October is National Cholesterol Awareness Month, but most people
think they already know about cholesterol. Ask them, and they'll
tell you it's bad, you should avoid it in your diet and that you
want your blood cholesterol number to be lower. Actually those
three things are only about half true. Your body makes
cholesterol on its own. Good thing, because it serves some
useful purposes in the body: cell structure, nerve function and
so forth. Secondly, unless you eat no animal products
whatsoever, you can't avoid it in your diet. And third, you
really only want to lower the bad cholesterol -- the LDL stuff.
HDL cholesterol, the good kind, is OK at higher levels. Since
the advent of statin drugs, most people don't worry very much
about their cholesterol levels. The drugs are very effective at
lowering bad cholesterol (the LDL stuff) and while that's good,
some people feel they have a pass to return to eating a crappy
diet. But these drugs aren't without their side effects, like
short term memory problems, muscl