What Is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol, of course, has been around since we have but it wasn’t until 1951 that a government study on cholesterol brought it into the lime light.

This study was done on the bodies of servicemen who lost their lives during the war in Korea and the findings were astounding. You see, at that time, heart disease was thought to be only a disease suffered by older men, but 75% of these servicemen whose average age was 21, had yellow deposits of atherosclerotic plaque in their artery walls.

The culprit, cholesterol has been studied much more since then and is now thought to be a major factor in the risk of heart disease. In fact, recent studies show that there is a 2% decrease in the risk of heart attack for every 1% drop in your cholesterol level and in 2002 it was estimated that 107 million Americans have cholesterol readings high enough to require medical advice.

Many people think that cholesterol is only introduced by the foods you eat when in fact it is a natural function of the human body. It is present as a waxy substance in cell walls and membranes throughout your body. Your body needs cholesterol to survive and uses it to produce hormones as well as vitamin D and the bile acids which aid in digesting fat. Without cholesterol we could not survive. The problem only arises when we have too much of it floating around.

Your body processes fat in the liver where two delivery systems are necessary. One system delivers the fat to the body for immediate use and the other to be stored in fat cells. To perform these “deliveries” the liver splits the fat into two types - triglycerides and cholesterol.

The triglycerides and cholesterol are transported through the blood stream using lipoproteins. You are probably familiar with the at least two of the types of lipoproteins High Density Lipoproteins (HDL), Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL), and Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL).

The cholesterol deposited by the LDL can lead to a narrowing of the blood vessels. If this happens some excess can end up deposited in the arteries of the heart which can result in heart disease or stroke. This is why LDL has it’s reputation as the “bad cholesterol”. HDL, on the other hand is known as the “good cholesterol” and usually has the job of collecting this excess cholesterol and taking it back to the liver.

So you can see when the doctor talks about you have too much bad cholesterol and not enough good, how important that can be to your overall health!