Maybe you want to read this article which suggests that sugar is the problem;
The evidence for saturated fat and for sugar related to coronary heart disease
Impact of High-Fat Diet on Red Blood Cells May Cause Cardiovascular Disease
University of Cincinnati researchers have
discovered the negative impact a high fat diet has on red blood cells
and how these cells, in turn, promote the development of cardiovascular
disease.
This is one of the first studies to
demonstrate the effect of red blood cells on the disease and could also
affect the way patients with other health conditions, like cancer, who
are prone to developing cardiovascular issues, are diagnosed and
treated. It will be published in the Nov. 17 edition of the journal Circulation with an accompanying editorial.
"Obesity
caused by chronic consumption of a high-calorie, high-fat diet is a
worldwide epidemic, representing one of the greatest threats to global
health,” says principal investigator Vladimir Bogdanov, PhD, associate
professor and director of the Hemostasis Research Program within the
Division of Hematology Oncology at the UC College of Medicine and member
of the Cincinnati Cancer Center and UC Cancer Institute. "White blood
cells play a key role in fueling adipose tissue (fat) inflammation and
insulin resistance in obesity and also promote the clogging of arteries,
or atherosclerosis, setting the stage for heart attack and stroke.
While these outcomes linked with a high fat diet and fat in the blood on
white blood cells have been shown in animal models and humans, the
impact of high fat diets on other bone marrow-derived cells, like red
blood cells, is not well defined.
"Evidence is
emerging that red blood cells play an important regulatory role in the
development of atherosclerosis, binding pro-inflammatory proteins that
cause dysfunction in the inner lining of the blood vessel wall—the
endothelium. We explored how a high fat-diet causes red blood cell
dysfunction in this study.”
Bogdanov and his
team fed a 60 percent high-fat diet to a group of animal models for 12
weeks and saw an increased amount of key proteins that stimulate white
blood cells bound to red blood cells. These white blood cells, also
known as macrophages, are a type of white blood cell that "eats”
cellular debris, foreign substances, microbes, cancer cells and anything
else that does not have the types of proteins specific to the surface
of healthy body cells on its surface. They also play a crucial role in
atherosclerosis.
"In red blood cells from
animal models fed a high-fat diet, there was an increase in cholesterol
found in the cell membrane and phosphatidylserine levels, promoting
inflammatory reactions. Phosphatidylserine is a phospholipid membrane
component which plays a key role in the cycle of cells,” Bogdanov says.
"When red blood cells from the animals being fed the high-fat diet were
injected into a control group, eating a normal diet, there was a
three-fold increase in their spleens’ uptake of red blood cells. The
spleen is involved in the removal of blood cells, as well as systemic
inflammation.
"All of these findings show that
the dysfunction of red blood cells, corresponding with dysfunction of
the lining of blood vessels, occurs very early in diet-induced obesity
and may play a part in the formation of atherosclerosis. Diets high in
saturated fat have long been associated with endothelial dysfunction,
the precursor to atherosclerosis, but to our knowledge, the effects of
high-fat diet on red blood cells have not been rigorously examined.”
He
adds that in humans, high cholesterol is associated with alterations in
red blood cells which are improved by treatment with statins, but the
majority of obese humans do not have severe high cholesterol as was the
case with the animal models in the study.
Bogdanov
stresses that this project would have never been successful were it not
for a close collaboration between his lab and that of Professor Neal
Weintraub, MD, from the Vascular Biology Center at the Medical College
of Georgia, Georgia Regents University (GRU). Weintraub, who is a
co-principal investigator and a former UC faculty member, is working on
expanding the team’s findings in animal models to human disease. His
team has recently conducted a study which demonstrated that a single
high-fat meal produces harmful effects on red blood cells in humans.
Bogdanov adds that these findings may also help patients with cancer who
are frequently prone to thrombosis (blood clots).
"This
study was funded using start-up funds I received from the university
when I came here, which also helped me collaborate with other labs, like
that of Dr. Weintraub’s, Dr. (Xiaoyang) Qi’s in my own division,
throughout the medical campus and elsewhere in the country and abroad,
to create an academically balanced study touching on aspects of both
cardiovascular disease and cancer. These types of packages are vital for
making progress on innovative research that may not otherwise be
feasible.”
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