Cholesterol is NOT the enemy:

 It's inflammation that's making you fat and killing you slowly
by: Jonathan Benson

The collective psyche of American society is long overdue for a major paradigm shift in its understanding of fats, inflammation, cholesterol, and the true cause of most chronic illnesses. Even many physicians, who should know better, still argue that cholesterol is evil and that sticking to a low-fat diet is good for health. But the fact of the matter is that avoiding fats is toxic to your health, and consuming the many food additives that commonly replace them - these include synthetic trans fats, refined sugars, and processed grains - are a primary cause of disease-causing inflammation.

It all makes sense if you just stop and consider the native role cholesterol plays in protecting arteries against lesions and other damage. Rather than being the cause of plaque buildup in the circulatory system, cholesterol is actually the healing agent the body sends to sites that have been damaged by inflammation. In other words, if you have too much cholesterol buildup in your arteries, your real problem is too much inflammation rather than too much cholesterol, and a whole different mitigatory approach is required to address the problem.

"It's the inflammation in the vessels that starts the lesion," says Dr. Beverly Teter, a lipid biochemist from the University of Maryland who has been researching fats and their affect on the human body for many years, as quoted by CBN.com. "The body then sends the cholesterol like a scab to cover over it to protect the blood system and the vessel wall from further damage."

This runs completely contrary to the prevailing medical dogma, which still maintains that saturated fat and cholesterol are silent killers that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and other forms of chronic illness. As a result, millions of Americans have been duped into avoiding these necessary nutrients to their own demise, while they instead gorge on unhealthy vegetable oils, trans fats, sugars, grains, and phony low-fat junk foods.

"When choosing which fats to eat, pick the ones that are high in omega-3 fats and also choose natural saturated fats," advises Lorie Johnson from CBN.com. "On the other hand, stay away from the fats that lead to inflammation, such as trans fats and omega-6 fats," she adds, noting that most of the oils used in processed food are unhealthy vegetable oils posing as "nutritious."

Saturated fat and cholesterol necessary for proper cellular function, brain health

What few people today realize is that their bodies actually require both saturated fat and cholesterol for proper metabolism, brain health, hormone balance and cellular homeostasis. Without these two important nutritional components, a cascade of health problems can ensue, including debilitating brain conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. This is especially true for people who take toxic statin drugs to artificially lower their cholesterol levels.

"People with high cholesterol live the longest," says Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D. "Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol."