Everything You Need to Know About Cholesterol

How does cholesterol affect me? This is the first question everyone asks themselves when it comes to cholesterol. You might have already suspected that cholesterol in our food does contribute to the high levels of cholesterol found in some people's blood. But besides this, it is also important to know that the liver can actually create cholesterol. Actually, what is even more important is that the excess of cholesterol in our bodies does not come from our diet, but from our liver.

In many people, high cholesterol levels are due to an overproduction of cholesterol by the liver, and not as it might have been though that they ate too much cholesterol. Cholesterol overproduction by the liver can be on a genetic basis, but also can be thanks to an over stimulation of the liver by saturated fats and trans fats, generally found in our diet.

You might have heard that generally speaking there are two major kinds of cholesterol. There is the "good" cholesterol, also known as the HDL cholesterol or high density lipoprotein cholesterol. Now, we usually want to keep our HDL cholesterol high in order to have a healthy heart, but what about the other kind of cholesterol? Well, there is the "bad" cholesterol, also known as the LDL cholesterol or low density lipoprotein cholesterol, which can be pretty harmful to our bodies. So, if it is harmful, we just want to keep those levels down.

In our food, cholesterol is not attached to any protein. Still, in our bodies, all the cholesterol in our food will eventually become bad cholesterol. Blood tests usually help to measure total cholesterol levels, but also both good and bad cholesterol. Since most of the cholesterol in our bodies and the total cholesterol is an LDL/HDL ratio, we would generally like to see a level that is less than 200, or a ratio less than 4:1. These blood tests can also help find out the risks of any type of heart disease developing.

What damages our blood vessels and significantly contributes to the risk of heart disease developing is the cholesterol attached to the LDL protein. Keeping the LDL (or "bad") cholesterol as low as possible may seem hard, but it mostly takes only some self-discipline and the will to adapt to a more healthy diet. Minimizing the dietary intake of cholesterol as well as the dietary intake of saturated and trans fats will most of the times help. Still, pretty often - medications may be prescribed by your doctor.

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