There is a big misconception of cholesterol being bad, but I’m going to try to clear things up. There is very little explanation of cholesterol except maybe “the HDL is the good one, you want that high, and the LDL is the bad one, you want that low. And for total cholesterol, as low as possible is healthiest.”
There is so much money and people invested in the concepts of good/bad cholesterol, however we know little about it.
-15 million Americans take statins
-20 billion dollars profited from statins
-hundreds of million spent on advertising for statins
What is cholesterol?
-It is a sterol, naturally occurring steroid which provides GROWTH for all cells
-A fat, naturally occurring molecule that helps the body store and provide energy
-allows precise signaling of the nervous system
-an essential structural component of every cell membrane in the body
-provides healing for inflammation.
Moreover, it acts as an antioxidant and a precursor for brain supporting molecules like Vitamin D, testosterone and estrogen.
From what you’ve just read, wouldn’t you want as much of this as possible? Yes.
The brain demands high amounts of cholesterol as a source of fuel, but neurons themselves cannot generate significant amounts of it. So, it depends on cholesterol from food that’s delivered by the bloodstream via a special carrier protein called LDL, ‘low density lipoprotein.’ This is the same protein that’s demonized as being bad, however there’s nothing bad about LDL, which is not even a cholesterol molecule at all! It is a vehicle for transporting life sustaining cholesterol from the blood to the brains neurons.
Where did the confusion set in? When LDL (nutrient transporter) is high, it just means that it’s levels have increased because it is aiding poor situations in the body, for example:
– low in energy = the body needs cholesterol via transport of LDL, therefore LDL goes up
– inflammation in the body = the body needs cholesterol via transport of LDL, LDL goes up
– high cognition situations (stress at work) = the body needs cholesterol via transport LDL, LDL goes up
You get the point. What we are seeing here is when the body is in problematic situations, it needs cholesterol that comes to the rescue via help from LDL. It is other problems in the body that force LDL to be on high alert, but the actual LDL readings have nothing to do with bad health. And this is where we’ve made the mistake in thinking that when the body is unhealthy, (from high blood sugar, disease, inflammation, etc.) it is the LDL reading that reads high in our blood results, which we have mistaken as “bad LDL” instead of the pre-mentioned causes!
When we’re talking about bad cholesterol from food, as there is no such thing as bad cholesterol created in the body, we must look to highly oxidative trans fats/oils, such as vegetable oil, margarine, canola oils, safflower oil, etc.
The readings on your blood test that you’ll want to look for if you ingest these foods are:
-high CRP(C-reactive protein) – signs of high inflammation
-high triglycerides – caused by trans fats or processed sugars that turn to fat once digested).
-high blood glucose – caused by processed carbohydrate
Studies show that patients that fell victim to heart attack and stroke had cholesterol levels at a normal to low ranges, whereas readings of inflammation, blood sugar and triglyceride readings were at high levels.
Top foods that contain good cholesterol:
-egg yolk -grass fed liver -grass fed read meat -fatty fish -coconut products -grass fed butter
