Super Fitness Health BlogCholesterol Levels
Cholesterol is a waxlike and white substance that is present in some of the foods we eat; it is also manufactured by all the cells of our body, but most notably by the liver cells. Some cholesterol is critical to good health.
Not only is cholesterol an important component of cell walls, it is essential for the production of some. For most people between 70 and 75 percent of the cholesterol in their blood is produced by their liver; the rest, about 30 percent comes from the food they eat. Your foods cholesterol, therefore, is something that you can change by your own efforts.
Your body requires fat and cholesterol in order to maintain good health. During infancy and childhood fat is essential for normal brain development; throughout life, it is essential to provide energy and support growth. Cholesterol is used to build the walls of cells throughout your body and for the manufacture of key essential substances like hormones and vitamin D. That makes it important to have at least some fat and cholesterol in your body at all times.
If cholesterol is needed for healthy bodily function, how is cholesterol bad for you! It’s simple.The answer to these questions is simple. A certain amount of cholesterol is important for the body. However when your blood cholesterol levels exceed 200mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter), you become at risk of developing heart disease. It’s the reason so many of us are looking for a solution to high cholesterol.
Raised total blood cholesterol is clearly a changeable heart disease risk factor. In so many cases heart attacks, bypass surgeries, angioplasties, and sudden cardiac deaths occur in people with a total cholesterol level above 200mg/dL. Cholesterol medication is used to help control those levels.
Now here’s a question: is it ok to eat eggs these days? Well, that shows up one of the problems, doesn’t it? Advice always seems to be changing. Right now the general advice seems to be that you don’t have to worry too much about eating eggs, whereas they used to be considered a very bad influence on your cholesterol. So who do you believe? As with all these things, it pays to look into the reasons why the advice has changed and then to apply some of your own common sense.
After all, we all love a nice egg, especially if it’s been boiled correctly using an egg timer. If you don’t, it’s a bit of guesswork to get the right consistency, but more importantly you don’t always know when the egg’s been cooked. It’s important to make sure you cook your eggs correctly, since – cholesterol aside – they can contain salmonella.
But a better way to estimate risk of heart disease is to know your ratio of total cholesterol to good cholesterol. It’s not just the total amount of high cholesterol that tells you what your risk is: you do need to know what the ratio is.
Always seek your doctor’s advice for all health related issues. The information in this post is for information purposes only and is not intended to diagnose any ailment or suggest any treatment. You can find more information at www.highcholesterolfoods.net but should always seek clarification of any information found on the web from your own doctor, before doing anything.
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