• Your body uses cholesterol to make hormones that help you deal with stress and protect against heart disease and cancer.
• Your body needs cholesterol to make all the sex hormones, including androgen, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and DHEA.
• Your body uses cholesterol to make vitamin D, vital for the bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction and immune system function.
• The bile salts are made from cholesterol. Bile is vital for digestion and assimilation of dietary fats.
• Cholesterol acts as an antioxidant, protecting us against free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.
• Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain.
• Since serotonin is the body's natural "feel-good" chemical, it's not surprising that low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior, depression and suicidal tendencies.
• Mother's milk is especially rich in cholesterol and contains a special enzyme that helps the baby utilize this nutrient. Babies and children need cholesterol-rich foods throughout their growing years to ensure proper development of the brain and nervous system.
• Dietary cholesterol plays an important role in maintaining the health of the intestinal wall. This is why low-cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.
• Finally, the body uses cholesterol to repair damaged cells. This means that higher cholesterol levels are actually beneficial. Meyer Texon, M.D., a well-known pathologist at New York University Medical Center, points out that indicting fat and cholesterol for hardening the arteries is like accusing white blood cells of causing infection, rather than helping the immune system to address it.

FACT: Deaths from heart disease and all other causes increased 11 percent for each 1 percent drop in cholesterol according to a 30-year follow-up of the famous Framingham Study.

Do the American people know this? No, because the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute published the reverse of the above facts in the journal Circulation. Yes, believe it or not!

And the fact is that for women, low cholesterol is more dangerous than high cholesterol.

Another fact is that when people maintain low levels of cholesterol in their blood over long periods of time with statin drugs, their risk of death from all causes will increase.

Taken from the book Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon.

This entry was posted in Alternative Medicine, Commentary

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