How the pharmaceutical industry loves disease! Better still, it is especially gleeful about creating myths, carefully crafted ones, many of which have become the touchstones of modern medicine.

This is why most of us have come to fear the ‘C’ word - ‘cholesterol’. We are told that cholesterol is bad for health and leads to obesity and various types of cardiovascular disease including cardiac arrest and stroke.

Next we are told that there are two types of cholesterol - ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol. Then we are told that high cholesterol levels are the primary cause of heart disease.

And finally, the clincher. Modern medicine says that if your cholesterol levels are elevated, certain drugs will effectively lower these levels and thus greatly reduce your risk of heart disease.

Now what if I told you that much of this is actually not true? What if I said refined sugar, not cholesterol, was one of the main culprits of vascular and coronary disease? 

Good cholesterol, Bad cholesterol ?

We have been told time and again that there are mainly two types of cholesterol - ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol. This is untrue for two very good reasons. What we refer to as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol are actually High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) and Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL).

HDL and LDL are not cholesterol. They are protein molecules that bind with cholesterol and transport it from the liver via the bloodstream to the trillions of cells in the human body. Cholesterol needs this transport system because it is fatty and does not mix well with water-based blood.

LDL is much-maligned because modern medicine has made us believe that it sticks to the walls of the arteries and causes plaque to accumulate. On the other hand, we have been told that HDL is ‘good’ because it has the ability to dislodge the LDL from the arteries and transport it back to the liver, where it is recycled.

The fact is that neither LDL nor HDL is good or bad. Cholesterol is a basic component of the body’s cell membranes or cell walls. It is needed to build and repair the membranes, and keep them permeable and fluid. It is also important for the production and synthesis of bile acids, steroid hormones, and several fat-soluble vitamins. Cholesterol is the ‘good guy’, not the ‘bad’.