CARDIOVASCULAR RESEARCH CENTRE

Title

Health and Quality of Life

Clinical nutritionist explains: why your cholesterol and your blood pressure are still bad even after you cut out fat, started walking and take medication every day

By Matt B.

Nutritionist Specializing in Cardiovascular Health

If you've already cut out fried food, cut back on salt, started walking, maybe you already take medication every day — and your bloodwork keeps coming back bad — read this short article before you change anything in your routine.

In 20 years, I heard the same five sentences — and I gave the wrong answer to all of them

Hi, my name is Matt.

I've worked in cardiovascular health for 20 years.

In that time, I've had a lot of people come to me saying the same thing:

"I cut out fried food and my cholesterol didn't come down."
"I walk every week and my blood pressure won't come down."
"I take my medication properly and my bloodwork is still bad."
"I'm always checking my blood pressure and the number never improves."
"My father had a heart attack and I'm afraid I'm heading down the same road."

I've heard that hundreds of times.

And almost every time, the person came in feeling guilty.

As if they had done something wrong.

But in most cases, that wasn't it.

The most dangerous thing about high cholesterol is that it feels like nothing at all

Let me be very direct with you.

High cholesterol and high blood pressure don't hurt.

You don't feel a thing.

That's why so many people live with this for years without really worrying about it.

The problem is what's happening inside, silently, during all that time.

Fat gradually builds up along the artery wall.

That buildup is called plaque.

And it's the plaque that can one day close off the blood's passage.

It isn't the number on your bloodwork that decides your future.

It's the plaque.

And it grows without warning.

One sentence in a study made me realize I'd been advising people wrong for years

I spent years telling people the same things: eat less fat, eat less salt, walk more.

It worked for some patients.

But not for all of them.

And that bothered me.

Until one night I was going through studies on cholesterol and I read a sentence that made me stop.

The study wasn't about how much fat was in the blood.

It was about what happens to that fat while it's circulating.

That's when I understood what had been missing.

Your cholesterol isn't the villain. What happens to it on the way is.

I'm going to explain this in the simplest way possible.

Cholesterol doesn't travel loose in your blood.

It's fatty, and blood is watery.

Fat doesn't mix with water.

So cholesterol travels inside little packages.

Those little packages ar what your bloodwork calls LDL.

Here's the point:

That fat can spoil during the trip.

Every day, the body produces certain unstable molecules.

They come about simply because we breathe.

And they increase with high blood sugar, smoking, pollution, poor sleep and age.

Those molecules attack the fat inside the package.

And the fat spoils.

It's the same reaction that turns cooking oil rancid when it sits open too long.

Except inside your blood.

Now here comes the important part.

Normal fat, the liver recognizes and clears out of the blood.

Spoiled fat, it doesn't recognize the same way.

So it stays.

It keeps circulating longer than it should.

And while it's in there, it runs into the defence cells that sit along the artery wall.

Those cells try to clean up

.

They swallow that spoiled fat.

But they swallow too much.

They get full.

And they get stuck there in the wall.

Many of those full cells, together, form the first layer of plaque.

In other words:

Plaque isn't fat piled up on the wall. It's a defence cell clogged with spoiled fat.

And there's more.

An artery isn't a rigid pipe. It opens and closes.

On the inside, it has a very thin lining that produces a chemical signal.

That signal tells the artery: "relax, let the blood through."

Spoiled fat interferes with that signal in two ways: it makes the lining produce less, and it also destroys part of what has already been produced.

Less signal, more closed-off artery.

The same blood passing through a smaller space.

Higher blood pressure.

That explains something my patients always asked:

"Why is the bottom number the one that won't come down?"

The top number is measured when the heart squeezes.

The bottom number is measured when the heart rests, between one beat and the next.

At that moment, the number depends on one thing only: how much the artery managed to relax on its own.

You didn't fail.

You took care of the number.

While the process causing the problem kept happening every day.

Nobody lied to you. They just left one thing out.

Diet: takes care of the fat that comes in. A good share of your cholesterol your own body produces.
Walking: improves your whole body. But it doesn't stop fat from spoiling inside the blood.
Cholesterol medication: reduces production and improves the number. The fat that keeps circulating stays exposed.
Vitamin C: only dissolves in water. It stays in the watery part of the blood.
Vitamin E: gets into the fatty part, but stays in only one region and gets used up.
Omega-3: it is itself a fragile fat. It needs to be protected; it doesn't protect.

None of them is wrong.

It's just that none of them covers this specific point.

I needed something that did four things at once. Nothing on the shelf did.

After understanding that, I started looking for something else.

I needed something that did four things at the same time:

Sit inside the fatty part, where the spoiling begins.
Protect the fat before it spoils, not after.
Not turn into a problem itself after acting.
Be simple enough for a person to take every day without changing their routine.

Medication didn't do that.

Vitamins didn't do that.

Omega didn't do that.

The answer wasn't at the pharmacy. It was at the bottom of the ocean.

I searched the shelves for years.

Vitamins, omega, extracts, teas, imported formulas.

Everything I picked up did one part of the job and left the rest out.

Then I finally looked at where the studies I was reading actually came from.

And they didn't come from a pharmaceutical lab.

They came from an algae.

An algae that lives trapped in shallow pools, under the harshest sunlight on the planet, with nowhere to hide.

To keep from destroying itself, it makes its own shield.

A red pigment so powerful it dyes whatever eats that algae. That's why salmon and shrimp turn reddish.

That pigment has a name.

What does that is astaxanthin.

One molecule that gets into the fat and stays there, protecting it, every single day

Astaxanthin has a red pigment from a marine algae. It's what makes salmon and shrimp turn reddish.

And it has one very rare feature:

It mixes with water and with fat at the same time.

Sounds small. It's everything.

Vitamin C only mixes with water. So it stays outside, in the watery part of your blood.

It never gets near the fat.

Vitamin E gets into the fat, but only into one small part of it, and it gets used up.

Astaxanthin gets in and stays.

It goes right inside the fat circulating in your blood and stands guard there.

Every single day.

While that fat travels through your body, it's protected.

And this is where your life starts to change:

Protected fat is fat your body can clear out. It doesn't keep drifting around in your blood. It leaves circulation the way it should. Your cholesterol comes down.
Fat that doesn't stick to the wall means an artery that stays clear. Less material building up means less plaque forming. That's what lowers the risk down the road.
A clear artery is an artery that can relax. And a relaxed artery opens up more room for blood to pass. Your blood pressure comes down, especially the bottom number.

Three results. One cause.

And there's a detail that matters over the long haul.

Some antioxidants break down after doing their job and start doing harm instead. Beta-carotene is the best-known case.

Astaxanthin doesn't do that.

It does the work and stays intact.

That's why you can take it every day, every month, with no break.

TRY ASTAXANTHIN WITH A 90-DAY GUARANTEE

Your cholesterol starts coming down — including what diet couldn't reach

"I went on a diet and my cholesterol didn't come down." by Sophia

Now you have the piece that was missing.

The fried food you cut out was the fat that was coming in.

Astaxanthin takes care of the fat that's already circulating — protecting it from spoiling every day.

What does that mean for your day?

It means that the next time you hand in your lab requisition, your cholesterol is going to be low.

Your blood pressure comes down

"I walk every week and my blood pressure won't come down." by Benjamin

Walking makes you stronger. But it doesn't give the artery back its ability to relax.

When the artery's lining goes back to producing the relaxation signal properly through astaxanthin, the artery opens more.

Your blood pressure is going to come down.

And day to day, that's very concrete:

You check your pressure and the number doesn't give you that jolt.
You check again the next day and it's about the same.
And then, without noticing, you start checking less.

Your bloodwork genuinely improves — and your doctor is going to ask what you did

"I take my medication properly and my bloodwork is still bad." by Olivia

Your medication does one thing very well: it reduces the amount of cholesterol your body produces.

It works on the quantity.

But there's a second problem it wasn't designed to solve: the condition of the fat that keeps circulating.

And it does keep circulating. Every day. Even with the medication working properly.

That's why so many people take medication for years, have a "controlled" number on paper, and still have high triglycerides, low HDL and high blood pressure.

You don't need to change medications. You just need to cover the part that's left uncovered, with astaxanthin.

At 12 mg a day, triglycerides can drop by up to 97% and good cholesterol (HDL) can rise by up to 48%. And bad cholesterol (LDL) and total cholesterol come down by up to 94%.

The result you want isn't a new capsule in the drawer.

It's showing up at your appointment with your bloodwork in hand and hearing your doctor say:

"It's improved a lot, let's reduce your medications."

And being able to answer that you did your part.

You put the blood pressure monitor in the drawer and get it out of your head

"I'm always checking my blood pressure and the number never improves." by Ellie

That wears you down more than the blood pressure itself.

The monitor in the kitchen drawer turns into a judge.

You check, the number comes back high, you get worried. The worry raises your pressure. You check again. It goes higher.

But when the numbers stop giving you a jolt, the check-worry-check wheel stops spinning.

The monitor goes back to being just a monitor: you use it when you need it, not when you're afraid.

You protect your heart at the point where plaque begins to form

"My father had a heart attack and I'm afraid I'm heading down the same road." by Liam

It isn't the number on the page that decides your future.

It's the fatty plaque.

And it begins with spoiled fat being swallowed by the defence cells in the artery wall.

Every day that fat is protected through astaxanthin is a day with less cardiovascular disease and more health.

And there's something nobody asks for, but everybody feels

Energy.

When blood circulates better, the body gets oxygen better

.

And people usually notice it not at the gym, but in the small things:

The afternoon no longer collapses at three o'clock.
Going up the stairs at home doesn't leave you stopped halfway.
You get to the end of the day with energy to talk, not just to collapse onto the couch.
On the weekend you keep up with the outing instead of sitting and waiting.

Nobody buys a supplement thinking about that.

But that's what a person remembers weeks later.

CHECK AVAILABILITY

In short, what changes from Monday to Sunday

Cholesterol and triglycerides coming down, without changing your routine

Blood pressure finally comes down

Your next bloodwork comes back different and better

Fewer medications, less worry, more peace

Act where the heart attack begins, not where it announces itself

Energy from the start of the day to the end

TRY ASTAXANTHIN WITH A 90-DAY GUARANTEE →