180 Degree Health - Heart Disease and Cholesterol

180 Degree Health - Heart Disease and Cholesterol: "Cholesterol levels are a pitiful indicator of heart disease risk to the point where they are really no indication at all. Mean serum cholesterol levels in France for example are almost identical to that of Americans, yet their heart disease risk is but a fifth of what America endures. This is just one of literally dozens of striking contradictions."

Since cholesterol levels couldn’t predict much of anything, it was subdivided into two categories of cholesterol types, HDL cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. Now, we were told, there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Getting a reading on your total cholesterol profile is just now becoming a common practice, and guess what? It’s already ancient history too.

Now we know that there are other subcategories of cholesterol that refine risk even further. There is pattern a and pattern b LDL, “bad” cholesterol. That’s right, there is bad, bad cholesterol, and good, bad cholesterol. Oh brother. Turns out our war on bad cholesterol was rife with friendly fire, destroying yet another type of cholesterol that supposedly protects us from heart disease.