What is Cholesterol? Part 2It may surprise you to find out that dietary cholesterol has only a modest impact on blood cholesterol levels for most of the population. When the body is working efficiently, the liver regulates itself to keep potentially harmful LDL-cholesterol from building up in the blood. And when we eat foods high in cholesterol, the small intestine absorbs less of it and the liver reduces its production of cholesterol. People called "cholesterol responders" have faulty cholesterol adjustment systems and their blood cholesterol is high, but this is quite rare. If this is true, you're probably wondering, what's all the fuss about? Well, cholesterol has accomplices in clogging up the arteries. Enter the role of fats we eat: saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. These three types of fat differ in their impact on cholesterol levels. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats can help lower cholesterol levels. Monounsaturated fats are found in greatest amounts in food from plants, including olive, flax and canola oil. When substituted for saturated fat, monounsaturated fat helps lower LDL's while leaving HDL's unchanged. Polyunsaturated fats are found in foods from plants, including safflower, sunflower, and corn oils. When used instead of saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats tend to lower LDL's but they lower HDL's as well. But don’t start cooking with these oils just yet. Saturated fats are found mainly in foods from animals such as meat, poultry, and whole-milk dairy products like cream, milk, ice cream, and cheese. Saturated fat is also found in butter, lard and coconut, palm kernel, and palm oils. Saturated fats have the dubious distinction of raising cholesterol levels far more than anything else we eat. That's why, if you're trying to lower your blood cholesterol level through diet, you must curb the total amount of fat you eat, especially saturated fat. But there’s catch here, coconut oil is saturated fat, but it doesn’t convert to trans fatty acids, so it doesn’t cause harm to our arteries and coconut oil is the oil of choice when you want to fry your food. That’s right, if you are going to fry food, ONLY use coconut oil as it will not harm you arteries. In addition, new evidence suggests that trans fats (formed when liquid vegetable oils are processed to make hard or semi-soft table spreads and cooking fats) are even worse for your heart than saturated fats. In an on-going study of 80,000 nurses, researchers found that the chance of suffering a heart attack was 53% for the women who consumed the largest amounts of trans fats than for those who consumed the least amount of them. But the women in the group with the largest consumption of total fat (46% of calories) had no greater risk of heart attack than those in the group with the lowest consumption of total fat (29% of calories). Does this mean as long as we eat the right fats we can eat as much as we like? I’ll tell you the answer next week. Be blessed and be healthy!
Ward W. Bond, Ph.D. |
