Cholesterol and Heart Health Part I

Cholesterol and Heart Health

Hello folks! Welcome to Chen’s Nutrition Facts!

When you hear the word “cholesterol”, what comes to your mind? “It is bad for you”, “Don’t consume too much.” “Be away from high cholesterol foods”, “it gives you heart disease.” …… BUT WHY?

Many people associate cholesterol with the word “bad”. Is cholesterol really bad for you? What makes cholesterol bad for you? I will explain cholesterol systematically through the blog to answer some of these questions about cholesterol.

What is cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that’s found in all cells of your body. Look at your skin. Imagine taking one layer of cells out of your skin. And then, take one cell out of the layer. Finally, look at the cell membrane of the cell. Cholesterol is a part of your cell membrane. It is an essential structural component of animal cell membranes that is required to maintain both membrane structural integrity and fluidity. Cholesterol is in every cell of your body! You can’t live without it!

Is cholesterol bad?

Now we know that we can’t live without cholesterol. You should be able to answer this question. Right! Cholesterol is not bad! Cholesterol is essential to our body! There are three primary functions of cholesterol. It serves as a precursor for the biosynthesis of steroid hormones, bile acids, and vitamin D. In other words, cholesterol is building blocks of many essential hormones in our body.

 Let’s look into these three products of cholesterol. Steroid hormones involve glucocorticoid, which is involved with glucose metabolism; mineralocorticoid, which is involved with the salt and water balance in our body;   androgens, which stimulates and controls the development and maintenance of male characteristics; estrogens, which are involved with in both menstrual and estrous reproductive cycles; finally, progestigens, which are also involved with menstrual and estrous reproductive cycles, in addition to maintain pregnancy.

Bile acids are involved in emulsification of fat, which means that making large fat droplets into smaller droplets.

Body synthesizes Vitamin D from cholesterol under the exposure of sunlight. Vitamin D is best known of its function of helping absorbing calcium, which is essential to bone health.  Vitamin D is also responsible for enhancing intestinal absorption of iron, magnesium, phosphate and zinc. Research has shown that adequate Vitamin D is related to lower mortality rate, better bone health, lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, dementia, and vitamin D also helps maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Steroid hormones, bile acid, and vitamin D are derived from cholesterol. I have to say that cholesterol is such a versatile piece of fat-like substance! It is essential! It is not bad!