Great American Nutrition Fallacies:Cholesterol

Cholesterol is bad for you and we should all have the same cholesterol level. As mentioned in #2, cholesterol is essential in the production of many hormones in the body.  Doctors love to manipulate blood cholesterol levels with medications.  Everyone who gets a physical has their blood cholesterol levels tested.  Some people have high cholesterol levels while other might have low.  If the cholesterol level is considered too high then the doctor will administer a statin type drug to block the production of cholesterol in the liver.  But I feel that this doesn’t solve the problem nor is it always the best approach.  If I were to get my cholesterol tested it would most likely be high.  This is because I bodybuild and am constantly tearing down muscle tissue.  Naturally my cholesterol levels would be high to help in the repair of the tissue.  Cholesterol is not the bad guy. In fact, cholesterol helps increase the anabolic properties necessary to increase lean body mass.  However, I would probably be told by the doctor that I would have to take a drug to block the production of cholesterol. This would be disastrous for me because it would be going against what my body is capable of producing to help support my physiological make up.  To say that all humans should have exactly the same blood cholesterol level seems strange to me.

Cholesterol is necessary for healthy functioning of the human body.  If you really want to get nit picky then I would say stop eating refine, processed sugar. Sugar is the problem for blocking the coronary arteries– not cholesterol.  Sugar scratches the interior lining of the arteries, cholesterol is released to help patch up the scratches. The more sugar that is consumed the more cholesterol is produced, until eventually there is so much damage to the artery wall that the cholesterol builds up and occludes the artery.  So when the surgeon opens up the person and sees that the artery is blocked by cholesterol they assume that the person’s heart attack is a direct result of cholesterol, when in fact it was a result of eating too much sugar.  The cholesterol was only trying to help repair the artery wall, but the person kept eating sugar causing damage to the artery. Cholesterol is not the bad guy, over consuming sugar is.