| Eighty-percent
of the cholesterol in your body is produced by your liver, and the rest
comes from foods like meats, eggs and dairy products.
The biggest influence on
blood cholesterol level is fats in your diet, not the amount of cholesterol
you eat from food. Narrowing it down further what really matters is the
"type" of fat you eat.
Their
are two types of fats, "good fat" which are monounsaturated and
polyunsaturated fats, lower your risk of disease such as heart disease and
atherosclerosis.
"Bad fats" being saturated
and trans fats will increase the risk for certain diseases. The key to
healthy eating is to substitute the bad fats for good fats avoiding the
trans fats. See: Guide to Good and Bad Cholesterol
Major dietary sources
containing high cholesterol include cheese, egg yolks, beef, pork, poultry,
and shrimp. See: Foods to Reduce Bad Cholesterol.
Cholesterol
is insoluble in blood and is transported in the body's circulatory system
within lipoproteins.
There is a large range of
lipoproteins within blood, generally called, from larger to smaller size:
chylomicrons, very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), intermediate density
lipoprotein (IDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density
lipoprotein (HDL). The actual cholesterol within all the various
lipoproteins is identical.
LDL = bad cholesterol and
HDL = good cholesterol |
