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Understanding Your Body and Cholesterol

Do you know what cholesterol really is?  Where does it come from and what does it do?  Why do you need it? 

Cholesterol is a form of fat produced by the liver (the other form of fat produced by the liver is triglycerides.)  Cholesterol comes from two places, what you eat (animal products) and what your liver produces.  Cholesterol is used by your body to make sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen and it is used to make and repair most cell membranes throughout your body.  

There are three types of cholesterol, HDL (High Density Lipoproteins), LDL (Low Density Lipoproteins) and VLDL (Very Low Density Lipoproteins).  Your body needs cholesterol to function and maintain itself properly, but having too much cholesterol can cause havoc in your blood vessels — specifically in your arteries.  Our focus will be on the HDL and LDL cholesterols.  LDL cholesterol is the problem child when it comes to causing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), a form of heart disease.

LDL and HDL have different jobs.  LDL (think Little Delivery Lads) delivers cholesterol to cells in the body that needs it and also deposits cholesterol on the walls of arteries.  HDL (think Helpful De-cluttering Ladies), on the other hand, goes around collecting up the extra, unused cholesterol from the cells and plucks cholesterol deposits off the arterial walls then transports it back to the liver to be converted to bile. 

Knowing this, imagine your blood vessels are the streets of a little city inside your body.  In this little city there are too many LDL’s driving around with their trucks overflowing, and stuff flying off everywhere – like the trash that’s frequently seen lying along the highway.  Now imagine that your little city doesn’t have enough clean up crews to pick up the trash along the roads.  Soon, there’s so much crap on the roads it’s impossible to drive anywhere.  It’s easy to understand why having too much LDL cholesterol and not enough HDL cholesterol can lead to and an excessive, unhealthy build up of cholesterol plaques on the insides of your arteries.

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