Cholesterol is quite a new term but nowadays it is well known and sensitive persons are frightened by it. Struggle for the universal decholesterolization has begun approximately in the 1980s. At the same time a so-called “fashion” has appeared to calculate quantity of the cholesterol eaten with products practically with the calculator in hands.
Sometimes they say about “good” and “bad” cholesterol but not all its variations are dangerous. It is homogeneous as a substance but found in blood in different compounds with other fatty matters and proteic substance which are called lipoproteins. One of them is low-density lipoproteins which carry cholesterol with blood to peripheral organs from liver where they are synthesized. If these compounds are overproduced or its disintegration is disrupted then large quantity of cholesterol is accumulated in blood. And in this case LDL cholesterol can be called as “bad” one.
The fact is that the excess of cholesterol finds its way into vessels’ walls. Here it is accumulated and conjunctive tissue proliferates around its deposition. So atherosclerosis plaque which narrows the lumen of a vessel and blocks blood flow is formed.
There are different kinds of atherosclerosis plaques. The most dangerous are malignant plaques with a big cholesterol nucleus and a cap adjusted to it with the help of connective tissue. Such a cap is easily torn and the plaque drains like abscess in the lumen of the blood vessel. In response to it organism tries to patch the damaged place by a thrombus. Very often such a thrombus cannot stop its growth and bocks up the lumen of the vessel as a cork. Blood flow is stopped and body tissues die off without oxygen and nutrients. If it happens in heart - it causes myocardial infarction and if it occurs in brain - it causes cerebral stroke. The onset of such dangerous diseases is evoked by high level of cholesterol which is found in “bad” LDL cholesterol.
There exist another viewpoint on the problem of low-density lipoproteins; a number of specialists question the idea that there is a certain connection between high-density lipoproteins and large number of cardiovascular diseases. They consider that people are frightened by slogans which boggle imagination: “killer of arteries”, “horror of the century”, “social danger number one”. That is, attribution of all of these characteristics to cholesterol makes doctors more and more doubtful about it. They refer to the fact that for more than twenty years of the fight against cholesterol doctors failed to reduce sickness rate from atherosclerosis and death rate from cardiovascular diseases.
Very often specialists mention so-called “French paradox”. It’s about the fact that the French have low rate of cardiovascular diseases despite that they traditionally consume food which is rich in cholesterol. And on the contrary, in the USA, where the majority of population has fallen for non-cholesterol diets, continue heading the list for the rate of atherosclerosis and number of obese people.
Despite the fact that many people nowadays take medicine which reduces the level of cholesterol in blood or follow the corresponding diet, the number of suffering from cardiovascular diseases does not decrease.