Know How Good Cholesterol Can Benefit Your Health
Most people may think of ominous things whenever the word cholesterol is mentioned though they need not because once they understand what it is and how it threatens their health they will learn to adjust so that they can continue maintaining sound health. To be sure, cholesterol is steroids and alcohol combined and this combination is referred to as sterol, in addition it is also a fat that is called a lipid. What's more, most of the cholesterol that we have in our bodies is produced by the liver while the remaining quantities are actually ingested from the foods we that we eat.
Saturated Fats And Trans Fats
The main culprit as far as suffering from elevated cholesterol levels is saturated fat that causes the liver to produce excessive amounts of cholesterol, and trans fats also have the same kind of effect. Though cholesterol is also contained in animal foods, there is none of it in vegetables and other plant foods, and when in fat form it does not dissolve in blood. Thus, you need to use some other substance in order to get the fatty cholesterol to dissolve and that is where lipoproteins enter into the picture. Lipoproteins are special kind of carriers that can either be low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) with the former being bad for the body while the latter is good for the body.
It is LDL cholesterol that is the main carrier of bad cholesterol and when its level rises, the walls of your arteries may fill with plaque that will cause a narrowing of the arteries. This in turn will impair free flow of blood to necessary parts of the body. And when blood does not reach vital organs including the heart, you can be at risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. You will need to keep the levels of it at under 100 mg/dl to enjoy good health.
On the other hand, HDL or high-density lipoproteins will return cholesterol to the liver where it can be excreted and thus there is less chance of plaque build-up in the arteries, which means lower health risks. It follows then that in order to enjoy good health you need more HDL and less LDL. The best way to increase HDL is through exercise as well as by eliminating or drastically lowering intake of fats, more specifically saturated fats and trans fats.
Thus, the correct 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 should be kept as low as possible.
