Most people may think of worrying things whenever the word cholesterol is mentioned though they should not since once they learn what it is and in what manner cholesterol threatens their health they will learn to adjust in order to continue maintaining sound health. To be sure, cholesterol is steroids and alcohol combined and this combination is called sterol, in addition, it is also a fat that is named a lipid. Also, most of the cholesterol that our bodies have is formed by the liver whereas the remaining quantities are in fact ingested from the foods that we eat.



As far as suffering from elevated cholesterol levels, the main culprit is saturated fat that incites the liver to fabricate excessive quantities of cholesterol, and trans fats also make the same kind of effect. Though cholesterol is also enclosed in animal foods, there is no cholesterol in vegetables or any plant foods, and when in fat form it does not dissolve in blood. Thus, you have to use a number of other substance in order to get the fatty cholesterol to dissolve and that is where lipoproteins come into the scene. Lipoproteins are special kind of transporters that can either be high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) with LDL being bad for the body whereas the HDL is good for the body.

It is LDL cholesterol that is the main carrier of bad cholesterol and when its level gets up, the walls of your arteries may fill with plaque that will cause to narrow arteries. This in turn will harm free flow of blood to essential parts of the body. And when blood does not get to vital organs like the heart, you may be at risk of having a heart attack or stroke. You will have to keep the levels of cholesterol at under 100 mg/dl to benefit from good health.

On the other hand, HDL or high-density lipoproteins will return cholesterol to the liver in which it can be excreted and thus there will be less chance of plaque build-up in the arteries, which means lower health risks. In resume, in order to have good health, you have to get more HDL and less LDL. The best way to augment HDL is through exercise and also by eliminating or radically lowering ingestion of fats, more specifically saturated fats and trans fats.

Thus, the correct assessment of cholesterol is that if it is in the form of HDL then its level should be high while if it is LDL then its level should be kept as low as feasible.