Transcription
Let's talk about the best nutrients to remove plaque from your arteries. When I talk about plaque, I'm talking about three things: the combination of cholesterol, a certain type of protein that creates the fibrosis, and we're talking about calcium. These are the three ingredients to form a Band-Aid when you have inflammation or some type of problem on the inside of your artery.
The first thing to know is there are two types of plaque. There's soft plaque and then there's hard plaque, or calcified plaque. They're both very, very different. The soft plaque is very unstable; it's more dangerous. The hard plaque, the more dense plaque, is more stable, less dangerous. The soft plaque is four times as common as the calcified plaque.
When you get a CAC test, they give you a score, and this score really represents how much plaque you have in your arteries, mainly the calcified plaque, because a lot of the soft plaque is involved in the turning into calcified plaque that does not show up on a CAC score.
Now, there's something called a CAC Paradox, in which you might find that your CAC score goes up after changing your diet, cleaning up the bad stuff, and starting to get healthy. The score might go up. Well, what's happening? It's not getting worse; you're just converting more of that soft plaque to hard plaque, where it becomes more stable. And there are some other tests that you can do, which I'm going to explain at the end, that will help you identify more of the soft plaque. Because that CAC test really is not the best test to pick up this soft, dangerous, unstable plaque. But I will talk about what tests you should do about this to assess this problem in a moment.
You usually have something called glycation connected to it. What is glycation? It's where you have a sugar and a protein that gets stuck together. And so that's involved in a certain protein that kind of locks up and creates problems and inflammation in your body. This soft plaque is usually involved with more oxidation, okay, especially of the LDL. And I'm not talking about LDL in general; I'm talking about the one that's more pathogenic. There are two types of LDL. There's the LDL that's, uh, much smaller; it's called the small dense LDL, okay? That's the more dangerous type, the more pathogenic type, versus the other LDL, which is very different; it's the large buoyant type, and it's not the pathogenic type. You just have to realize there are two types.
I'm going to show you a very simple way to use what they give you on your blood test to determine what type of LDL you have. The first one, it's a long name, myeloperoxidase. The next one is LP-PLA2. So those are the two biomarkers that help pick up if you have this soft plaque.
Now, another test that probably would be even better if you can do this, and it's a relatively inexpensive, quick, non-invasive test, it's an ultrasound of your carotid, and that gives like a 98.6% prediction of having the problem. There are some other really important values to look at too. Is, is your HDL, okay? You want that to go up. HDL tends to clean up that pathogenic bad LDL. The next thing you want to see on the low side is triglycerides, because if the triglycerides are high, then you can pretty much know the person's consuming too many carbs.
Now, there's another test that if you can get this, it's a really good way of assessing what's really going on with these lipids, okay? And it's called lipoprotein insulin resistance. If you happen to get a blood test and you can request this, it'd be very, very important to know where your number is at because out of all of the factors, that's the one that's the most associated with cardiovascular atherosclerosis.
All right, so now let's discuss how one can figure out if they have the, the small dense particles for the LDL versus the large buoyant, okay, without even doing that test. What you do is you divide the LDL by something else called ApoB. It's part of the lipoprotein that indicates the number of particles. Ideally, we want it to be greater than 1.2, which will indicate large buoyant LDL, which is the non-pathogenic version.
Now, all of that is very interesting and a bit complex. So I want to jump into what nutrients can help remove this plaque, okay? Well, the first two nutrients are number one, Pycnogenol. That's pine bark. You'd want to take 150 milligrams. Pycnogenol helps convert the soft plaque to the calcified plaque, where it becomes more stable, and also it prevents the formation of plaque. And the next one is called Gotu Kola. You'd want to take 450 milligrams of Gotu Kola. Gotu Kola helps enhance the function of Pycnogenol, so it's going to help this conversion to more stable plaque. It will also prevent the formation of plaque.
Number three remedy is is Vitamin K2, which is the most potent inhibitor of vascular calcification. It basically stops the calcification from occurring in your arteries. I would not recommend taking Vitamin K2 in micrograms; I would recommend taking it in milligrams. And I've looked around to find a supplement that will give you the amounts in milligrams. There are not many, and I personally don't have a product like that, and I don't, don't have any affiliations or associations with any other companies that do. Except I did find one company that does have it, does provide it. It's Life Extension. It's called Mega K2. I'll put that link down below.
So the next remedy is Nattokinase. Nattokinase can help decrease the thickness of the carotid wall. And the last remedy is called Niacin. Don't get the sustained release one; get the one that creates the flush. I know some people don't like that, but as far as cholesterol goes, it is what you need.
Now, I'm not advocating that you take just a lot of nutrition. I'm giving you the ones that are the most potent. I'm also going to talk about some other ones next that also create some amazing effects for plaque. I just want to mention them because I don't want to leave them out. Tocotrienols help decrease inflammation of the arteries; it's a type of vitamin E. Berberine is a really good one. You have also aged garlic, you have magnesium and potassium that helps to soften up the arteries if they're stiff and rigid. And then you have vitamin D, which is a very potent anti-inflammatory, really good for the arteries, really good as an anti-plaque vitamin.
And so I put a lot of the references that I talked about down below. Check them out. But if you'd like to know the best meal or foods to help you avoid plaque, I put that video up right here. Check it out.