The Cholesterol Myth

We all know there are two types of cholesterol, right? There's the good cholesterol and the bad cholesterol. The bad one, LDL cholesterol, builds up when you eat fatty foods and gets stuck in your arteries, forming plaque and cutting off your circulation so you get a heart attack and die. The good cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, fights the bad cholesterol. If your bad cholesterol gets too high, you can take your chances on exercise and changing your diet, but that might not work if your genetics are wrong, so you should take a drug and live a good life. I know this is true because an actor who plays a doctor on TV told me so, and then other actors dance through flowers or go surfing.

This cholesterol myth is misleading on so many levels. To unravel the myth, I will break it down into parts:

--What is cholesterol? And why do people think high cholesterol levels cause heart disease?
--What about HDL and LDL?
--What role do free radicals play in arterial plaque buildup?
--Why does cholesterol only stick near the heart and not in the itty bitty capillaries?
–Why is the statin treatment for high cholesterol dangerous?

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