Understanding What is Cholesterol?
by Dane Masters
If you have found out that you have really high cholesterol levels and are wondering why this is the case. You are probably also asking how you can lower these levels, what the risks are, and just plain, what is this? Many people with high cholesterol levels focus on trying to lower these without actually understanding the nature of cholesterol. While it is not imperative to know, it is a good idea to have some insight into just what is cholesterol. Understanding more about cholesterol will help you to understand why you should keep cholesterol levels low.
So what is cholesterol? Cholesterol is quite simply a class of aerobic chemical compounds that are mostly hydrophobic in nature. So what the heck does that mean? Well, if you never took organic chemistry or biochemistry in college, or never went to college, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. Even if you took those classes, it still doesn’t tell you very much.
Perhaps a better way to answer the question is to look at what cholesterol does to the body. Cholesterol does serve a purpose in the body, it is not all bad in nature. Cholesterol provides the membranes of cells with a flexible, fluid quality in animals. Unlike the cells of plants which are inflexible, animal cells have to bend and flex without breaking. Cells in animals (of which we humans are), have membranes that consist of a double layer of lipids. Each lipid cell layer has a hydrophilic head and tail. The hydrophilic head aligns with the watery interior and exterior of the cell, and the tail aligns in the centre of the cell which is relatively free of water. Cholesterol likes to be in the centre of the double layer of lipids in the cell membrane, and its molecules are small enough to flow freely here. This flow of cholesterol molecules is what allows the cell membrane to remain elastic and flexible.
Cholesterol is therefore vital to animal life. It is transported throughout the body in lipoprotein carriers that fall under a few different classes. The two general classes are high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and low-density lipoproteins (LDL). It is the LDL carriers that pose health risks in high levels by getting stuck along arteries, and not actually cholesterol.
So, what is cholesterol? In broader terms it is something we cannot live without but in terms of LDL, it could be something that could kill us. Essentially cholesterol is a building block of the body, it is produced naturally in the liver and we do not need to eat or take any kind of supplements to ensure its production. You liver will produce all the cholesterol you will ever need. Therefore there is nothing you need to eat to produce it. Cut out all LDL cholesterol producing foods and your body will continue to run just fine without them.
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