> Health and Disease > Heart/Cardiovascular > high cholesterol

Just say the word "cholesterol" and most people shudder. Almost half of North Americans are believed to have less-than-optimum cholesterol levels. Cholesterol has been vilified as "Public Enemy No. 1," to be eliminated from the diet–and lowered in the bloodstream–at all costs. But at what cost to your health?

While it’s true that too much or too little of certain forms of cholesterol can wreak havoc, it’s also true that this much-maligned substance is absolutely essential to health and well-being. Let’s examine the benefits and drawbacks, debunk some myths, and learn how proper food choices and effective dietary timing can lead to a healthy cholesterol status.

What is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance found among the many fats (triglycerides) in your bloodstream, but it is not a fat. It is actually a steroid that forms the backbone for the body’s adrenal and sex hormones. As a structural component of all cell membranes, it helps to strengthen cell walls and is vital in the exchange of nutrients and waste materials across membranes. Cholesterol is so important to nerve impulses that you couldn’t move a muscle without it. No wonder your central nervous system–brain, spinal cord and nerves–contains nearly one-quarter of your body’s cholesterol stores. Cholesterol is also required for the digestion of fat and is responsible for converting sunlight into vitamin D.

Since cholesterol is waxy, it doesn’t mix well in water mediums–including blood, which is 80 percent water. To ensure proper transportation of this essential steroid through the bloodstream to the cells, your body wraps cholesterol in specialized protein carriers called lipoproteins. The amount of protein required to carry a cholesterol particle dictates the density of that protein. You produce both low- and high-density lipoproteins, or LDLs and HDLs. LDLs are responsible for transporting cholesterol to your cells, while the smaller, denser HDLs are responsible for picking up excess cholesterol from the cells and transporting it to the liver for processing or elimination.

LDLs are considered the "bad" cholesterols: the more of them circulating in your blood, the greater your risk of arterial disease. When LDLs are damaged through oxidation, they can accumulate in the walls of the arteries that feed the heart and brain (a condition known as atherosclerosis), cutting off essential nutrients and oxygen to the cells and potentially leading to heart attack or stroke. Almost 60 percent of circulating cholesterol is the LDL form. HDLs, on the other hand, are considered the "good guys" of cholesterol. Research indicates that HDLs are able to remove accumulated plaque in the arteries and may actually reverse atherosclerosis.

Optimum Cholesterol Levels

Unfortunately, to lower cholesterol, many people take pharmaceutical drugs known to create or contribute to possible health implications. Statin drugs, for example, block the liver’s cholesterol production and deplete levels of coenzyme Q₁₀–one of the body’s most important antioxidants and an essential component of energy metabolism. In animal experiments, statins and most other cholesterol-lowering drugs have produced cancer in dosages close to those prescribed to humans.

Other people, in an effort to lower cholesterol levels, eliminate cholesterol-containing foods, such as eggs and meat, from their diets. While diet is indeed key to cholesterol control, this approach is also misguided because the majority of the cholesterol in bloodstream is manufactured in your liver (up to a tremendous 1,500 milligrams daily) and does not come from cholesterol-containing foods. "There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in the blood," says pioneering cardiovascular disease epidemiologist Ancel Keys, PhD. "None. And we’ve known it all along."

The Real Diet Connection

Brad King, MS, MFS, is a Canadian-based fitness expert and performance nutritionist certified by the International Sports Sciences Association with a masters in Fitness Science. He has developed award-winning products for the natural supplement industry and is the former host of the daily Victoria radio health show Body Talk. He is the author of the international best-seller, Fat Wars: 45 Days to Transform Your Body (MacMillan Canada, 2000), and the soon to be released The Fat Wars Action Planner.

Source: alive #244, February 2003