Have you heard of cyclodextrin? It's a chemical that's supposed to dissolve
cholesterol crystals and, in fact, for some reason, it's supposed to help the
body genetically gear up to dissolve cholesterol crystals and not only just
in plaque but in the bloodstream as well. Well, like many things I had not heard of
that before and like many things, someone told me
about it. I learned a lot of things from patients
that way. I learned a lot of - about a lot of things from YouTube commenters as
well but this this person was neither one. His name is Stewart M and this was
on the forum. So, if you haven't been to the forum, basically, what that's for is
for folks that have a little bit deeper interest than just your typical quick
youtube comment and move on. If you haven't been there, I'll show you briefly
a couple of clues on how to get there and if you still can't get there, then
John and I - yeah, leave a comment under the YouTube videos, and John and I can
help you get there. This is an image of John's recent video
on how he dropped his calcium score 59% in 16 months. Huge impact on his
health and probability of a heart attack and stroke. If you haven't seen that
video, obviously, I think you should take a look. A lot of people - it's been very
popular. A lot of people taking a lot of interest. Basically, what you do is you go
down to the bottom of these videos and, usually, when one place or another - it
will give you an opportunity to show more and see text below that. Our text
always includes a link to our website, as well as to the forum website. If you get
to our website, it's up at the top. Again, if you have trouble finding it, please
let us know. We will leave a comment. We'll help you get there.
But again, this is - back to cyclodextrin. Cyclodextrin is - it's an interesting
chemical. This - this journal was in one that I've
heard of - I've seen a few times. It's not incredibly popular but it is fairly deep
and if you look at the science, it's - it does appear to be a well-reviewed
Journal. Lots of - there's a lot of focus on genetics, proteomics, some of the more
technical parts of medicine. Let's just leave it at that and then go next
because this is a dense article. It's got a lot of content and I want to just
cover a couple of things fairly quickly. So, basically, what they're saying, again,
let me help you interpret some things... Continuous retention of apolipoprotein-
containing lipoproteins, (Oh my lord, what is that? That's LDL - bad
cholesterol) Remember apolipoprotein B? That's the protein that helps hold bad -
the bad cholesterol particles together. apo A holds the good cholesterol
particles together. The cholesterol itself is no different. It's more of a
function of the particle itself. Again, I've covered that in different - different
videos and you could look them up - Ford Brewer Apo lipoprotein or Apo a,
Apo b. I don't mind though. Is - this is bad
cholesterol and they say in continuous retention in the sub endothelial space
causes abundance of free cholesterol or plaque.
Whoa. Let's go back, what was sub endothelial space? You remember - we've
talked about this in multiple other videos, as well. The most people think
plaque is just deposited on the inside of the artery like hair in a drain in a -
in a shower. That's not the case. It actually goes through the inner lining
and gets deposited between that inner lining and the - the muscular layer. A
structural layer - what we call the media. So sub endothelial means the - the space
between the intima and media of the artery. Cholesterol accumulation or
deposition of cholesterol crystals (CC) triggers a complex inflammatory response.
They're also referring to that inflammation which is the real danger.
Even more dangerous than the plaque itself which again we've talked about in
multiple other videos but the question - one of the questions is... Is it actually
just the cholesterol crystals that trigger that inflammation, as they're
saying here? Well, that's, again, a topic for a different video, a different time.
So, what they're saying is "Look, there's cyclodextrin. It's got a huge name as
well. Cyclic oligosaccharide 2-hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin. Again,
cyclodextrin or CD as they label it in this article. It increases cholesterol
solubility and couldn't prevent and reverse atherosclerosis. Now, here they
show that it does (at least in a mouse) and they also show in humans that the
mast cells, the immune cells that break up, go into the artery wall and break
this up, actually are impacted by this as well. They did some genetic studies which
show that. So there's some very, very interesting potential with this chemical
and, well, what's the catch? Yes - there's a catch and we'll talk about that as well.
So, here's just some of the quick regression trials that they looked at.
Basically, what they did was they took mice. They said murine model. Murine model
means a lab mouse. They took mice, fed them high cholesterol
diets, and so increases in their - in their serum or blood cholesterol. That's all
they saw. There the red bars or the mice that got - They are controls, the mice that
got the high cholesterol diet. The blue bars are the mice that got the CD
and cyclodextrin. Before you say, again, "Oh, well.. good. Give me some of that." Again,
wait to the end of the video.
They've looked at genetic approaches to increase the capacity of macrophages, to
release and remove cholesterol from atherosclerotic lesions from plaque and,
again, here we find that CD could actually do it. (Okay, more images) CD
induces LXR. Now, what is that? It's liver X receptor gene expression. So
there's - there are things that I'm not going to get into, again, for this video.
If I do, it would take too long but they're very much associated with plaque
removal. However, so why don't you just give things that focus on LXR? They've
tried that and those have problems, significant problems. So it's not going
to be an LXR. It might be something like this, which might involve getting
the body to increase the LXR levels. Now, what is this image? This is an image
where they basically took some radioactive markers and marked
cholesterol crystals. So, you see up here, there's - that's a - one picture, one image
of cholesterol crystals. In these other images, with the bright green, show the
crystals themselves. They highlight them and, basically, what it's showing is the
cycloid X and interacts with and dissolves both extracellular, in other
words serum, and intracellular cholesterol crystals. So extracellular
would be both in the serum and in flag and intracellular would be inside this
cells, as well. This highlighted image shows the significant decrease in
crystals - cholesterol crystals. This is the control and these are the mice that
got the CD (cyclodextrin). So, again, lots of good data which clearly does indicate
support. The thought that cyclodextrin does, maybe, help dissolve plaque, as well as
and probably by helping decrease cholesterol. Bad cholesterol, both in
plaque and outside. Here's another image. Basically, what they're showing with this
one is the - after the injection with the cyclodextrin, you get an increased
excretion of cholesterol in the urine and feces of these rats. Again, the
controls and the cyclodextrin are blue. So, again, huge excretion of cholesterol.
Now, I'm not going to (obviously) - I'm not going to get into details on this but
this is a lot of the genetic piece where it's basically showing what happens here
is - it appears that the CD, the cyclodextrin is increasing the genetic
profile, increasing the expression of genes associated with LXR (liver
x receptor) area. Again, more interesting information. They - again, more images. Neat,
interesting, images out of the the article itself and you can only see the
top. Unfortunately, I can't get the entire image in here but basically what this
shows is they're significantly more plaque that's being built and and laid
down in these arteries in the control which is up here and the - versus the one
the mouse - mice that got cyclodextrin. Again, just tons of images showing some
very, very good information.
This image, basically, is showing again, how LXR (Liver X receptor) is very
much involved in the mechanism. Let me finish up with this comment: So
everything sounds great. We've got a miracle drug on the way,
right? Maybe, not true. Let's go to one of the reference articles, referenced in
that previous article. This was in rejuvenation research and it mentions an
inflammatory
prodrug - some anti-inflammatory pro drug that could actually decrease cholesterol
is inflammatory - some of the inflammatory nature and it's talking about CD (cyclodextrin)
Here at the bottom, I've highlighted the problem. However, chronic
CD treatment in animal models damages auditory cells. In other words, you - they
lose their hearing and obviously this must be addressed before CD can be
developed as a systemic drug for atherosclerosis.
So, again, here we go down the path of looking for yet another drug. I don't - you
know... I hope it works but it gets back to the point: Lifestyle is medicine.
Lifestyle is difficult but it's safe and let's focus on our lifestyle first and
make sure that we've done everything we can before we try to bail ourselves out
of a bad lifestyle with yet another medication. Thank you for your interest.