Cholesterol: The Hero We Deserve, Not the Villain We Were Sold

Sep 21, 2024

5 min read

Updated: Oct 11

Cholesterol… What Is It, Really?

Part 1: The Misunderstood Hero

Cholesterol gets a bad rap, but did you know your body actually needs it to survive?

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance found in every cell of your body. Your liver naturally produces it because it’s essential for building cell membranes, producing hormones, making vitamin D, and digesting fats.

So why have we spent decades treating something our bodies naturally produce as the enemy?

Cholesterol: The Hero, Not the Villain

First, your body doesn’t make cholesterol by accident. It has some pretty important jobs!

Cholesterol is your body’s repair substance. When you get a cut, the scar tissue that forms contains cholesterol. A similar process happens in your arteries. When blood vessels become damaged, cholesterol is involved in the body’s response.

It’s also needed to produce estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and adrenal hormones that help regulate blood pressure, metabolism, and stress.

And let’s not forget digestion! Your liver uses cholesterol to make bile salts, which help break down fats and absorb nutrients.

Some research has even raised questions about the relationship between low cholesterol levels and conditions like cancer and depression. Studies have reported associations between very low cholesterol and increased health risks, particularly when levels fall below 180 or 150.

So perhaps cholesterol deserves a little more credit than it’s been getting!

LDL and HDL: The Cholesterol Transport Team

We’ve all heard the labels:

LDL: The “bad” cholesterol.
HDL: The “good” cholesterol.

But here’s something interesting. LDL and HDL aren’t actually cholesterol. They’re lipoproteins that transport cholesterol throughout your body.

Think of them as little submarines delivering essential supplies!

LDL carries cholesterol to cells that need it, while HDL helps transport excess cholesterol back to the liver. These particles also transport other important fats and nutrients.

LDL has additional roles in the body’s immune response, which is why I question the idea that it’s simply something bad we need to eliminate.

And what about clogged arteries?

We’ve been taught that cholesterol clogs our arteries, but arterial plaque is more complicated than that. Calcium and inflammation also play important roles.

This is where vitamin K comes into the conversation. Vitamin K helps regulate how calcium is used in the body, and vitamin K2 is found in foods like egg yolks, cheese, and certain animal fats.

Funny how some of the foods we’ve been told to avoid contain nutrients our bodies actually need!

Saturated Fat vs. Vegetable Oils: How Did We Get Here?

For generations, people cooked with butter, lard, and other traditional animal fats. Then, in the 1950s, saturated fat and cholesterol became the villains of heart health.

Doctors began recommending that people replace animal fats with vegetable oils like soybean, corn, and canola oil.

But what else was happening during this time?

People were smoking like chimneys!

Remember those old cigarette advertisements featuring doctors? Wild, right?

Smoking damages the endothelium, the delicate inner lining of your blood vessels, and contributes to inflammation and cardiovascular disease.

Yet instead of focusing solely on the many factors contributing to heart disease, much of the attention shifted toward dietary cholesterol and saturated fat.

Meanwhile, vegetable oils became increasingly popular.

Many of these oils are high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which can oxidize when exposed to excessive heat. They’re also often rich in omega-6 fatty acids, raising questions about the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats in our diets.

This brings me to something I believe deserves far more attention.

The Real Culprit: Inflammation

Rather than looking at cholesterol alone, why aren’t we talking more about what damages our arteries in the first place?

Smoking, highly processed foods, poor metabolic health, and chronic inflammation all deserve attention.

When blood vessels become damaged, cholesterol is part of the body’s response. But when inflammation and damage continue, plaque can develop over time.

My question is simple: Are we focusing too much on cholesterol numbers and not enough on what’s happening inside the body?

Dietary cholesterol also doesn’t translate directly into blood cholesterol. Your liver helps regulate cholesterol production, adjusting how much it makes based partly on dietary intake.

So when someone tells you to swap your butter for margarine simply because it’s cholesterol-free, I think it’s worth looking a little closer at the ingredients and the bigger picture.

The Statin Money Machine

Statins are prescribed to lower cholesterol, and they’re big business for the pharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceutical companies have financial relationships with medical professionals through research funding, consulting, and speaking engagements. I believe these relationships deserve transparency, especially when medications are prescribed for long-term use. But beyond the money, I have questions about the consequences of lowering cholesterol.

Statins can reduce the body’s production of CoQ10, a substance important for cellular energy production, particularly in muscles. Muscle pain and weakness are recognized side effects for some people.

There have also been debates about the relationship between cholesterol-lowering treatments and other health concerns, including cancer and neurological conditions.

I think these questions deserve discussion rather than dismissal.

My concern is that we’re sometimes so focused on lowering a number that we overlook nutrition, exercise, stress, inflammation, and the body’s need for cholesterol.

Are we treating the underlying problem, or simply changing the numbers on a blood test?

The Honolulu Heart Study: An Interesting Perspective

One study I find particularly interesting is the Honolulu Heart Program, which followed men over several decades.

Researchers observed associations between declining cholesterol levels and increased mortality in older participants.

Findings like these challenge the idea that lower cholesterol is automatically better for everyone, although they don’t necessarily establish that higher cholesterol causes longer life.

It’s a reminder that cholesterol and overall health are more complicated than one number on a lab report.

Some people with low cholesterol experience heart attacks, while others with higher cholesterol live long lives.

So shouldn’t we be looking beyond cholesterol alone?

Let’s Look at the Bigger Picture

Here’s what I want people to understand.

Cholesterol is essential to life. It’s not some useless substance your body produces just to cause trouble!

I believe we’ve spent far too much time fearing cholesterol and not enough time understanding how our bodies function.

Instead of focusing only on a cholesterol number, let’s start asking questions.

What’s causing inflammation? What are we eating? Are we moving our bodies? How are we managing stress? And are we addressing the root causes of poor health?

I’m not saying we should ignore our health or our bloodwork. I’m saying we should understand what those numbers mean and look at the whole picture.

Because our bodies are far more complicated than a single number on a lab report.

Knowledge gives us the opportunity to ask better questions and make more informed decisions about our health.

And that’s what I want you to take away from this!

I’ve included links below to scientific studies published on PubMed, along with articles written by doctors, so you can dig a little deeper, explore the research for yourself, and come to your own conclusions.