April 5th, 2011
By Craig Fear
Cholesterol. The almighty evil substance that will surely clog our arteries and send us all to an early death. You would think that the lower our cholesterol numbers the better.
You would think from listening to your doctor that no cholesterol would be what we should have in our body. The truth is you need cholesterol and lots of it! Let’s take a look at HDL an d LDL to get a better understanding of this.
Frist of all, LDL and HDL are not cholesterol! They are the proteins that carry cholesterol in the blood. LDL carries it away from the liver and HDL carries it back from the tissues to the liver. This is totally normal. LDL, the bad cholesterol, is really not bad.
It’s actually essential. You can’t live without it. Then why has it gotten such a bad reputation? Because it was thought that it has a natural tendency to get snagged and form clots. Question: Do you really think Nature is that stupid?
So this is how it works. Think of a fire department. Cholesterol is the fire department. The fire is sugar and processed foods. The rise of sugar in the past 100 years has coincided with the rise of chronic disease.
The average American consumes over 150 pounds of sugar per year! This will degrade the functioning of every system in your body, including the lining of your arteries.
Your body in its infinite wisdom will send cholesterol, packaged on LDL proteins to the source of the inflammation, where the cholesterol will help put out the fire. But guess what happens when we keep eating sugar and crap food? The fire never goes out, so cholesterol will form a clot.
So what to do?
Stay tuned for my next post and please let me hear your thoughts and comments.
Hi, my name is Craig Fear. And yes, that 's my real last name. Welcome to Fearless Eating, my blog about traditional foods where I dismantle common food myths and help you eat, well... fearlessly!
I'm also a certified Nutritional Therapist as well as a GAPS certified practitioner. My practice, Pioneer Valley Nutritional Therapy, is located in Northampton, Massachusetts.