What’s Good About Cholesterol?

Did you have any idea that cholesterol is actually essential for you to live? It is embedded in cell membranes within your body for fluidity and permeability of those cells. Cholesterol also has other very important functions in your body that shouldn’t be ignored or suppressed.

Interestingly enough, cholesterol is an aid in the making of bile. Bile is what is secreted from your gallbladder to break down fats during digestion. However, too much cholesterol can lead to atherosclerosis which is a chronic inflammatory response in the walls of arteries. Atherosclerosis is the reason that cholesterol has such a bad rap. Believe it or not, there is only one cholesterol. The reason why cholesterol has been blamed for atherosclerosis is the mechanism in which it is transported in our blood. See fat (cholesterol) and water (blood) don’t mix so the cholesterol is hidden in proteins to move through the blood. These different transporters are the HDL and LDL that you hear about.

Cholesterol is actually really important for functions within the body. Vitamin D couldn’t be made without cholesterol since it is a major precursor to vitamin D. Since Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in the United States, it can make one wonder if some of that can’t be a result of over 12 million Americans taking cholesterol lowering drugs.

According to Wikipedia, cholesterol is also a major precursor to various steroid hormones (which include cortisol and aldosterone in the adrenal glands, and the sex hormones progesterone, the various estrogens, testosterone, and derivatives).

Therefore, we really wouldn’t exist without the beneficial effects of cholesterol.

The Cholesterol Cycle

By Ron Rosedale, MD

One could speculate that to replace damaged, old and worn-out cells the liver needs to be notified to either recycle or manufacture cholesterol since no cell, human or otherwise, can be made without it. In this case, cholesterol is being manufactured and distributed in your bloodstream to help you repair damaged tissue and in fact to keep you alive.

If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place. It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation.