Good Cholesterol Levels: Know The Real Deal To Optimize Your Health

Good cholesterol levels are not the levels we are generally being encouraged to have. The cholesterol levels being promoted by the medical industry and doctors are high and are not good cholesterol levels that help support healthy living.

Good cholesterol levels are needed to prevent heart disease. The World Health Organization indicated that heart disease is the number one killer in the world.

“…cardiovascular diseases killed 17.5 million people in 2012, that is 3 in every 10 deaths. Of these, 7.4 million people died of ischaemic heart disease and 6.7 million from stroke.”^[1]

A major cause of heart disease is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a disease in which a plaque of fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances builds up inside your arteries. This plaque hardens and narrows the diameter of the arteries, restricting blood flow, and oxygen and nutrient delivery to the heart and other parts of the body.^[2]

There are several factors that increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis. The risk factors include:^[3]

1. Genetics
2. Degenerative
3. Inflammation
4. Cigarette smoking
5. Systemic hypertension
6. Diabetes mellitus
7. Being overweight
8. Inactivity
9. Stress
10. Cholesterol

Though cholesterol is last in the list,Dr. William Clifford Roberts, Executive Director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute and Editor in Chief of The American Journal of Cardiology, believes:

Atherosclerosis has one single cause and that is cholesterol. All of the other factors combined are contributory at most. If there is not enough cholesterol in the blood there may not be enough cholesterol to penetrate the artery walls and trigger the disease.^[3]

So what are good cholesterol levels to have to reduce the risk of and to prevent prevent heart disease, stroke, and heart attack? If we leave the recommendation up to the medical industry we will be recommended levels that are not the optimal cholesterol levels, and the reason might surprise you.

In this case good cholesterol levels are referring to optimal LDL cholesterol levels which is the type of cholesterol that leads to the the development of atherosclerosis. The optimal LDL cholesterol level is between 50-70 mg/dl^[4], but this is not the recommended good cholesterol level.

“Accumulating data from multiple lines of evidence consistently demonstrate that the physiological normal LDL level and the thresholds for atherosclerosis development in CHD events are approximately 50 to 70 mg/dl.”^[4]

Newborn children start off with LDL levels of 30 to 70 mg/dl. Healthy, wild, adult primates have LDL levels approximately 40 to 80 mg/dl, and humans are the only adult mammals, excluding some domesticated animals that have a mean LDL level above 80 mg/dl and a total cholesterol level over 160mg/ml.

Good cholesterol levels consisting of LDL level of 50 to 70 mg/dl are the levels seen in societies free of the heart disease epidemic. The average person’s LDL level is around 130 mg/dl, which is around twice the normal physiologic level.

The federal government doesn’t push the medical industry to recommend good cholesterol levels below 100 mg/dl of LDL cholesterol because:

“…the intensity of clinical intervention required to achieve such levels for everyone in the population would financially overload the helathcare system. Drug usage would rise enormously.^[5]

The federal government doesn’t advocate for what science shows to be good cholesterol levels is that is would frustrate the public, who would have difficulty maintaining the low LDL cholesterol level.^[6]

So the public is not informed of the optimal diet for health. A whole food plant-based diet does not contain cholesterol because plants don’t contain cholesterol. The body will make all the cholesterol it needs, and excessive amounts of cholesterol we ingest from animal products makes it difficult for us to maintain good cholesterol levels and optimal LDL cholesterol levels of 50 to 70 mg/dl.

It is interesting that studies indicate that 50 to 70 mg/dl of LDL is the optimal level, because I eat a whole food plant-based diet and my LDL level is 51 mg/dl. It appears a plant-based diet supplies me with just the amount of LDL that I need to support my healthy living. Please look into the benefits of a plant-based diet in supporting your healthy living.