What if all you’ve been told about lowering cholesterol to prevent disease was just not true?

For the longest time I’ve been coming upon studies that buck the conventional–and very profitable-wisdom that cholesterol causes heart disease. The research I’ve been doing further disproves the link between what we eat and our cholesterol levels.

Now before your inner critic commandeers the floor, read on and I’ll do my best to lay a foundation of science to back up my title.

Cholesterol is manufactured by the liver and is essential for life. It is not, as so many people think, “fat in the blood.” It’s a waxy substance, soapy to the touch, and only 7% of it is found there. The other 93%, according to Dr. Owen Fanorow, “is located in every cell of the body, where its unique waxy, soapy consistency provides the cell membranes with their structural integrity and regulates the flow of nutrients into and waste products out of the cells.”

Here are a few of the roles cholesterol plays:

• Cholesterol is a precursor of vitamin D in the skin. When exposed to sunlight, this precursor molecule is converted to its active form for use in the body.
• Cholesterol is the main component of bile acids, which aid in the digestion of foods, particularly fatty foods. Without cholesterol we could not absorb the essential fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K from the food we eat.
• Cholesterol is necessary for normal growth and development of the brain and nervous system . Cholesterol coats the nerves and makes the transmission of nerve impulses possible.
• Cholesterol gives skin its ability to shed water.
• Cholesterol is important for normal growth and repair of tissues since every cell membrane and the organelles (the tiny structures inside the cells that carry out specific functions) within the cells are rich in cholesterol. For this reason newborn animals feed on milk or other cholesterol-rich foods, such as the yolks of eggs, which are there to provide food for the developing bird or chick embryos.

Let’s stop there though the list goes on and on. I have one more really important aspect of cholesterol’s importance to introduce now as it’s flu–infectious bug– season.

According to Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, in his book Fat and Cholesterol Are Good For You!, “Did you know that high cholesterol protects you against infectious diseases?” He cites many studies but this one stood out to me. (And understand that this is the Reader’s Digest version)

David Jacobs, Ph.D, Mayo Professor of Public Health followed more than 100,000 healthy individuals in the San Francisco Bay area for 15 years. He found that those who had low cholesterol to start the study had been admitted to the hospital more times for infectious diseases.

It is a known and accepted fact that bacteria and other such bugs may play an important role in heart failure. Without going in to a long explanation of why and how that works, suffice to say that researchers both here and abroad discovered that not only was mortality highest when immune function was not optimal but mortality was higher in the patients with the lowest cholesterol!

Maybe all this lowering of LDL cholesterol isn’t the healthy prescription it’s cracked up to be?

Tomorrow I’ll continue laying a foundation with more on the function of cholesterol in the body and whether or not your food choices cause your numbers to increase or not.  If you don’t want to wait for me to lay it all out here over the next few days I’d suggest you take a look at Dr. Dwight Lundell’s book, The Cholesterol Lie. Dr. Lundell was a heart surgeon, has performed over 5000 bypass surgeries, and felt he had to tell the world what he learned after seeing so many damaged hearts. His mission is to keep people off the operating table and his book will tell you how and why what we all now believe as gospel hasn’t got a prayer in terms of keeping us healthy.