What Is Cholesterol Used For?

You may have heard all the news about cholesterol and might have come to the incorrect conclusion that it's all bad. You think that if you can avoid cholesterol altogether in your diet then the subject will go away completely, but it is in truth a rather complicated and natural part of your body chemistry. What is cholesterol used for? It has many different and important roles. In part it's used to produce steroid hormones that we need to function and develop correctly. These hormones are so important that they play a significant role in our physical development, our ability to reproduce and our ability to fight off infection.

If cholesterol levels are out of balance, in certain circumstances we may be vulnerable to developing diabetes as cholesterol helps to produce cortisol, an important steroid hormone in regulating blood sugar levels.

In terms of digestion, cholesterol affects how much bile we produce. This particular fluid is stored in the gallbladder and is crucial in helping us to digest foods that contain fats. Without bile we would not be able to digest fat as we do, as it helps to break down the fat into more manageable particles. We know how important certain vitamins are, whether we take them in supplements or within our food, but we must remember that we cannot absorb the goodness of these vitamins without bile, which as we have just said requires cholesterol.

When we are born we have the ability to produce an adequate amount of cholesterol and generally maintain this ability through life. However, we introduce additional cholesterol which is contained within animal products themselves. As we eat foods that are high in cholesterol our body has to make adjustments to the amount that it manufactures each day. Sometimes the balance is not in tune and in particular the high density lipoproteins are not able to control the low-density levels. The HDL carries excess cholesterol out of the arteries and is vital in helping us to maintain our overall heart health.

Remember that cholesterol is not a fat, per se. It certainly has characteristics that make it similar in many respects, but it's mostly made from carbon and hydrogen which means that it has no affinity for water, as does fat. In an ideal world it has a self-regulating ability and if we are careful about our diet we can generally avoid a buildup of hardened cholesterol within the arteries, which leads to one of the biggest killers of the modern day - the heart attack.

What is cholesterol used for? We can see that there's a complicated association between various organs within our body, our ability to produce and regulate cholesterol and our very well being. This is why it's important to regulate the amount of dietary cholesterol that you ingest and even then to make sure that your ratio of "good" cholesterol to "bad" cholesterol is sufficient to allow your natural defenses to work correctly. Knowledge, interpretation and regular maintenance of cholesterol levels are important.

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