How Much Do You Know About Cholesterol?

How often should you have your cholesterol checked? What should your LDL be? How about your total cholesterol? And which is worse: stick margarine, eggs or nuts?

Not sure of the answers? You're not alone. For a cholesterol challenge, an Everwell video crew headed to a Farmer's market to find out how much everyday people know about these cholesterol topics and others.

And, turns out, very few people have all the answers. "Terrible," lamented one of the volunteers when the anchor asked how she was doing.

To get to the bottom of these questions, Everwell interviewed experts to help straighten out fact from myth. Check out their answers and try out the quiz for yourself below.

Comments

[DrP]

09:41 PM on 06/08/2011

For an excellent explanation of cholesterol, what readings mean, what are the important markers, and what sort of diet will optimalize your readings may I recommend:
The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living by Phinney and Volek.
This book presents the science in a clear and understandable manner and cuts through all of the misconceptions.
Main point: The most important readings are HDL (the higher the better) and triglycerides (the lower the better). Both are improved by reducing consumption of grains, starches, and sugars and increasing consumption of fat. Yes, Really.

[polishlogician]

11:45 PM on 06/08/2011

yep, my contention is that cholesterol encased in LDLs is high when cell repair and formation is high, this could be through body growth, muscle growth (rigorous exercise, or injury rehab), or infection as body tries to repair itself replicating healthy cells.

I think many with high LDLs may be suffering arteriosclerosis from bacterial infection which would thrive in a sugar-rich environment.

Such an infection would also increase white blood cell counts. Now would any doctor treating a patient, seeing an elevated white cell blood count put them on a diet to reduce their white blood cells?

There has never been any definitive study linking cholesterol with heart disease in the past 40 years. There is no such thing as "good" cholesterol and "bad"...there's just cholesterol...your body produces about 1 gram per day, if you eat more of it, your produces less, if you eat less cholesterol it produces more.

Cholesterol is all good, those who eat less only force their liver to make more, and the body doesn't want to, that why HDLs return the recycled cholesterol back to the liver to begin with. Give your body and liver a break and eat cholesterol.