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The 8% Newsletter

We hope your weekend was spectacular and that your week kicks off in similarly fabulous fashion. In this week’s edition, we’re taking on one of the most misunderstood nutrients, or so it seems, cholesterol. Yep, that nutrient with a reputation darker than midnight. Google it, and you’ll find a mere 1.06 billion results, 99% of which say something along the lines of “do this ridiculous thing every day and lower it”. The remaining 1% is actually giving readers the tools to make healthy choices. So, with our common sense at the helm of this discussion, let’s unpack this 1%!

What Is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy substance that is found in our cells. It’s classified as a lipid, more specifically a sterol. Although it is a totally normal and necessary part of our bodies composition it has a pretty bad wrap per health experts. Here's an interesting fact, cholesterol is strictly an animal thing. You won’t find it in plants. They have something called phytosterols, but we’ll save that for another time. For now, let’s focus on where you do find it. Think butter, tallow, steaks, fried eggs, yogurt, shrimp, oysters—all the foods blessed by the flavor gods.

 

What Does Cholesterol Do?

Cholesterol plays many critical roles, most of which are essential, if not outright heroic: 

  • A critical component of our cell membranes: Cholesterol is in the cell for 2 main reasons. It helps keep the membrane semi-impermeable (so things can’t just waltz in, or out for that matter) and fluid (so it doesn’t freeze solid). Without cholesterol, your cells would be about as defensible as a house of cards.

  • Bile Production: If you’ve ever had a nasty stomach bug, you know what we’re talking about. Bile is responsible for the breakdown of fats. It breaks fats into its components, fatty acids. The liver produces it, sends it to the gallbladder, when food gets to the small intestine, more specifically the duodenum or first part bile is secreted to break down the fats. Cholesterols are used in this process as a critical component of bile acids. 

  • Vit. D Production: If you recall from our Vit. D edition a few weeks back, there was a cholesterol we mentioned that is found on the skin and is responsible for initiating the process of creating active D3. This cholesterol was called 7-Dehydrocholesterol or 7-DHC. So without sufficient cholesterol we will certainly have more than a few other problems associated.

  • Myelin Sheath: Think of your neurons like electric cables. What does any good cable need? Insulation! Otherwise the efficiency will be undesirable. So in the context of our neurons it makes the electric impulse travel further, faster. All good things. A whopping 40% of the myelin sheath is made of cholesterol. Now you understand why some people say that butter is good for the brain, more on this later.  

  • Hormone Production: We need cholesterol to make steroid hormones that include testosterone, estrogen and cortisol. We need the first two but we could do without the last!

 

Is Cholesterol A Nutrient? Is It Essential?

Here’s where the story gets interesting. A common misconception is that if something is on a nutrition panel, it’s an important nutrient and needs to be included in our diets. Naturally, when you see cholesterol on the panel you think you need it. However, while cholesterol appears on nutritional labels, you don’t need to eat it. Your liver has you covered; producing, modifying and eliminating all the cholesterol that comes through our bodies. As the Cleveland Clinic puts it, “you don't need to get it from food (and it's not an essential nutrient). The cholesterol you gain from your diet is extra and unnecessary, like adding sand to a beach.” 

If it is not essential why then is it on the nutritional panel? If you recall from the Vit. D edition, although bodies could synthesize all the Vit. D we needed, it required 15-30 minutes of sunlight a day. Most people failed at that, so scientists thought that it would be important to add it as an essential nutrient to make sure that people were not deficient. This is not the case with cholesterol. 

Historically speaking, cholesterol has been thought to be one of the main contributors to atherosclerosis, one of the leading contributors to death and disease in western countries. So the logic was to slap it on the back of your favorite donuts so that you were conscious of how much you are consuming and (hopefully) make you think twice about it.


What’s All The Fuss With It?

If cholesterol is so useful, why should we be careful? The answer lies in the impact on blood cholesterol. Roughly 8% of the U.S. population has high cholesterol, and research shows that dietary cholesterol has little effect on blood cholesterol. This may be best exemplified by a Harvard medical student that managed to stuff 720 eggs in a month, check it out here. Keep in mind that each egg has about 150 mg of cholesterol, so he would be consuming at least 3600 mg per day or 18 times the daily maximum. The interesting fact is that after a month, his cholesterol levels were unchanged! That is pretty impressive, and against so much we’ve been told about cholesterol. That being said, it has more to do with his regulatory mechanisms being in tip top shape. These same mechanisms do deteriorate over time making it harder to stay in the healthy range. And on top of that, 1 month can hardly be used as an indicator to prove a high cholesterol diet to be perfectly fine and healthy.

So, why is it bad? Although dietary cholesterol is indeed adding buckets of sand to a beach, they are still buckets. So over time, a high cholesterol diet can “modestly increase blood cholesterol” as the American Heart Association puts it. Not only does it increase blood cholesterol which increases the risk and progression of atherosclerosis, but it also increments a lipoprotein transporter called LDL (low density lipoprotein). We’ve talked plenty about these guys. This transporter is in charge of depositing cholesterol in our cells. Part of the transporter is a protein called APO-B-100, infamous for sticking to our blood vessel walls. Essentially initiating and worsening the buildup of plaque.


Hey reader! Before you move on, we’d love to get some of your input on these newsletters! More importantly, we want to know what you’re curious about. Drop us a line by responding to this email with a topic for a future edition, and we’ll try our best to bring it in front of the 8% community!

 

Final Thoughts

The bottom line? Cholesterol isn’t inherently evil. In fact, it’s indispensable. But if you already have high cholesterol, it’s wise to keep an eye on those “extra grains of sand” you’re adding to the beach.

So with that 1% of actual truth on cholesterol under your belt, you can make better choices that fit your health. Hope this edition has served you well, and we’ll you next week 8%er!