The Truth about Cholesterol

Let’s talk about cholesterol. Cholesterol has been made out to be a dirty word. However, cholesterol is an essential ingredient for optimal health. It is the precursor to many hormones, as well as necessary for healthy nerve function and the conversion of vitamin D from exposure to the sun, which explains why about 50% of all elderly are vitamin D deficient, because most of them are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. Cholesterol-lowering drugs will virtually guarantee that an older person will have a vitamin D deficiency. One of the hormones that cholesterol is converted to is cortisol. These 2 go together and they are essentially for putting out fires in the body.

We can think of cortisol as the firemen and cholesterol as the fire truck. When cholesterol is elevated, it tells you there is a stress response for “fire” going on inside your body. Instead of trying to remove the fire trucks, what we should be asking is “What’s causing the fire?” In my practice the 3 most common causes of fire or stress response in the body come from the “3 S’s”---Subluxation, stress, and sugar.

Subluxation causes interference in the nervous system which causes the body to go under any physical stress. Emotion stress also causes the body to undergo chemical and physical changes, and lastly, sugar is a chemical stressor to the body. Two other common chemical stressors to the body are trans fats, which is partially hydrogenated oils, and dairy products. These stressors will cause your cholesterol to go up; however this is a totally intelligent response of the body to try to preserve your life. Cholesterol is not the problem. There is another problem that needs to be corrected, and lowering your cholesterol artificially with harmful drugs will not put out the fire.