Interesting Stuff

[Guest guest]

http://medschool.ucsd.edu/SIRA/healthwise/june00/p4.html

Editor:

Can you share some of the discoveries you've made?

 

Dr. Witztum:

One of the major contributions, for which our center is famous, is our

development of what is called the oxidation

hypothesis of atherosclerosis. Dr Steinberg, myself and our colleagues developed

the hypothesis to explain why the

cholesterol-carrying particles, the LDL, actually cause atherosclerosis. The

first step in that process is the

development of foam cells, which are special cells in the artery wall that take

up a lot of the cholesterol and keep it

there.

 

Editor:

Are these cells a natural part of our body?

 

Dr. Witztum:

They are not normally there; but if you have high plasma levels of cholesterol,

then you start developing these cells.

They are called " foam cells " because under the microscope they are full of lipid

(fat and cholesterol) and they look

like a cell full of little foamy deposits. The pathologists originally described

these as foam cells. The mechanisms by

which cells can take up the LDL and become foam cells was not known. What was

discovered in our laboratories was that

the LDL had to be modified. The native LDL particle doesn't generate foam cells

when it is incubated with these special

cells called monocytes or macrophages.

 

The LDL has to be modified, and our laboratories discovered that the lipids in

the LDL had to be oxidized.

 

[ ******* Note the above statement ********* and then start to understand that

not all the fatty acids (lipids) in the

LDL carrier have the same sensitivity to oxidation. Polyunsaturated fatty acids

are greater than Monounsaturated fatty

acids are greater than Saturated fatty acids.]

 

This process is called oxidation of LDL, which converts LDL into a form that is

very rapidly taken up by the macrophage,

and can very quickly convert a normal cell into a foam cell. That is probably

the first step in the atherogenic process.

 

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Good Health & Long Life,

Greg Watson, http://optimalhealth.cia.com.au gowatson

USDA database (food breakdown) http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/

PubMed (research papers) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

DWIDP (nutrient analysis) http://www.walford.com/dwdemo/dw2b63demo.exe

Patch file for above http://www.walford.com/download/dwidp67u.exe

KIM (omega analysis) http://ods.od.nih.gov/eicosanoids/KIM_Install.exe