Cholesterol

Cholesterol may be the most misunderstood substance in most people’s minds. And it’s all wrapped up with fat.

For years our mothers have been telling us to eat a diet low in fat, with lots of fibre-rich fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The problem with fat is that it has high calories (bad for most urban Canadians) and in the old days we believed that eating fat was a serious cause of heart disease.

In the old days we thought that eating fat boosted cholesterol in the blood, and cholesterol deposits in the bloodstream cause narrowing of the arteries. In the heart’s supply arteries a blockage causes a heart attack. We know that is bad. So we existed for many years with this view: eating fat causes heart attacks.

It’s understandable that people are a bit confused right now, because the view has become a bit more complicated. But it’s not so complicated that you can’t understand it. Just think about it a bit.

There are two types of cholesterol: HDL (we’ll call it good cholesterol) and LDL (we’ll call it bad cholesterol). Having lots of good cholesterol is good, because it cleans up bad cholesterol. You want more good than bad cholesterol, and preferably lots more. If your good cholesterol cleans up the bad cholesterol, then it doesn’t deposit in your arteries, and so you avoid a heart attack.

The evidence for the benefit of good cholesterol is getting stronger every day, to the point that today it was reported that keeping good cholesterol high is important even if you take drugs that artifically lower your bad cholesterol. In other words, it may have benefits beyond just cleaning up.

So where does this leave us with fats? Well, we need to realize that there are four broad classes of fat (for our purposes) and they have different effects on the good and bad cholesterol.

The worst fats are trans fats. They raise your bad cholesterol and lower the good cleaning-up kind. Most are in convenience foods. I try not to eat artificial trans fats at any time, and don’t worry about eating the trace amounts in milk and meat products.

Then comes saturated fats. They raise your bad cholesterol, but also raise the cleaning up good cholesterol. Best to limit them where possible, but I don’t declare war on them.

Unsaturated non-trans fats are the key! Eating unsaturated fats lowers your bad cholesterol and increases your good cholesterol. By doing so they reduce your risk of heart attack.

Of course, unsaturated fats are still high in calories, but as long as you don’t overeat, replacing trans fats with unsaturated fats is the way to good heart health!

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› health     2007-09-27 14:38   ...0