Many of us have heard that cholesterol is very important for your health.
It is bad to have high cholesterol, but we don’t know exactly what it is. What does cholesterol do in our body, what is its function?
Today we will explain the importance of this natural fat in our body.
Cholesterol is a natural fat, where most of it is made in the liver. Therefore, all those animals that have a liver make it. Therefore, we also find this fat in foods of animal origin. But it can also be found in processed foods. The famous “Trans Fats”.
It is a necessary fat for the proper functioning of our body because it participates in many processes that the body performs throughout the day and if we did not ingest it our organs would not function properly and could cause us health problems.
Below, we detail what these processes are:
Main functions of cholesterol in the body:
- Formation of cells: fundamentally helps with the formation of the cell membranes of our organs so that the membranes are neither too thin (would lose their consistency) nor too thick (would not allow nutrients to penetrate properly). It also repairs damaged cells and helps create new ones.
- Works as an antioxidant: it reduces the negative action of free radicals preventing premature aging of cells.
- It helps to produce hormones: it participates in the synthesis of female (estrogens and gestagens) and male (testosterone) sex hormones, it also helps with corticosteroid hormones. These hormones are fundamental because they allow us to do certain vital functions.
- It synthesizes vitamin D: it helps transform the sun’s rays that reach our skin into vitamin D.
- It cleanses the body and helps with digestion: cholesterol is taken to the liver and used to produce bile. Therefore, we will be cleaning our organism from fats and eliminating bad cholesterol. During this process, it also helps to assimilate food, therefore we will improve digestion.
Who should advise us on our levels
As you can see, the main functions that cholesterol has are very important for us to enjoy good health and well-being at work or in our daily lives. That is why we recommend that you have your cholesterol tested regularly. Always with the purpose of knowing whether our levels are the most adequate or we should improve them.
Only our doctor should tell us what we should do to improve these levels in case they are not the most recommended.