Our Blood Cholesterol Levels Indirectly Affect Our Joint Structures. Here’s How.
It turns out that these two issues can be linked to the same enzyme.
Heart disease, as we know it, is and has been responsible for the deaths of many people on this planet. The data presented by the World Health Organisation indicate that:
The world’s biggest killer is ischaemic heart disease, responsible for 16% of the world’s total deaths. Since 2000, the largest increase in deaths has been for this disease, rising by more than 2 million to 8.9 million deaths in 2019. Stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are the 2nd and 3rd leading causes of death, responsible for approximately 11% and 6% of total deaths respectively.
And we can see that the second killer behind heart disease is that of stroke.
Those two issues are linked together, unfortunately.
The problem being that we can’t pinpoint high cholesterol as the sole reason for heart disease, however:
We can see how it accumulates in our body, and then that triggers off a biochemical response that gets our immune cells involved.
Because the cholesterol firstly gets eaten up by live macrophage cells, which will eventually end up being entrapped within a plaque.
And these macrophages are able to produce (matrix metalloproteinase) MMP enzymes that can digest the collagen cap sealing off an atherosclerotic plaque.
Which means that these MMPs can also digest away joint cartilage in the development of osteoarthritis — all these MMPs are being produced at the command of an inflammatory signal:
So when the body is chronically inflamed, we know that the entrapped macrophages and the free macrophages (swimming about in the blood) do have a higher tendency to produce more MMPs — the prevailing inflammation signals in the body will tell them to produce more.
Which will potentially result in an acute symptom of a heart attack if the collagen cap on an atherosclerotic plaque were to be digested and weakened to the point of the plaque rupturing.
It’s because of those immune system macrophages. You’d actually have to wonder if they’re providing an optimal level of defense for the human body to ward off any infections from viruses or bacteria that find their way into the body if they’re just happily digesting off joint cartilage like there’s no tomorrow.
Though at the same time it was pretty obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic that people with heart disease, for instance, were at higher risk of death from a COVID-19 infection simply because their immune defenses were unable to keep up with the rate of virus propagation within the body — and that in itself indicates a suboptimal immune defensive mechanism.
But at the same time, the increased production of MMPs that target the joint areas and trigger joint degradation leading to osteoarthritis, no? Simply because joint cartilage is made predominantly out of collagen!
We can therefore see that the biochemical mechanism that triggers plaque rupture is the same biochemical mechanism that eliminates damaged joint cartilage.
And we’d therefore have to watch out on how we’re living our lifestyles — is anything that we’re doing aiding in triggering the pro-inflammatory pathways?
Do feel free to check out 10 Nutrients That Support A Healthy Heart to see how our diet can influence our heart health!
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