Cholesterol Fact or Fiction?

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Have we all been suckered by the cholesterol propoganda of the last few decades?  Do you know why cholesterol is "bad" for you? Do you know why in the US we need to keep our total cholesterol down under 200?  Is there a cholesterol level that is too low?  And what about all those cholesterol lowering drugs? Do they help?

High cholesterol leads to high blood pressure and heart disease and premature death, right?  Cholesterol has had a poor public relations run until recently.  Is it possible that those early studies that most doctors still believe were only part of the story?  If Lipitor and other statin drugs are so effective, why is heart disease still the number 2 killer of all Americans?  

Here are some facts you might not know about cholesterol and it's function in the body.

• Cholesterol is made by the body, the liver to be precise.  
• Cholesterol is incorporated into every cell wall of every cell your body has.  
• Cholesterol is the mother of the sex hormones in your body including estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol etc.  
• Cholesterol is incorporated into your bile acids to help you digest and absorb fat in your diet.  
• Cholesterol acts as an antioxidant and protests us against free radical damage.  
• Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain.  Low cholesterol levels can lead to depression and suicidal tendencies. 
• Breast milk is rich in cholesterol and helps baby brains and nervous system to develop properly.  
• Cholesterol plays an important role in keeping the digestive tract healthy.  Low cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome due to the poor health of the digestive system. 
• Cholesterol is a precursor to vitamin D which is essential to prevention of cancer, immune support, keeps your bones healthy, keeps your nervous system health and tons of important functions that scientists are just started to fully understand.  

For these reasons and because I don't believe in tampering with Mother Nature, I rarely use cholesterol lowering herbs or advocate cholesterol lowering drugs.  For more details on how cholesterol is actually important for your body's functions, read this great article by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD.

And what about all those cholesterol lowering drugs like Lipitor that people are on nowadays?  Do they help improve your lifespan? Dr. Jerome Hoffman, MD from UCLA who is a professor of clinical medicine asks us this question about using statin drugs to lower cholesterol. 

"What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit? And that they could do just as well by exercising? How many would take that?"  

Of course he's referring to the efficacy of statin drugs.  The old adage is that there are Lies, More lies and there are Statistics.  Pfizer, the maker of Lipitor, the number one selling drug may have pulled a fast one on all of us.  In it's ads that proclaim that there is a 36% reduction of heart attacks actually breaks down in the fine print.  That 36% reduction in heart attacks actually means that in the large study they did 3% of people on placebo or sugar pill had a heart attack during the study compared to the whopping 2% on Lipitor.  So for every 100 people on Lipitor it can save 1 person from a heart attack.  But what about the other 99 people taking the drug?

My argument is that cholesterol is a natural function of the body and it makes me very uncomfortable for so many people taking cholesterol lowering drugs and eating low fat diets when we clearly don't have good pharmaceutical answers to preventing heart disease and that you may be lowering your cholesterol level too low leading to a whole host of problems for your body and brain.  No sex drive?  Maybe it's low cholesterol.  Depressed? Check your cholesterol.  Not menstruating? Maybe your cholesterol is too low.  Generally I've found in my practice that total cholesterol under 150 is way too low.  If your HDL is a good percentage of that total cholesterol number you may be also be experiencing fertility concerns as well.  

So think long and hard befor you start on cholesterol lowering drugs, there is definitely more to the story.

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Comments

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You make some very good points. Big Pharma has enormous interest in keeping everyone thinking their cholesterol is to high.

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In case of high density, the ratio of proteins compared to fat will be high and high density lipoproteins or HDL is the good cholesterol which does the work required to help unblock your arteries and which also helps in getting rid of unwanted fat from the body. In order to test your cholesterol level, you may need to take a test that is aimed at measuring your lipoproteins which are sorted according to their density. There is another aspect to cholesterol and that is triglyceride, which is a type of fat that is obtained from the food that you eat and which is also produced in the body, and when there is a high level of triglycerides, you are at risk of having high total cholesterol in which you can get high LDL as well as low HDL, which is bad for your health.

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Put simply, it doesn't matter whether your diet is high in cholesterol or low in cholesterol - cholesterol is so important to your body that it can, and does make your cholesterol levels exactly what it needs them to be, so, for YOU, your cholesterol levels are healthy cholesterol levels - everything else considered.

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