What is Cholesterol? Understanding its Nature!
If you’re like me and have really high cholesterol, you’ve probably asked yourself a number of questions such as; “How do I lower it? What are the risks of high cholesterol? And what is cholesterol anyway??” Most people focus their attention on ways of lowering cholesterol without ever really knowing what cholesterol is. While you certainly don’t need to know, being able to answer the question ‘what is cholesterol?’ may at least give you some better insights on why its important to keep it low, and how. If not, it may at least help prepare you for a spot on Jeopardy.
One way of answering the question, what is cholesterol? Is to look at it from an organic chemistry point of view, although this might appear complex to a lay person, it is really quite easily understood. Cholesterol is an aerobic chemical compound that is hydrophobic in nature. Still sounds complex doesn’t it?
Perhaps a better way to answer the question is to look at what cholesterol does to the body. Cholesterol does serve a purpose in the body, it is not all bad in nature. Cholesterol provides the membranes of cells with a flexible, fluid quality in animals. Unlike the cells of plants which are inflexible, animal cells have to bend and flex without breaking. Cells in animals (of which we humans are), have membranes that consist of a double layer of lipids. Each lipid cell layer has a hydrophilic head and tail. The hydrophilic head aligns with the watery interior and exterior of the cell, and the tail aligns in the centre of the cell which is relatively free of water. Cholesterol likes to be in the centre of the double layer of lipids in the cell membrane, and its molecules are small enough to flow freely here. This flow of cholesterol molecules is what allows the cell membrane to remain elastic and flexible.
Cholesterol is therefore vital to animal life. It is transported throughout the body in lipoprotein carriers that fall under a few different classes. The two general classes are high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and low-density lipoproteins (LDL). It is the LDL carriers that pose health risks in high levels by getting stuck along arteries, and not actually cholesterol.
So, what is cholesterol? In broader terms it is something we cannot live without but in terms of LDL, it could be something that could kill us. Essentially cholesterol is a building block of the body, it is produced naturally in the liver and we do not need to eat or take any kind of supplements to ensure its production. You liver will produce all the cholesterol you will ever need. Therefore there is nothing you need to eat to produce it. Cut out all LDL cholesterol producing foods and your body will continue to run just fine without them.
