Most of us have been taught a pretty simple story about heart health.
Cholesterol gets too high. Lower it.
Fat is bad. Eat less of it.
Your numbers move into the approved range and everybody feels better.
I’ve never been completely satisfied with that.
Cholesterol isn’t some foreign substance that accidentally wandered into your bloodstream. Your body makes it. It uses cholesterol to build cell membranes, make hormones, produce bile acids and do a bunch of other things necessary to keep you alive.
That doesn’t mean LDL doesn’t matter. It does.
But I think there’s a big difference between “this matters” and “this number tells us everything we need to know.”
My own experience certainly made me question the simple version.
When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I changed the way I ate dramatically. I cut sugar and most carbohydrates. I stopped worrying about dietary fat. Meat and eggs became staples. I walked. I lost nearly 100 pounds.
My blood sugar returned to normal without diabetes medicat…
