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What is Cholesterol
If you’re
like me and have really high cholesterol, you’ve probably
asked yourself a number of questions such as; “How do I lower
it? What are the risks of high cholesterol? And
what is cholesterol anyway??” Most people focus
their attention on ways of lowering cholesterol without ever really
knowing what cholesterol is. While you certainly
don’t need to know, being able to answer the question
‘what is cholesterol?’ may at least give you some
better insights on why it’s important to keep it low, and
how. If not, it may at least help prepare you for a spot on
Jeopardy.
So what is cholesterol? Cholesterol is quite simply a class
of aerobic chemical compounds that are mostly hydrophobic in
nature. So what the heck does that mean? Well, if
you never took organic chemistry or biochemistry in college, or never
went to college, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. Even
if you took those classes, it still doesn’t tell you very
much.
A better way to answer ‘what is cholesterol?’ is to
focus on what it does. The chief purpose of cholesterol is to
provide animal cell membranes with a fluid, flexible quality.
Unlike plant cells, which are rigid, animal cells have to be able to
bend and stretch without breaking. Animal cell membranes
consist of two layers of lipids, each with a hydrophilic head and long,
hydrophilic tail. The heads orient themselves towards the
watery cell interior, and the watery exterior of the cell, while the
tails line up in the relatively water free center.
Cholesterol, which is mostly hydrophobic, thus prefers being in the
center area of the membrane, and is small enough to flow through this
center area freely. The flow of cholesterol molecules through
the interior areas of a cell membrane provides the membrane with
flexibility.
Cholesterol is therefore vital to animal life. It is
transported throughout the body in lipoprotein carriers that fall under
a few different classes. The two general classes are
high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and low-density lipoproteins
(LDL). It is the LDL carriers that pose health risks in high
levels by getting stuck along arteries, and not actually
cholesterol.
When people ask me ‘what is cholesterol?’
that’s usually what I tell them. I also tell them
that it is an essential building block of several hormones, and is
naturally produced by the liver. While our diets typically
have plenty of cholesterol in them, the liver will naturally be able to
meet all of our cholesterol needs without getting any from
food. Therefore, you can never eat too little
cholesterol. So, the next time someone asks you
‘what is cholesterol?’ you know what to
say.
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A Healthy Dose of Good Advice
