Cholesterol is the essence of life. It forms the hydrophobic cell wall of every single cell in the body of which there are billions. Every day millions of cells are destroyed and new one stake their place. All the new cells need cholesterol for their cell walls.

Nearly 90 per cent of the total body cholesterol is synthesis din the liver and only 10 per cent (a rather small portion) is obtained from food intake. In spite of all these facts, high-profile propaganda has been launched against cholesterol in human diet, so much so that many people are afraid even to look at foodstuffs containing cholesterol, leave alone eating them! If one were to totally shun cholesterol, one would age very fast as cell replacement would get impeded. The skin would become loose and wrinkles would appear prematurely.

Another falsehood that has been propagated pertains to vegetable oils. A majority of laypersons are under the impression that coconut oil is rich in cholesterol, while sunflower oil is freeform it. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In fact, no vegetable oil contains cholesterol. Cholesterol comes only from animal food (non-vegetarian). However, certain oils do contain other fatty acids and fats, whose level of content depends on the nature of the oil (mainly viscosity). I must hasten to add here that all types of fat are equally good or equally bad, depending on how they are consumed. While saturated fats may be bad for the blood vessels, unsaturated fats are related to human cancer. So it is futile to choose between one fat and another. The safest is to exercise moderation in fat intake; only about 30-34 per cent the total food intake must be fat. It is also important to remember not to deep-fry food articles because when oil burn sat a high temperature (160″C), the oxygen in the air gets incorporated into the fat in the food being fried so as to produce very toxic chemical which damages the blood vessel walls directly.

Michael Brown got a Nobel Prize in 1989 for discovering the cell wall receptors for cholesterol. Having experienced the futility of trying to reduce human cholesterol levels, he decided to treat his children to ice-cream for the first time in their life and could not resist the temptation to eat some himself. He even wrote an article in Reader’s Digest entitled “Daddy Also Likes Ice-cream”.

Over the years, every scientific effort to reduce human cholesterol through drugs has resulted in higher death rates among the treated groups compared to the controls. There have been several drug trials to lower serum cholesterol since the original study in 1969 (Edinburgh-New Castle Study) to the recent Helsinki study, using a new drug Gemfitrozil. All of them had more total deaths in the drug group compared to placebo group. It remains a mystery as to why people still want their body cholesterol levels reduced by resorting to drugs. Our cholesterol levels are what they are because of the genes we have inherited from our parents and, as such, the only beneficial way of changing the cholesterol level for good is to change our parents! Advances in genetics have shown the presence of a gene for vessel wall thickening called the (anthrax gene). There is no use barking up the wrong tree trying to lower blood cholesterol!