Friend or Foe?
Do you consider ‘Cholesterol’ akin to a swear word? Do you believe cholesterol causes heart disease? Would you be surprised to learn that current trends are turning away from this belief and people, including doctors, are beginning to realise that cholesterol is, in fact, good for you?
Experts are now starting to accept what many have long be stating: that cholesterol is good and does not cause heart disease, but rather it is bad food and stress that are the problems.
Cholesterol is used by the body in many different ways. Among them are the following:
- It is used to make Vitamin D;
- It is used to make almost all your hormones;
- It is the glue that keeps your cells together and thus your entire body together;
- It makes up the majority of your brain; and
- It is generally protective and is the first thing that arrives at the site of a wound, even before clotting cells. This is an important factor with regard to the levels of cholesterol in your body as I will discuss below.
In fact, cholesterol is so important to the body that the body actually creates it itself in the liver. The food you eat plays very little part in how much cholesterol is in your body because the body will only use a very small proportion of it and discard the rest. You could eat as many eggs (which are filled with cholesterol) as you wanted and not raise your cholesterol levels to any significant level. Also, if the body uses any cholesterol from your food, it will decrease production of it in the liver accordingly. There is always balance depending on how much the body needs at that time.
There is such a thing as good and bad cholesterol, but not in the way that most people generally understand them. People are told that cholesterol that goes to the heart is bad and the cholesterol that moves away from the heart is good because it is taking cholesterol away from the body and you want to get rid of as much of it as possible. But, with everything you now know cholesterol does for the body, that would be disastrous. The less cholesterol a person has in their body, the sicker they become. In old people particularly, the more cholesterol you have, the better you feel and the longer you tend to live.
This is because cholesterol protects the body from harm. The more stressed you are, the more cholesterol you will have in your bloodstream. The more wear and tear in your body, the more cholesterol is produced to heal the wounded sites. So if you do find that you have too much cholesterol in your body, think of it as a warning signal telling you that something is wrong and the body is reacting to it by increasing the amount of cholesterol. It could be that you are unwell in some way and the moment you get better, cholesterol levels will decrease because it is no longer needed.
Good cholesterol is stable and found in saturated fats like butter and animal fat, whilst bad cholesterol is oxidised and found in processed foods like vegetable oils (margarine) and powdered milk. Think of all the confectionery that is eaten every day which is made with powdered milk and all the cheap fast food like chips that is consumed every day.
If you eat cheap food, you will have cheap health. Help yourself by consuming good quality food as much as you can and that includes saturated fats that contain cholesterol.
The tide is finally turning. Cholesterol is now gradually being recognised as no longer the enemy, but rather a crucial element to health.