Cholesterol: Why you need not fear eggs and butter, and what you can do about elevated LDL (part 1)

​For around 40 or so years, we’ve been told that if we eat cholesterol-containing foods like eggs and saturated fats (butter, cream, meats, coconut oil, cream and milk), we’ll raise our cholesterol and our risk of cardiovascular diseases, like heart attack, stroke and arterial plaques.

Recently, I’ve had many people asking me how many eggs they can safely eat per week, because their doctors have told them they have high cholesterol and therefore need to avoid eggs. And I’ve had several people express surprise that I recommend most people could benefit from eating more eggs and saturated fats.

So, in a  series of two articles, I’m going to help you learn more about cholesterol – what it is, what a high LDL cholesterol blood test result really means, and why you don’t need to fear saturated fats or eggs (truly).

Key facts to know about cholesterol

• Research has shown that when your LDL cholesterol is higher than your HDL cholesterol, there is a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. So it’s true you should be concerned if a blood test shows your LDL cholesterol is higher than your HDL. However…..
• The majority of your body’s cholesterol is actually produced by your liver. Your liver produces around 1g of cholesterol – a waxy substance needed for many aspects of human health – every single day.
• Eating one egg will give you around 200mg of cholesterol – a pretty insignificant amount given your liver makes around five times this, every. single. day. Also keep in mind that eggs are an excellent, affordable source of protein, vitamins A, D, B2 and B12, iodine, choline and healthy fats.   

It’s important to understand that cholesterol is in fact needed for your mental and physical health. Some of the many functions of cholesterol in your body include:

• helping make vitamin D (vital for mental health, thyroid health and normal immune function),
• helping make bile (vital for digesting fats)
• making your nervous system’s myelin sheathing (the protective coating on your nerves that degrades in serious illnesses like Multiple Sclerosis)
• making the membrane (walls) of every single cell in your body
• making male and female sex hormones (testosterone, progesterone, estrogens)
• supporting the function of serotonin receptors and all brain cell communication.

 
Given the important role of cholesterol in the health of your nerves and brain – which play a huge role in your mental health – it’s interesting to note that low HDL blood cholesterol has been linked to depression, major depressive disorder and a history of suicide ideation and suicide attempts.

Additionally, saturated fat, which we’ve been taught to fear in relation to our heart health, is also necessary for the healthy structure of cell membranes. It also makes up a significant component of breast milk and is needed to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins D, E, K and A.

So if our livers are making cholesterol daily and using it for structural and functional purposes to keep our bodies healthy, and saturated fat is needed for structural and functional purposes AND makes up part of human breast milk…..can cholesterol-containing foods like eggs and saturated fats really be so bad for us?

Click here to read part 2 of this article.