Is cholesterol bad for you? It has a very bad press and many people talk about LDL, mistakenly called ‘bad’ cholesterol and HDL, the mistakenly called ‘good’ one.
First let’s look at what cholesterol really is. It’s a product that is naturally made by your liver. And it’s a product found in animal protein. You need it. It’s essential to a healthy body.
If you consume high amounts of animal protein, your liver makes less. If you don’t, it makes more.
And here’s the big one, the levels do not affect the health of your heart. People with low or high levels of cholesterol have no difference in their propensity to have heart related problems. By taking drugs that lower your cholesterol levels, you are not more protected against heart disease than if you don’t.
The statins, those drugs which lower your levels, such as lipitor, mevacor, zocor, pravachol, and lescol are known to cause cancer in rodents. Although they are considered to reduce the risk of heart disease, this is unrelated to cholesterol.
LDL is short for low density lipoprotein and HDL is short for high density lipoprotein. Lipoprotein carries the cholesterol around in your blood.
The problem arises from your consumption of cooked animal protein. By cooking meat, the fat becomes damaged. Not only is the fat damaged by high temperature, but also by processing.
If you eat a lot of cooked and/or processed animal protein, you will have a higher than normal amount of damaged cholesterol floating around in your blood stream. This can be seen by having a high LDL count.
If you have a high LDL count, then you are at a higher than average risk of suffering from a heart related problem.
If your HDL count is high, then you don’t have a high amount of damaged cholesterol floating around.
What is far more important than your cholesterol blood levels is the amount of damaged cholesterol you have in your blood. By eating raw or little animal protein, you could avoid this.
A diet largely based on plant foods will provide all the protein you need.
The dangers of low cholesterol, especially the ever declining levels advocated to entice more people onto the lucrative drug market, can especially lead to stroke, depression, low vitamin D and hormonal problems.
Treating the cause of any problem is far more effective than treating the effect. Once you know the cause and direct your attention to changing that, the effect disappears on its own.
For more information you may like to see my article on cholesterol here.
