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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: cholesterol and lipids
Message-ID: <261@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 22:47:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.261
Posted: Fri Aug  2 22:47:06 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 06:00:15 EDT
References: <771@burl.UUCP> <787@mtuxo.UUCP> <193@omen.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25

> 	And as for the cholesterol, maybe there is no "concensus"
> because the danger isn't quite as bad as you think! Recent research
> has shown that there are two types of cholesterol(High density
> Lipo-protein and Low density Lipo-protein), and the significant
> factor with regard to health is the *ratio* of the two types, *not*
> the absolute quantity consumed! So, in order to evaluate the danger
> of some food you must check the ratio of cholesterol types. This is
> not as easy to do as measuring total cholesterol content.

Let's remember the difference between EXOGENOUS cholesterol, that found in
the diet, and ENDOGENOUS lipid fractions, including cholesterol, HDL's and
LDL's, circulating in the blood stream.  I am sure that the digestive
system does not distinguish between the various classes of lipoproteins in
foods as it gleefully attacks them with acids and enzymes, reducing them
all to their simple constituent components.  It is meaningless to refer to
HDL's or LDL's or their ratios in foods as being "beneficial" or "harmful"
to human health, because during digestion they all turn into various
amounts of cholesterol, fatty acids, amino acids and glycerol, quite
uncharacterizable as high-density or low-density anything.  It is the ratio
of lipid fractions found in the blood of real live people which appears to
matter.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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