Cholesterol is a white, waxy substance that is present in some of the foods we eat; it is also manufactured by all the cells of our body, but most notably by the liver cells. A certain amount of cholesterol is critical to maintaining good health.
It's not just an important component of cell walls, it is also essential for the production of certain hormones. For most of use, between 70 and 75 percent of the cholesterol in their blood is made by their liver; the rest, about 30 percent comes from the food we eat. Your foods cholesterol, therefore, is something that you can directly affect yourself.
Your body requires fat and cholesterol in order to maintain good health. During infancy and childhood, fat is essential for normal brain development; throughout life, it is essential to provide energy and support growth. Cholesterol is used to build the walls of cells throughout the body and to manufacture essential substances such as hormones and vitamin D. That makes it important to have at least some fat and cholesterol in your body at all times.
If cholesterol is needed for healthy bodily function, why is cholesterol bad for you? It's simple.The answer to these questions is simple. A certain amount of cholesterol is important for the body. But when blood cholesterol level exceeds 200mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter), you become at risk of developing heart disease. That's why so many people are looking for a high cholesterol cure.
Elevated total blood cholesterol is very much a changeable heart disease risk factor. In so many cases heart attacks, bypass surgeries, angioplasties, and sudden cardiac deaths occur in people with a total cholesterol level above 200mg/dL. Cholesterol medication is used to help control those levels.
Now here's a question: is it ok to eat eggs these days? Well, that shows up one of the problems, doesn't it? Advice always seems to be changing. Right now the general advice seems to be that you don't have to worry too much about eating eggs, whereas they used to be considered a very bad influence on your cholesterol. So who do you believe? As with all these things, it pays to look into the reasons why the advice has changed and then to apply some of your own common sense.
After all, we all love a nice egg, especially if it's been boiled correctly using an egg timer. If you don't, it's a bit of guesswork to get the right consistency, but more importantly you don't always know when the egg's been cooked. It's important to make sure you cook your eggs correctly, since – cholesterol aside – they can contain salmonella.
A better way to estimate risk of heart disease is to know your ratio of total cholesterol to good cholesterol. It's not just the total cholestrol level that tells you what your risk is: you need to know what your ratio is.
Always seek your doctor's advice for all health related issues. The information in this post is for information purposes only and is not intended to diagnose any ailment or suggest any treatment.
