I’m designating this week to be "Cholesterol Week". This topic is very important to me because many people are taking dangerous cholesterol-lowering drugs without even fully understanding what cholesterol is and how these drugs can be extremely harmful. It makes me very concerned.
Today’s topic will be "What is Cholesterol?"
Cholesterol is a general term for the molecules in your body called lipoproteins. "Lipo" means "fat", so a lipoprotein is a fat and protein stuck together. There are different kinds of lipoproteins but their function is to transport fat molecules to the places they are needed in your body.
For example, our cell membranes are made up of fat. So the lipoproteins (cholesterol) brings the fat to your cells so that it can maintain a healthy membrane. Healthy membrane = healthy cell.
Your brain is also needs a regular supply of cholesterol because it is made up of a lot of fat.
Cholesterol is an ingredient in bile, that stuff you may have noticed while throwing up on an empty stomach. Besides burning the lining out of your esophagus, it actually has an important purpose of helping you digest the fat you eat.
As you can see then, cholesterol is completely useful and necessary.
You can eat cholesterol and it is also made naturally in your liver. If you don’t eat enough, your liver will make extra. When you have too much floating in your body, your liver takes some back and uses it for making bile or hormones. In other words, your body is designed to regulate its own cholesterol levels.
Like I mentioned, there are different types of cholesterol. You may have heard of "good" and "bad". I’m not here to judge, but what is normally considered the "bad" cholesterol is the low-density lipoproteins aka LDL. The "good" cholesterol is high-density lipoprotein aka HDL. The HDL is considered good because it can remove LDL from the blood. There are different types of LDL and HDL that have different effects on your body which is beyond the scope of this post. But just so you know.
Standard advice is to keep your LDL under 130 and your HDL as high as possible, preferably around 60. The numbers refer to milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) of blood.
Tomorrow I am going to write about what cholesterol has to do with heart disease and why everyone is making a huge deal about keeping it low.
Bye for now!
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2 comments:
I am strongly against the use of statins to reduce cholesterol, It can be done much more safely using magnesium, water, and exercise. I would highly suggest any one worried about this topic to check out this article Magnesium and Walking Will Always be Superior to Lipitor
Fantastic piece. Most people DO NOT UNDERSTAND the role of cholesterol in the human body and they NECESSARY function it provides. You should look at the egg experiment. It was where people ate eggs, yellows and all, for a year I believe and their cholesterol actually went DOWN!
As usual, great piece!
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