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Cholesterol Overview
For many years, the term Cholesterol was considered a bad word. Cholesterol in
general was thought to be bad for your health and it was believed that eating
foods which contain Cholesterol would actually increase your Cholesterol
levels and put you at increased risks for having heart attacks and other heart
disease problems.
Everyone was told to stop eating foods which contained cholesterol and to stop
eating foods high in fat. Unfortunately, these statements and beliefs were a
bit too generic. You see, cholesterol is actually needed by the body to
promote healthy cell growth and regeneration. And there are some types of fats
which are good for you, too, and also provide nutrition that our bodies need
to stay healthy.
Recent advances in medical science and research, however, has helped us come
to understand that there are actually good and bad types of cholesterol, as
well as good and bad types of fats. Research has also shown that actually
eating foods which contain cholesterol won't necessarily cause you to have a
heart attack or develop heart disease.
Good cholesterol is also known as HDL, or high-density lipoprotein. Bad
cholesterol however, is known as LDL, or low-density lipoprotein. When you
have too much LDL cholesterol in your body, especially when compared with the
amount of HDL cholesterol you have, you're at a higher risk for developing
heart diseases and problems.
Testing for the different types of cholesterol in your body is not yet an
exact science, but generally doctors want to see a good HDL to LDL ratio when
they do tests for these specific types of cholesterol. A ratio of 5 HDL to 1
LDL is usually considered good. Unfortunately, though, not all doctors will
test for the two types of cholesterol and their ratios. Instead, they rely on
the old method of testing general cholesterol levels, which is an imprecise
way of knowing how well your heart health actually is.
If LDL cholesterol is tested alone, however, doctors normally want to see a
result of less than 100mg in some cases, or 70mg in others. The difference in
the levels will depend on your particular doctor, because the 70mg or less
recommendation is somewhat new.
You can get cholesterol from foods, both plant and animal foods, actually, but
simply eating foods which contain cholesterol won't usually be the cause of
bad cholesterol levels in your body. In fact, some new research has started
showing that simple sugars and starches are actually more of a cause for alarm
than cholesterol containing foods, because the sugar and starch foods cause a
plaque build up in your blood vessels.
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