According to Fred Kummerow - the late 102-year-old emeritus professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois, "cholesterol is good for your heart -- unless that cholesterol is unnaturally oxidized by frying foods in reused oil, eating lots of polyunsaturated fats (PUFA), or smoking." An article in
ScienceDaily in 2013 explains his research
Link. Fred wrote a book about it
Amazon
From the ScienceDaily article about Fred's research (rearranged order to be short and to the point)
Sphingomyelin and calcium:
Arteries of the newborn human placenta contain about 10 percent sphingomyelin and 50 percent phosphatidylcholine. [Membranes are largely made of phospholipids, a proportion of which is sphingomyelin]
Arteries of people who have had bypass operations have up to 40 percent sphingomyelin and about 27 percent phosphatidylcholine ... and blocked arteries have twice the sphingomyelin as unblocked arteries.
[In the presence of certain blood salts] sphingomyelin develops a negative charge that attracts positively charged calcium.
Human cells incubated with cardiac patient blood plasma increase their calcium uptake from the culture medium.
Oxidized cholesterol:
Bypass patients also have significantly more oxidized cholesterols (oxysterols) in their plasma and tissues than people without heart disease.
When a large amount of oxysterols is added to a cell culture, phosphatidylcholine is changed into sphingomyelin and the uptake of calcium is increased.
My commentary:
Sphingomyelin seems to contribute to arterial calcification - positively correlated with plaque formation but not the whole story.
Dietary oxidized cholesterol (oxysterols) are contained in most restaurant fried foods. Cholesterol also gets oxidized in the body. Oxidized cholesterol is likely positively correlated with oxidized LDL.
The liver makes VLDL which becomes LDL after dumping triglycerides into various hungry tissues.
I once believed the liver QC (quality control) process destroyed oxidized VLDL before releasing it, and by replacing dietary saturated fats with PUFA (easily oxidized polyunsaturated fats), we lower LDL by causing the liver to make more oxidized VLDL. I don't believe that's the whole story, but then, whatever is (in biochemistry).
Edited by RWhigham, 27 October 2017 - 06:05 PM.