THE MYTH ABOUT CHOLESTEROL YOU SHOULD KNOW

What is cholesterol?

Cholesterol is one of the most common health issues that majority of people must have heard about, but you might not be sure exactly what it is.

Cholesterol is a waxy type of fat or lipid, which moves throughout your body in your blood. Lipids are substances that do not dissolve in water, so they do not come apart in blood. Your body makes cholesterol, but you can also get it from foods.

Is cholesterol that bad?

In 1950, Dr Keys carried out a study about cholesterol. In the study, he found out that countries like Japan, USA, Canada, etc., have a high rate of heart attack because they consume more fat.

He then became the father of the Lipid Heart Attack theory, but there are few other things that he omitted then.

The study was conducted in just 22 countries and he left out countries that consume more fat, but less heart disease like Norway, Holland and others. He also left out countries that consume less fat, but with a high rate of heart disease, like Chile and other countries.

So his study then is insignificant.

But, let’s look at something that can help come to a reasonable conclusion.

Saturated fat = Increased cholesterol

Increased cholesterol = heart disease.

Let’s look at what cholesterol really is. You might have come across HDL and LDL in many test results or books.

HDL = High density lipoprotein

LDL = Low density lipoprotein.

They are proteins not cholesterol. They are like an envelope that carries cholesterol throughout the body.

So, the HDL, often called the good cholesterol carries old cholesterol to the liver to be recycled.

Why does our body recycle cholesterol if is that bad?
The fact is, our body needs cholesterol and it produces up to 2,000 mg of cholesterol every day. Every cell in our body makes cholesterol. An egg will produce up to 300 mg cholesterol. When you eat more, your body make more, but our cells  use cholesterol on a daily basis.

Cholesterols act as bandage to help arteries that are wounded or damaged. It plasters and repairs them. The cardiac output causes pressure every day, which causes some damage to the arteries, but cholesterols are there doing the repair work to heal the arteries.

Most brain cells are made from cholesterols. Therefore, we need cholesterol to survive.

We also need cholesterol to make Vitamin D available in the bloodstream. So, if there is an increase in calcium, it will transport it to the bones for absorption.

LDL carries cholesterol from the liver to the tissues, but remember, they (HDL, LDL) are not bad, they are just an envelope that carries cholesterols.

However, LDL envelope that carries cholesterols are of different sizes, big and small ones. It is the small envelopes that mostly carry bad fats, which form plaques and clogs on the surface of arteries.

That can cause heart attack or disease, but not the principal cause. It will take too much time for it to cause heart problems.

Now, what is the major cause of heart attack and heart diseases?
Inflammation is the cause.

INFLAMMATION

Inflammation causes damage to the wall of the arteries, among other bad things it causes in our body.

That’s why cholesterols are always in the Arteries to heal the damage, so the more inflammation in the arteries, the more our body produces and recycles cholesterol for healing.

What causes the inflammation? 

SUGAR is the culprit.

The amount of sugar we eat will spike high availability of cholesterol because the body is intelligent enough to know that it will cause inflammation, so healing is needed.

And due to that high availability of cholesterol, clogging and plaques of cholesterol on the walls of the arteries will take place.

So, the problem is not cholesterol but SUGAR, no SUGAR no increase in cholesterol.

Another thing that causes inflammation is CORTISOL (stress hormone). Too much of the stress hormone in our body will cause inflammation.

In conclusion, take egg yolk, coconut oil, avocado, cheese, butter not margarine (many Nigerians are eating margarine and think is butter), Palm kernel oil, red palm oil. 

Don’t consume hydrogenated oils, we have many brands of them. Many of them have hearts on the label which signifies it’s good for the heart but that’s not true!

Avoid SUGAR to avoid INFLAMMATION.