Cholesterol - Find Practical Facts for Your Family

Most people may think of ominous things whenever the word cholesterol is mentioned though they should not because as soon as they understand what it is and how cholesterol is dangerous for their health they will learn to change things in order to carry on maintaining excellent health. To be sure, cholesterol is alcohol and steroids united and this mixture is referred to as sterol, plus, it is also a fat that is called a lipid. Also, the most part of the cholesterol that our bodies have is produced by the liver while the remaining quantities are actually ingested from what we eat.

The main culprit as far as suffering from elevated cholesterol levels is saturated fat that causes the liver to produce large quantities of cholesterol, and trans fats also make the same type of result. Though cholesterol is also contained in animal foods, there is none of it in vegetables and any plant foods, and when in fat form it doesn't get dissolved in blood. So, you have to use some other substance for getting the fatty cholesterol to dissolve and that is where lipoproteins enter into the scene. Lipoproteins are special type of transporters that can be either low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) with LDL being bad for the body while the HDL is good for the body.

It is LDL cholesterol that is the main carrier of bad cholesterol and when its level gets up, the walls of your arteries may fill with plaque that could cause a narrowing of the arteries. This in turn will harm free flow of blood to essential parts of the body. And when blood doesn't get to vital organs like the heart, you could be at risk of suffering a stroke or a heart attack. To enjoy good health, you will have to keep the levels of it at under 100 mg/dl. On the other hand, HDL or high-density lipoproteins will return cholesterol to the liver where it can be excreted and thus there will be less possibility of plaque build-up in the arteries, which means lower health risks. In resume, in order to have good health, you have to get more HDL and less LDL. The best way to increase HDL is by doing exercise as well as by eliminating or radically lowering intake of fats, more specifically saturated fats and trans fats.

So, the right assessment of cholesterol is that if it is in the form of HDL then its level should be high while if it is LDL then its level has to be kept as low as possible.