We obviously don't trust big pharma.
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All the praise for cholesterol is correct, however if it builds up in the blood this might indicate that its not converted into the steroid hormones which is often caused by low thyroid.
I'm not really sure I understand what you mean by building up in the blood. Do you mean having two blood tests a month apart and seeing whether it went up? Or do you mean, builds up in the blood as opposed to somewhere else in the body?
"High" cholesterol levels are not necessarily bad and there is certainly nothing bad about cholesterol itself. Almost all of our cells produce it and no matter how much we consume our body will compensate by adjusting it's own production. It's better to consume more then less.
However, if your blood cholesterol get's "very high" something is wrong. The cholesterol in your blood is supposed to be used, among other things for the conversion into steroid hormones. If you have a traffic jam and cars pile up on the road you can't just say "cars are good" and leave it at that, you have to fix the cause for the jam.
Also, if the conversion is not working properly, your body will release even more cholesterol into your blood to enforce the conversion which will lead to even higher blood cholesterol levels. The problem is not the cholesterol, it's the jam.
This is often happening in low carb and keto diets (which i did myself for 10 years) and it is - as far as i understand it - caused by high cortisol levels because the lack of sugar is stressfull in the long run, but there are many other factors. Cortisol blocks thyroid hormone and thyroid hormone is the regulator for the conversion of cholesterol. Basically thyroid hormone is (again, as far as i understand) the master regulator for our metabolism. If you have good thyroid levels you will have more energy, and even better, you will have good health because many health issues are related to a disfunctional energy-metabolism. People who don't get fat have a higher metabolic rate and the best example are kids. Kids have 3-4 times the metabolic rate of adults and it's quite obivous what the results are. Boundless energy and happiness.
Things that can be detrimental for your thyroid levels are a lack of sugar because it's a stressor to rely on fat-oxidation in the long run (it's supposed to get us through the winter and not through the rest of our lives), a lack of sunlight / Vitamin D or PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) which damage our energy metabolism (PUFAs are supposed to be in cold animals / plants and not in warm ones).
If you have a serious problem with this, more knowlegeable people then me would probably suggest to get a blood test for your hormone levels and continue from there, but that's about as far as i can talk about it with any level of confidence that it might be mostly correct.
Thanks a lot for this interesting read, especially the point about relying on fat-oxidation in the long run.
I wonder though why some UFC fighters or Joe Rogan for example are having mostly exclusively carnivore diets... do they eventually run into issues with high cortisol?
I personally have no issues, it's a family member who was given a test by the doc and told to do something about it (the doctor actually didn't wanna prescribe anything). So having read this thread I am not concered about high cholesterol, but will tell the family member to also eat foods that lower cholesterol (for example oatmeal for breaky).