11/07/2022
What is cholesterol and its effects on your overall wellbeing
Cholesterol is a fat-like, waxy substance found in your blood. It travels through the body and aids the production of hormones, acts as a building block for human tissue and helps the liver produce bile (which helps you digest food). Cholesterol is vital for making your body work properly.
When people speak about blood cholesterol you may hear people use the terms LDL and HDL cholesterols. If you get your cholesterol checked through a blood test, your doctor will talk about these two terms, so it’s good to know what they mean.
Cholesterol can’t travel through the body by itself. Instead, it hitches a ride with a compound of fat and protein called Lipoprotein (the taxi driver for your cholesterol). LDL and HDL are types of Lipoprotein.
LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein, but you can simply remember this as the “bad” cholesterol. This is because too much LDL cholesterol can stick to blood vessels, and as mentioned above, build up on the walls of your arteries, making it harder for blood to travel through your body or even stopping it completely.
Because of this, you want to keep your LDL levels low.
HDL, on the other hand, is your friend. It stands for high-density lipoprotein and is the ‘good’ cholesterol your body needs. HDL cholesterol keeps your cardiovascular system healthy and helps remove bad cholesterol from the blood vessels by carrying it to the liver, where it’s then broken down and removed from the body
