cholesterol

[ethandron]

is cholesterol just made from fat you actually put into your body ie. by eating a diet too high in fat, OR is it also made from fat stored in your body so that even if you ate a very low fat diet but still ate too much of what you did eat and became fat you would still have cholesterol in your blood?
see what i mean??

[rowanwitch]

A lot of it is produced by the liver

[ethandron]

i'm wondering how though, rowan. does the liver need to have fat from a diet too high in it to make cholesterol, or can it/is it manufactured from fat that sits there on your body (in my case round my stomach).
i know some people have a predisposition to having high cholesterol and it doesn't make much difference what kind of a diet they follow but i guess that's something different again.

[rowanwitch]

Its not so much the amount that goes in its the amount that isn't broken down for those poor folk you need to cut down on the foods linked to high cholesterol,...its only one sort that is a problem for most people the british heart foundation have some good stuff on their website

[LazyGun]

Cholesterol is synthesised from simpler molecules within the body. Sites of synthesis is primarily the liver, but it is also synthesised in the adrenal glands and the intestines. Cholesterol is a pretty important substance, forming the building blocks of cell membranes throughout the body, and is also involved in the production of Vitamin D as a precursor molecule - it also fills this role for the bodies development of various important hormones including the sex hormones.It is converted and stored as bile. Bile is really important to the digestive system. So, cholesterol is a key compound within the body.

If you have a diet rich in animal fats / cholesterol, you will switch off or reduce the bodys own manufacture of cholesterol through a homeostatic, biofeedback mechanism.

So, even if your diet was absent cholesterol through animal fats and whatever, you would still have cholesterol within the body - good thing too :)

The health risks of cholesterol relate to having very much more circulating within your system, and the hypothesis that too much cholesterol deposits within the circulatory system, forming plaques which in turn can lead to heart disease.

[ethandron]

thanks for that, very nicely explained :)