High Cholesterol Causes Heart Disease? : Part 3

When we talk about cholesterol, everyone seem to be scared of having high level of cholesterol, making it sound like something really bad, a villain, the 'bad guy'. When i eat eggs, I have people telling me it will contribute to high cholesterol and risk of getting heart disease. God, this insanity has got to stop at some point! Does anyone even know what cholesterol really is? 

Everyone I've spoken to, seemed to look stunned and surprised when I say, "High Cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease". Some people seem to care and curious, but most people just walk away or they just don't care if they drop dead one day. Am I even surprise why the rates of heart disease increases every year?

Cholesterol, has been a favorite theme on the airwaves for the past 30 years or so, and mostly it seems to get a pretty harsh press. Everywhere you go, posters, advertisements, articles, news, saying that high cholesterol causes heart disease. Is that right? Now, I'm going to give you the REAL facts about cholesterol and my own take on this. 

Cholesterol, is essential for life. Without cholesterol, you won't be here right now, there wouldn't even be female and male on this planet. Without cholesterol, you will not even be able to learn and have memory. Without cholesterol, you will not be able to produce Vitamin D and all the steroid hormones, including DHEA, estrogen, testosterone, etc. All your cells membranes are made up of cholesterol folks! Without it, they would disintegrate, as cholesterol provides structural integrity. Cholesterol has been protecting us from diseases for thousands of years. 

Let me ask you. Why do you think an egg yolk is full of cholesterol? It is because it takes one hell of a lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken. It also takes a lot of cholesterol to build and maintain a healthy human being. In fact, cholesterol is so vital that all cells, apart from neurons, can manufacture cholesterol, and one of the key functions of liver is to synthesize cholesterol. We also have an entire transportation system dedicated to move cholesterol around the body.

It should be pointed out that all these require a great deal of cholesterol. So much that it is almost impossible to eat enough cholesterol to meet your daily cholesterol needs. In order to meet this gap, the liver has to produce four to five times the amount of cholesterol as you ingest. In fact, you need to eat about six to eight egg yolk a day, and everyday, to meet the daily requirement of cholesterol production in the body. As most of us never do this, the liver fills the gap. 

So, how could it possibly make sense to claim that eating, say one third of our daily cholesterol requirement, would overwhelm our metabolic control systems, causing cholesterol levels to spiral out of control. If we did eat managed to eat four or five eggs a day, the liver would simply produce less cholesterol to keep the levels steady.

However much cholesterol you eat, the liver just keeps churning away, manufacturing as much as ever. Almost everyone I met kept saying this food and that food has high cholesterol and it is harmful to the body and could cause heart disease. If you have done your homework, you will know that 25% of total cholesterol in our body is in our brain. This is how all of us can recognize, remember, learn and process our thoughts since we are infants till now.  We need significant amount of cholesterol in our body to maintain all 60 trillion cells in our body. Without cholesterol, we wouldn't be here today. Cholesterol is antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, it protects human being from getting all sorts of diseases including cancer.

Now, let's move to to discuss about fat, primarily saturated fat. I'm sure some of you heard that consumption of saturated fat raises cholesterol levels in the body. Saturated fat was labeled as 'mass murderer' and partner in crime with cholesterol. Is there any truth in this hypothesis? The truth will be revealed and exposed in later discussion. Saturated fats, so we are repeatedly informed, raise our cholesterol levels, thus killing us all from heart disease. In addition to this, they have been implicated in causing cancer and diabetes and other nasty conditions too numerous to mention.

Eskimos, who have been living for generations after generations, eat high saturated fat, high protein in their daily diet. And you know what? They don't have cancer, heart diseases or any major disease known to  modern society. These diseases are literally unheard of during their generations. Then, we have unsaturated fat, which is widely known as the 'good' fat. It is also known as Omega 3 fatty acid, which is the healthiest molecule in the world. Indeed, you are looking at the substance that cures many diseases and ailments. All fats have fatty acids, and all fatty acids are fats.

Let's look into polyunsaturated fat. I got many colleagues and friends asking me different types of fats, which one is good, and which is bad, what to avoid and eat. More people are avoiding eating fats, but they are gaining more weight and getting fatter. How could that be? As I mentioned before, eating fats, especially healthy good fats, WILL NOT make you fat. Now, what is polyunsaturated fat? It is a fat, with more than one double bond in it. We then have monounsaturated fat, the fat with one double bond. Usually, they comes from vegetable sources, fishes, oils, seeds, etc.

I wrote earlier about trans fat weeks back, and it is another type of 'altered' fat, which is 'created' by mankind. With big machine, extremely high pressure and a few heavy metal catalysts, can manufacture trans bonds. High temperature heating while cooking, also can generate trans fat. It is also known as trans fatty acids. It is unnatural and damaging to our health. Our body's enzyme systems, are not designed to deal with trans bonds. This type of fat is the villain of all fats. In fact, trans fat causes heart disease, and not cholesterol! I will disclose in coming posts what other factors contribute to heart disease.

Does anyone knows how fat is transported in our body? Triglycerides. Yes, three fat bonds, attached to a backbone called glycerol. Glycerol, is actually half of a glucose or sugar molecule in a triglyceride, and when triglycerides are broken down into their component parts, glycerol travels to the liver, which combines two molecules to form glucose. The fats go to muscles to be burned up. In short, stored fats are part sugar, providing energy.

You must be wondering why am I discussing about fats and cholesterol without seeming to be the slightest connection among them. Well, the reason for this is because there is no connection between them! Yet the way they are discussed today, the impression seems to be given that the things are virtually the same. Fats, cholesterol, cholesterol, fats. Low-fat diet lowers cholesterol, high-fat diet raises cholesterol.

It is also true that foods containing cholesterol also tend to contain fats, specifically saturated fat. That's because foods containing cholesterol comes from animal sources, and so do foods containing saturated fat. I will discuss about the synthesis of cholesterol in our body in the next post, stay tuned.