholesterol stores.

10-20 minutes of midday sun converts 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D3.

This process is self-regulating and can actually reduce total cholesterol and LDL in deficient individuals.

By following this protocol, you may see triglycerides plummet, HDL rise, and LDL particle profiles shift to the benign type.

All without extreme diets or excessive medications.

Fix your metabolism, and the cholesterol numbers follow.

Thank you for reading!

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30 years ago, I was in chronic pain, with crippling anxiety and a broken immune system.

Since then, I’ve invested 7-figures researching the best health and performance-enhancing methods worldwide.

This account exists to help people live their best life.

Any cholesterol strategies that I missed? Comment below.

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