Cholesterol Levels

The Controversy

Now a days we hear a lot of warnings about cholesterol, but the funny thing is, cholesterol isn’t all bad. Our body produces cholesterol naturally and this cholesterol performs some pretty vital jobs - helping to build new cells, as well as produce hormones and insulate nerves. Only when we’ve got too much do we have a problem.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding Cholesterol because it’s made up of both good and bad cholesterol, and is known as HDL and LDL. So which is the good and which is the bad ?

Cholesterol word itself makes the chill run down the spine of many and gives them sleepless nights. Cholesterol is the most popular word within medical arena and many experts have defined it in various different forms. Cholesterol is the fatty, waxy and oily lipid substance found in the body. It circulates in the bloodstream and is carried in packages, which is known as lipoproteins. It performs various functions within the body like guarding the arteries, providing fat to the body and also producing hormones. Cholesterol is the essential substance required by the body but once it exceeds its certain limit it becomes a bane. High level cholesterol generally brings along various heart and liver related diseases. It also affect the brain functioning and tends to week the brain nerves.

Increasingly larger numbers of people suffer from heart disease as a consequence of high blood cholesterol levels. There are many factors that enable the accumulation of cholesterol inside the organism, but the major cause is considered to be unhealthy diet. Unhealthy diet and bad eating habits can considerably increase blood cholesterol levels.

Cholesterol is an important part of your body’s natural function. You can not live with out it. When your body starts producing too much of it then it becomes your hearts mortal enemy. If you have high cholesterol then you need to declare war. Anything less is not good enough. When you fight any war you need to have weapons and the more powerful they are the better. Modern medicine has given us some great weapons for fighting cholesterol. Sometimes that is not enough and unfortunately using them can come with severe side effects. I for one have not found one yet that I can take. The good news is that nature it self has provided us with weapons to fight cholesterol. With these natural weapons against cholesterol many people can avoid drugs and most of the rest can lower dose or improve the effect of their cholesterol drugs.

Lowering cholesterol without the negative side effects of cholesterol drugs is quite possible now thanks to a new generation of nutritional supplements that couple traditional nutrients with the latest research to reach new levels of effectiveness.

There are several nutrients with both solid scientific documentation of effectiveness, and traditional “anecdotal” evidence built up over hundreds of years of use in the worlds oldest healing tradition.

Huge topic. I can write a book on this but best not yet! Two more years of med school yet and by then I’ll be even more versed in how to lower cholesterol naturally.

First: What is cholesterol?

According to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, cholesterol is “the most abundant steroid in animal tissues, especially in bile and gall stones, and present in food, especially rich in animal fats, circulates in plasma complexed to proteins of various densities and plays an important role in the pathogenesis of atheroma formation in arteries.”