Your Body Do Need the Cholesterol
There has been so much bad press about cholesterol these days that most people do not know that cholesterol is actually essential to the proper functioning of the body. Cholesterol is part of the production of sex hormone, regulate mood and the body defense to stress because of its mood regulating property. There are 2 category of cholesterol, not the commonly known good and the bad, but the dietary and blood cholesterol.
Not many people know that our liver produces cholesterol. And cholesterol can be either beneficial to us or expose us to the risk of heart disease and stroke. We have heard of the bad cholesterol that plaque our vein and artery and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke and the good cholesterol that keep our vascular system healthy. It is important to understand both the “good” and “bad” cholesterol so we can tackle high cholesterol problem via informed lifestyle, diet and exercise changes.
The cholesterol our liver produce are called the blood cholesterol and circulate in our vascular system. While dietary cholesterol are the cholesterol ingested from our food and diet, absorbed by our digestive system into our bloodstream. These are the difference between these 2 category of cholesterol.
The cholesterol that we take in by the foods we eat has less affect on our cholesterol blood rest than our family history, presence of disease such as diabetes, thyroid or kidney disease and also on the lifestyle choices we make such as smoking, our exercise routine, and our body weight.
There is a connection between the amount of fat, especially saturated fat and trans fatty acids that we consume and the level of our LDL cholesterol, (the bad one). When we eat an abundance of foods such as meat, egg yolks, dairy products, and foods that contain hydrogenated fats we can help to increase our LDL cholesterol level which is the “bad cholesterol”. We want our LDL blood cholesterol level to be low and our HDL blood cholesterol level to be high in order for our bodies to be heart healthy. We should limit or avoid foods such as French fries, doughnuts, breaded or fried chicken, fish, crackers, cookies and baker products when trying to reduce our intake of trans fats (trans fatty acids).
While attempting to lower the bad (LDL) cholesterol, it is important to avoid the trans fat and saturated fat rather then avoiding the lean meat, eggs and dairy as these food contain the nutrients like zinc, protein, calcium, B-complex etc that the body needed to function properly.
It is good to have high level of HDL cholesterol in our body because it aids in the breaking up of the plaque that is form by the bad cholesterol. The good cholesterol attached itself to the bad cholesterol and ferries it away from the heart and brain back to the liver for it to be broken down. It also helps in the reduction of the LDL cholesterol from our system.
Now that you know cholesterol is not all bad but rather essential in our bodily function and the good cholesterol is pivotal in keeping our heart and brain healthy.